The Man Who Walked Right Off the Page

After Cain killed Abel, Adam and Eve had another baby boy. Eve said, "God has given me another son in place of Abel." She named him Seth.

Then the Bible does something surprising. It stops telling stories and reads out names, the way a teacher calls the roll. Adam. Seth. Enosh. Kenan. Mahalalel. Jared. About each man it says how long he lived, that he had sons and daughters, and then, again and again, the same three words.

And he died.

Adam lived nine hundred and thirty years, and he died. Seth lived nine hundred and twelve years, and he died. Enosh lived, and he died. Kenan lived, and he died.

Back in the garden, God had warned Adam that if he ate from the forbidden tree, he would die. Now the list shows it coming true.

Then comes Jared's son, Enoch, and the beat changes.

Enoch lived sixty-five years and had a son named Methuselah. After that, the Bible says, "Enoch walked with God" for three hundred years more. He talked with God and listened to him, morning and evening, the way two friends walk a long road side by side and never run out of things to say.

Enoch spoke for God, too, to people who mocked God and were cruel to each other. The book of Jude remembers his words: "Look! The Lord is coming with thousands and thousands of his holy ones, to judge everyone!"

When Enoch was three hundred and sixty-five years old (one year for every day in a year), he went walking with God one day and did not come home. His family searched the fields. "Enoch!" they called. He was nowhere to be found.

The Bible explains it in one short line: Enoch "was no more, because God took him." Much later, the book of Hebrews says it plainly: Enoch never died. One day he was walking with God on the earth, and then he was with God in heaven.

The list goes on as if nothing had happened. Methuselah lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years, longer than anyone else in the Bible. (His last birthday cake would have needed nine hundred and sixty-nine candles, and probably a bucket of water nearby.) And he died.

Methuselah's son Lamech had a baby boy. He looked at his son and said, "This one will bring us comfort from our work and from the ground the LORD has cursed." He named him Noah, a name that sounds like rest.

But Noah would die too, like his father and his grandfather. Of all the names on the list, Enoch was the only one who never died.

The years went by in hundreds and then in thousands, and people kept waiting for someone who could end and he died for good.

Then another man came who walked with God every step of his life. Luke wrote down his family's names, back through Noah and Methuselah and Enoch, all the way to Adam. This man did not go around death the way Enoch did. He died on a cross. On the third day he walked out of his grave alive, and later God took him up into heaven while his friends watched. "He will come back," angels told them, "the same way he went."

When he comes, he will finish and he died forever, for everyone who belongs to him. Enoch was right. The Lord is coming, and his name is Jesus.