Enoch's Prophetic Ministry

The statement that "he walked with God" after Methuselah's birth does not imply that he had been a godless person before and only now experienced conversion. He belonged to the faithful race and doubtless had served God loyally during the first 65 years of his life. But with the arrival of a son to grace his home he understood through experience the depth of a father's love and the confidence of a helpless baby. As never before he was drawn to God, his own heavenly Father, and eventually qualified for translation. His walk with God consisted not only in the contemplation of God but also in active ministry on behalf of his fellow men.

He looked forward to the second Advent of Christ, earnestly and solemnly warning the sinners around him of the terrible doom that awaited the ungodly (Jude 14, 15). Jude's reference to Enoch and his quotation of that patriarch's prophecy has occasioned much comment. Commentators are in general agreement that the pseudepigraphical book called 1 Enoch was in circulation among the Jews by the middle of the 1st century b.c.. Chapter 1:9 of this noncanonical work reads as follows: "And behold! He cometh with ten thousands of His holy ones to execute judgment upon all, and to destroy all the ungodly: and to convict all flesh of all the works of their ungodliness which they have ungodly committed, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him" (R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, Vol. 2, p. 189).

It is commonly believed that Jude quoted from this noncanonical work, though some hold the reverse to have been the case. If Jude quoted from 1 Enoch it was because the Holy Spirit led him to do so.