[00:00:01] Speaker A: What's up, Jason?
[00:00:02] Speaker B: Hey, how's it going, Nate?
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Really good. So this, I think, is maybe the first time in the history of our podcast that I am making sure to put a disclaimer in right off the top of the podcast. Oh, boy.
I want to make some things very clear before we get going today.
First thing is, this is not sacrament meeting.
Can we agree on that, Jason?
[00:00:24] Speaker B: I agree.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: Second thing, this is not Sunday school. Can we agree on that?
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:00:29] Speaker A: This is a podcast with two friends who share faith and enjoy talking about various things in the Scripture. Fair enough, Jason.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Fair enough.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: Am I missing anything there?
What's the unique perspective, Unique perspective that's going to be pushed to the limits today?
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Oh, dear.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: I've been waiting for this day the entire time.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: We've been doing the podcast ever since Doctrine and Covenants.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: Ever since Doctrine Covenants, when we brought up what my favorite part of the scriptures was, was the begats. I've been waiting for this day.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: We've reached.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: We've reached them. But what I'm going to say is for any of our listeners out there.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Or the beginning that will be.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: That would be. Or they're worried that they will be somewhat offended by hijinks, tomfoolery, and a bit of irreverence.
Here is your chance to just fast forward through the next four and a half minutes. So what are we looking at? What am I a minute in? If you go to minute six, 20, that's when go. Just skip the next four and a half minutes from here so that we don't have to worry about you potentially being offended at what we do, which is have fun. Let the begetting begin.
[00:02:06] Speaker B: Are you ready?
[00:02:19] Speaker C: You've been waiting for it.
We've been building for it.
Began.
Adam lived 130 years and begat a son in his own likeness and after his image and called his name Seth.
And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were 800 years and he begat sons and daughters.
And all the days that Adam lived were 930 years and he died.
And Seth lived 105 years and began Enos.
And Seth lived after he began EnOS 807 years and begat sons and daughters.
And all the days of Seth were 912 years and he died. And Enos lived 90 years and began Canaan. And Enos lived after he begat Canaan 815 years and begat sons and daughters. And all the days of Enos were 905 years and he died and Canaan lived 70 years and begat Mahal Eliel.
And Canaan lived after he begat Mahalaleel 840 years and began sons and daughters. And all the days of Canaan were 910 years and he died.
And Mahalale lived 60 and five years and begat Jared. And Mahalaleel lived after he begat Jared 830 years and begat sons and daughters.
And all the days of Mahalaleel were 895 years and he died.
And Jared lived 160 in two years and he begat Enoch. And Jared lived after he begat Enoch 800 years and begat sons and daughters. And all the days of Jared were 960 and two years and he died.
And Enoch lived 60 and five years and begat Methuselah.
And all the days of Enoch were 360 and 5 years and Methuselah lived 887 years and began Lamech. And Methuselah lived after he began Limmac 782 years had begat sons and daughters.
And all the days of Methuselah were 960 and nine years and he died.
And Lamech lived an hundred eighty and two years and begat a son and called his name Noah.
And Lamech lived after he begat Noah 590 in five years and begat sons and daughters.
And all the days of Lamech were 770 and seven years and he died.
And Noah was 500 years old. And Noah begat Shem Ham and Shake.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: I warned you.
[00:06:10] Speaker B: How do you even follow an act like that?
I don't even know where to go.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: I can tell you where I'm probably going.
I mean, like after this life. But continue.
I told you the bigots were my favorite section.
[00:06:27] Speaker B: I warned you. I mean, the burning question in my mind now at this point is, why don't we have a Mahalale boxer today? I mean, it sounds so good that.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: Actually that was one of the few names when I was reading it in, in. In like the announcer's voice that I was like, wow, this is a great name.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: That guy deserves to be in the ring.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: Mahalal. Yeah, dude. That's a good stage. That's a good one. All right, all right. There's our. There's our we. I just wanted to make sure to pay off the. The hype, the build up.
For those wondering. Jason had nothing to do with this. So if you're going to be angry at anybody, be angry at me.
Don't be angry at Jason.
Jason. Jason is off the hook.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:20] Speaker A: All right, so what are we talking about this week other than the begats?
[00:07:24] Speaker B: You know, that's the funny thing. Genesis 5. I mean, you just read the entire chapter in the introduction.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: That's it. I just read the whole thing.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: It's pretty rare in a Come follow me podcast that we've been doing in the now over a year that we've done it, that you actually read the entire chapter in the whole podcast.
That was it.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: It's kind of cool that the church devoted a entire week's lesson on. On a chapter that was 99% begetting.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: I mean, to your.
To your. Your. Your love of genealogies in the Old Testament.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: Heaven knows that's all that I love. That's what I love the most. Not all, but that's what I love the most, is just genealogy, baby. Just give me all the names.
[00:08:16] Speaker B: And. And it is cool. You. You know, we think about our emphasis on family history and genealogy today, and it almost seems like the church of Jesus Christ pushes it to a new extreme or that is something unique to us.
It is certainly not unique to us, but it is one of the things that we do fixate on, if that is the right way of putting it. I think we are known. We have a reputation for that. Ancestry.com.
but looking back into the scriptures and realizing that this made it.
How many things did not make it into the scriptures, but these genealogies did? This was something from day one that was very important to God's children.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: Do you want to know, honest to goodness, why I think the begats are so great?
Because I just love watching whoever is called upon in Sunday school to read those verses. I just watch, like, sheer panic go over their face when they're like, I'm supposed to pronounce these names. 70 verses worth of names, and everybody in the class gets to just sit here, watch me just murder all of them.
And I'm just in the back of the room somehow loving every second of it.
Is that wrong of me?
[00:09:43] Speaker B: No.
No.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: I mean, because I know the panic that's come over my. My countenance whenever it's been me that's called to read all these names. I'm like, I don't know how to pronounce any of these. But do you want to know what I do? I just own it. I just start going through those names. I don't even stop.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: For all the families that bring baggies of Cheerios, would it be appropriate in gospel doctrine this. This next week to bring baggies of popcorn just to listen People Read the names and the genealogies for you gospel.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: Doctrine teachers that think about popcorn this week.
[00:10:15] Speaker B: Think about it.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: All right, let's get into it.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: The reason why the church is focusing all of its efforts on this chapter of Begaddery is because in that list of names that Nate so kindly read for us in the beginning is the name of Enoch.
And this is the only mention, really that we have of him in the Old Testament. So the church has coupled this with Moses 6, and we're going to be springing off this list of genealogy to talk about Enoch, who he was.
And there's not a lot of information about him in the Old Testament. But fortunately, Joseph Smith was able to provide us with more information.
And what's cool to me is all the information that has come out subsequent to Joseph Smith's time about Enoch.
There is a first Enoch, a second Enoch, a third Enoch.
There is a Book of Giants that talks about Enoch. There are all sorts of text since Joseph Smith's time that has come out and added a plethora of information about this prophet that was barely mentioned in chapter five in a list of begatirs begetting.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: And Joseph Smith's record in the book of Moses, the way he describes Enoch and how he tells it goes right along with a lot of these other stories that we see, which to me is cool to see a prophet receive revelation, to write it, and to have subsequent text come out that validate his teachings.
So maybe let's start in Moses chapter six and read a little bit of background about Enoch.
So here I.
Let's get to maybe his calling.
65 years, that's young compared to the.
[00:12:21] Speaker A: Rest of these things.
[00:12:22] Speaker B: And that's funny, because it's interesting you say young because.
[00:12:25] Speaker A: Look, I'm just saying Moses was like the youngest of all the dudes in Genesis, and he was 500 something.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: Moses.
[00:12:32] Speaker A: Yeah. When he had. When he had his three sons, you're saying. No, not Moses, Noah. Sorry, no. Noah was like 500 something when he had his three sons.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: Yeah. It's interesting because some of These guys, yeah, 180 before they even have their first kid. And you're like, what were they doing the first 180 years?
It was a different lifetime. And it makes you wonder about what a year was.
But going it is important. I'm glad you noticed that it is young, because in our day, 65 wouldn't seem very young for a man to have his first son here, or at least to have Methuselah and the very next verse in verse 26. And it came to pass that Enoch journeyed in the land among the people. And as he journeyed, the spirit of God descended out of heaven and abode upon him. And he heard a voice from heaven saying, enoch, my son, prophesy unto this people and say unto them, repent.
For thus saith the Lord, I am angry with this people, and my fierce anger is kindled against them. For their hearts have waxed hard and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes cannot see afar off.
And for these many generations, ever since the day I created them have they gone astray and have denied me, and have sought their own counsel in the dark, and in their own abominations have they devised murder, and have not kept the commandments which I gave unto their father Adam.
Wherefore they have forsworn themselves, and by their oaths they have brought upon themselves death and hell. And I have prepared for them if they repent not.
And this is a decree which I have sent forth in the beginning of the world from mine own mouth, from the foundation thereof, and by the mouths of my servants, thy fathers have I decreed it, even as it shall be sent forth in the world unto the ends thereof. And here's Enoch's response, verse 31.
And when Enoch had heard these words, he bowed himself to the earth before the Lord and spake before the Lord, saying, why?
What a response.
I need you to go preach to all of these people, and not just these people. But I mean, we've got Cain who slew Abel. We have Lamech, who, according to the book of Moses, killed a man in order to keep the secret combination secret. And they had devised these oaths to kill each other to get gain.
And the Lord says, hey, I need you to go speak to them. And Enoch's like, why, just wipe them off and be done with it? Because you don't want me going there. Enoch continues.
And when Enoch had heard these words, he bowed himself to the earth before the Lord and said, and spake unto the Lord, saying, why is it that I have found favor in thy sight and am but a lad?
And all the people hate me, for I am slow of speech. Wherefore am I thy servant? So it's not just why, it's why me.
And if this is after he has Methuselah, as it almost leads us in to say, and at 65, he begat Methuselah. And as he was going forth, the Lord spoke to him, and he says, I am but a lad, and there is something to be said about being just a lad. I mean, obviously, we have the story of Joseph Smith. We have the story of Mormon Samuel.
We have the story of these young people that are impressionable, that are willing to listen to the Lord, that haven't turned away or hardened, that there is some value to it being a young man. Nephi, if his older brothers are still single, it suggests that he is probably still at a fairly young age.
And if he is saying, I am large of stature, I am large for my size, to where people confuse me for a man.
You wouldn't say that if you were already a man.
People confuse me for a man. Well, yes, you are a man. No, you have got this. You've got this boy hitting puberty early. That's like passing for somebody older than what he is, meaning that he was fairly young when he was called to do what he was doing.
So don't take your age as an excuse if you are a young person listening to this podcast and think, you know what? I am young. I am going to do whatever I want to right now and wait to do what the Lord wants me to do because he is going to give me a pass because I am young. I don't have to do it. I don't have to. The Lord has put high expectations on his youth from the beginning.
Now, granted, a youth in this case is 65 years old, and that seems really ridiculous to us. But, you know, if you are living to the age of 965 is pretty young, all right. So let's keep going. Slow of speech.
And it's interesting. Joseph Smith talks about having kind of a speech impediment, although when I read his words, I am inspired.
Moses says that he had a speech impediment.
And so this theme, it's kind of interesting to see it pop up here as well. They hate me because I am slow of speech. I am not the most eloquent. I am not the person you are looking for.
He's full of excuses for why not him.
And the Lord said unto Enoch, go forth and do as I have commanded thee, and no man shall pierce thee.
Open thy mouth, and it shall be filled, and I will give thee utterance, for all flesh is in my hands, and I will do as seemeth me good.
Say unto this, people, choose ye this day to serve the Lord, the Lord God who made you. Behold, my spirit is upon you. Wherefore all my words will I justify. And the mountains shall flee before you, and the rivers shall turn from their course, and thou shalt abide in Me and I in you. Therefore walk with me a great promise.
And the Lord spake unto Enoch and said unto him, anoint thine eyes with clay and wash them, and thou shalt see. And he did so. And he beheld the spirits that God had created, and he beheld also the things which were not visible to the natural eye. Cool little miracle. And it reminds you of the blind man in the New Testament who has his eyes washed with clay. And it reminds you of, or at least it reminds me of the role of Isaiah, the prophet. When he is called to be a prophet, he says, I am unclean, I am not worthy. And the Lord takes.
Or an angel takes tongs and grabs an ember from the altar of the Lord and puts it to his lips and his tongue to cleanse them for the role that he is going to fill to be a prophet.
So it is cool to see these actions.
When you look at heroes, mythology, and we're going to be talking a little bit about mythology today, when they're asked to do an impossible quest, the gods step in and give them a gift to be able to fulfill that mission, to fulfill that quest here. He's got a weakness. And it's interesting that God is saying, yes, I'm choosing you, maybe because of that weakness, because that weakness makes you humble. You are not arrogant, you are not proud because of that weakness. It has become a strength for you. And I will make it a strength for you. And I love. Let me skip forward to how it shows this play out. So this is chapter seven.
After Enoch's been teaching and Enoch has to go do battle with giants. We will get into all of this today.
Verse 13.
And so great was the faith of Enoch that he led the people of God and their enemies came to battle against them.
And he spake the word of the Lord. And the earth trembled. Here's a guy slow of speech.
He speaks the word of the Lord and the earth trembles. And the mountains fled, even according to his command. And the rivers of water were turned out of their course.
And the roar of the lions was heard out of the wilderness and all nations feared greatly. So powerful was the word of Enoch, that which was his greatest disability. Thank you. His greatest weakness. What he feared that everyone hated him. For so great was the power of his word that all of these things happened.
And so great was the power of the language which God had given him.
So that's one of the greatest things about Enoch for me to see God take him, to choose him because of his humility to choose him because of this weakness, and to turn that weakness into his greatest strength, and says, you will walk with me. And in the end, he does walk with him. And I find it fascinating, too. As the Lord says, mountains will move for you. Rivers will turn out of their course. And so when Enoch commands it, it happens. But it's not just that. Enoch goes and says, hey, I want this mountain to move, because I think God's going to move this mountain. He says it because God told him, you will move mountains and they will move for you.
He didn't take that on himself. Hey, if I've got this faith, let me see if I can move that mountain. Or, if I've got faith, let me see if I can command this river to move.
It doesn't operate that way. He has faith. But what does he have faith in?
He has faith that the Lord told him.
Because the Lord said, if you excuse me, the Lord said, you will move mountains.
How can I have faith to move mountains if the Lord didn't tell me that I can move mountains?
In this particular case, the God is telling him, the mountains will move for you. And he's believing what the Lord said and exercising that faith to fulfill what the Lord had said.
It's not just fun and games. I don't know if that makes sense.
You can see kind of where I'm headed with that.
[00:23:33] Speaker A: All right.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: Moses teaches here. Not Moses. Back to Enoch. It's written in the Book of Moses. He talks about Adam, he talks about baptism, and he teaches people some of the best verses as far as explaining the need for baptism. This idea of being born of the spirit, born of blood, born of water.
And he is this great, powerful teacher. We credit him with the city of Enoch.
And I wanted to take just a second to compare this to a book we have. This is the book of the Upright, published well after Joseph Smith.
And this is what they talk about Enoch.
And Enoch rose up. Let's go back one more verse. 4. This is the book of Jasher, or other words, the book of the Upright. And he said, rise, go forth from thy house, and from the place where thou dost hide, and appear to the sons of men in order that thou mayest teach them the way in which they should go and work, which they must accomplish to enter the ways of God.
And Enoch rose up according to the word of the Lord and went forth from his house, from his place, and from his chamber in which he was concealed. So here in this source, you have Enoch, who is hiding from the men again, this guy who's despised, slow of speech, who doesn't like to be out in public and God's calling him. And you can see where this why me attitude is kind of coming from. He's got an aversion to these people.
And Enoch rose up according to the word of the Lord and went forth from his house, from the chamber from which he was concealed. And he went to the sons of men and taught them the ways of the Lord. And at that time assembled the sons of men and acquainted them with the instruction of the Lord. And.
And he ordered it to be proclaimed in all the places where the sons of men dwell, saying, where is the man who wishes to know the ways of the Lord and good works? Let him come to Enoch.
And all the sons of men then assembled to him. And all who desired this thing went to Enoch. And Enoch reigned over the sons of men according to the word of the Lord. And they came and bowed to him, and they heard his word.
And the Spirit of God was upon Enoch. And he taught all his men the wisdom of God and his ways. And the sons of men served the Lord all the days of Enoch, and they came to hear his wisdom.
So to me, it is cool to see these extra biblical sources validate what the prophet Joseph revealed in the book of Moses. It is awesome.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: When we get into the giants, they're coming. All right, all right, I'll be patient.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: The giants are coming. The giants are coming because he does. He wages war with them.
And who's he?
[00:26:38] Speaker A: Enoch wages war with the giants.
[00:26:40] Speaker B: Yes, sir. Yes.
And who are the giants?
And now I'm trying to look at which way I want. Should we just dive into the giants now and then? I'll talk later about maybe the single greatest lesson I see Enoch learning and I learned from Enoch.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: Maybe we should do that first so that again, if people want to just tune out for the rest of the giant speech, they can.
Okay, let's get to the good stuff. Give us the lesson first.
[00:27:08] Speaker B: This is the most amazing thing to me. Enoch becomes this powerful warrior.
We read that verse where it talks about the power of his word.
I'm going to read. This is Moses, chapter 7, verse 14.
This is right after he says, so great was the power of the language which God had given him. So here we pick it up in v.14. There also came up a land out of the depth of the sea. And so great was the fear of the enemies of the people of God, that they fled and stood afar off and went upon the land which came out of the depth of the sea. And the giants of the land also stood afar off. And there went forth the curse upon all the people that fought against God. And from that time forth, there were wars and bloodshed among them. But the Lord came and dwelt with his people, and they dwelt in righteousness.
So you've got a great divide between the people of God and the people not of God. And the giants are here taking the other side.
The giants stood afar off. And it's fascinating to me that Joseph Smith chooses.
I mean, this is his inspired translation.
The Hebrew word for giants in Genesis is nephilim, which literally translated means the fallen ones, those that fell.
So you could almost say the apostates.
And it would be an accurate reading. It would be a correct translation. But Joseph Smith in his inspired translation, also goes with giants. There's something to it, and we'll dive into that here in a second. But as Enoch has been doing, he's not just a great teacher, he's a warrior.
And he has been fighting to establish Zion, and he's been fighting great wickedness. Remember the secret combinations. The Lord is mad at these people.
He's doing everything he can to build up a righteous people, but he's also doing it in the face of battle.
Enoch is a warrior.
And this takes us to the lesson I find the single.
This is the greatest lesson I think I learned in the Scriptures, and I learn it from Enoch.
Let's go to.
Let's go to. When Enoch is taken up to be with God, verse 27. And Enoch beheld angels descending out of heaven, bearing testimony of the Father and the Son of the Holy Ghost on many. And they were caught up into the powers of heaven unto Zion. And it came to pass that the God of heaven looked upon the residue of the people and he wept.
So just some context here.
In the Old Testament, it says, Enoch walked with God and he was no more on the earth.
We get here from the book of Moses that it wasn't just Enoch, but Enoch and the righteous followers were taken up. The angels came and took them up. And so now Enoch is looking at God and he sees God looking over the rest. That didn't get taken up.
I'm just going to read that again. And it came to pass that the God of heaven looked upon the residue of the people, and he wept.
And Enoch bore record of it, saying, how is it that the heavens weep and shed forth their tears as the rain upon the mountains?
And Enoch said unto the Lord, how is it that thou canst weep, seeing thou art holy? And from all eternity to all eternity. And were it possible that man could number the particles of Earth, yea, millions of earths like this, it would not be a beginning to the number of thy creations.
And thy curtains are stretched out still. And yet thou art there, and thy bosom is there. And also thou art just, and thou art merciful and kind forever.
And thou hast taken Zion to thine own bosom, from all the creations, and from all eternity to eternity.
And naught but peace, justice, and truth is the habitation of thy throne. And mercy shall go before thy face and have no end. How is it that thou canst weep?
So Enoch is looking at it here. He sees on earth his enemies, the people that he was afraid of, that he didn't even want to go around.
He follows the Lord, he gets courage, he builds this city, but he doesn't do it peacefully. He has to fight the people, the giants, and the enemies of God to establish this righteousness.
And after being a warrior and conquering and establishing his kingdom and giving him credit for establishing kingdom, it's also good to note that it took Enoch. If he started at the age of 65 and he was here for 375 years, it took him over 300 years to get to this point, right? This isn't just an overnight thing.
And thinking about Enoch in that time frame, think about if Joseph Smith lived as long as Enoch to get his society to where it would be.
We would still have Joseph Smith today and for another hundred years to come.
And what could you do with a man with a single goal and a single vision without switching hands, switching perspectives? You know, I don't know. It's interesting and giving it credit, but he also had a long time to get to this point. And he's looking down at his enemies and he's saying, God, you've got us. You've got numberless creations. You can create more people. You can do anything you want.
Why do you care about them?
It seems like a fair question.
Why in the world are you crying over these punks on earth that didn't want to listen to you. They were the bane of my existence. They would have wiped us off the earth.
You can create more earths and more people even better than them. Why do you care?
Fair question.
And the Lord said unto Enoch, behold these thy brethren.
So Enoch refers to them as the residue of the earth.
And the Lord refers to them as Enoch's brothers and sisters. These, thy brethren, they are the workmanship of mine own hands.
And I gave unto them their Knowledge.
And the day I created them. And in the garden of Eden gave unto man his agency.
And unto thy brethren I have said, and I have also given commandment. That they should love one another. And they should choose me their father. But behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood.
We can read about how bad these people were. But I can keep going. And the fire of mine indignation is kindled against them.
And in my hot displeasure will I send in the floods upon them. For my fierce anger is kindled against them. Behold, I am God. Man of holiness is my name. Man of counsel is my name. And endless and eternal is my name also.
Wherefore I can stretch forth my hands and hold all the creations which I have made. And mine eye can pierce them also. And among all the workmanship of mine hands There has not been so great wickedness as among thy brethren.
That is pretty bad.
Yea, I can take all of my creations. You are right. Worlds without end. And if I compare all of them, none of them are as bad as your brethren are right. Now that is pretty damning.
So he is agreeing with them. To a sense. Right. Verse 37. But behold, their sins shall be upon the heads of their fathers.
Satan shall be their father, and misery shall be their doom.
And the whole heavens shall weep over them, even all the workmanship of mine hands. Wherefore should not the heavens weep, seeing that these shall suffer?
But behold, these which thine eyes are upon shall perish in the floods. And behold, I will shut them up. A prison have I prepared for them.
And that which I have chosen have pled before my faith. Wherefore he suffered for their sins.
Inasmuch as they will repent in the day that my chosen shall return unto me. And until that day they shall be in torment.
Wherefore for this shall the heavens weep? Yea, and all the workmanship of my hands, he says.
Of course I am going to weep.
I cannot weep over you. You guys are righteous.
You are taken care of. You are going to get your reward. It is going to be good. But what about these guys?
A lot of what they are doing, they are doing in ignorance. Because they do not know better. Or because that is the world they live in. That is the situation. Those are the choices that they have made. But they are going to torment.
They are going to be shut up in prison. They are going to pay for what they have done. Should we not weep for them? They are my creation. They are your brethren, and they are going to suffer.
And somewhere along the lines and unfortunately, you guys have me trying to convey this. Somewhere along the lines, Enoch gets it.
The Lord is talking to him.
And now all of a sudden, instead of seeing these people that he has seen as the enemy for 350 years as the residue of the earth, that he couldn't wait for them to be wiped off and destroyed because that was in war.
That's your mission. That's what you are trying to do, destroy the enemy.
He sees them for who they are, God's children, his brothers and sisters. And he sees the suffering that they are going to endure because of their choices. And at which point, Enoch refuses to be comforted. And it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Enoch and told Enoch all the doings of the children of men, wherefore Enoch knew and looked upon their wickedness and their misery and wept and stretched forth his arms, and his heart swelled wide as eternity, and his bowels yearned and all eternity shook.
Here is the man that was looking at him and saying, this is the residue.
Get it over with. Wipe them out. And now he looks at him, stretches forth his hands, and learns that valuable lesson that without charity, man is nothing.
And that was maybe the last lesson Enoch had to learn.
As he was trying to save so many people, he was able to change his perception and gain that godlike love for even his enemy.
And it's easy to love our loved ones, our family, our friends, but being able to have that charity for the enemy and to really feel bad for him, I don't know. I love these scriptures. I love this story about Enoch. That's the.
That's the single greatest lesson I get out of Enoch.
His life.
[00:38:46] Speaker A: Okay, let's talk about those giants.
[00:38:48] Speaker B: Let's talk about those giants.
Okay. In order to better understand these giants, I think we're going to have to actually lean into a few verses outside of the context of this lesson. Okay, so I'm going to go back to Genesis 5, and then I'm going to skip forward to Genesis 6, because we are going to get to Genesis 6 next time, but the focus is going to be about Noah, not about the giants and the battle. And who are these people that Enoch is running up against.
So verse one. And it came to pass that when men began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair, and they took them wives, all of which they chose. And the Lord said, my spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh. Yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
And there were giants in the earth in those days.
And after that, when the sons of God came into the daughter of men and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men, men which were of old, men of renown.
What in the world?
[00:40:09] Speaker A: I don't understand a word you just said.
[00:40:11] Speaker B: Yes, this is kind of a weird little snippet.
[00:40:16] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:40:18] Speaker B: Why is God saying sons of God, daughters of men? That sounds terribly sexist for beginners.
Why is it that the daughters are considered wicked, but the sons are considered righteous?
Right.
[00:40:32] Speaker A: Give me an answer.
[00:40:35] Speaker B: And then you look at it and say, okay, the sons of God marry the women.
They take them for wives, and God gets mad.
Wait a second. Isn't that the whole man should not be alone. He should take a wife for that reason, he should separate himself from his parents.
And God looks at it and says, how dare you marry them.
I'm upset. And you're not going to live 900 years anymore. You're going to live to about 120, and that's the end of it for you.
Just for getting married.
So Genesis doesn't give us a full picture.
And the last thing is that the giants are attributed to being so there were giants in the earth in those days. And also that when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, and the same became mighty men which men were of old, men of renown.
So I don't think we're getting answers to these questions in the Bible.
And here I think we've got to take this and spread the net a little bit wider.
This is talked about in the Book of Enoch.
You've got three different books of Enoch.
And in the Book of Enoch, this is kind of cool. And maybe this is where the comic books get this concept from. But they refer to a group of people, a group of angels called Watchers.
And these angels whole mission was to just be watching men here on Earth, not necessarily interfere. They were the Watchers.
And some of the Watchers decided that they did not want to just be Watchers anymore.
And they came to the Earth and they talk about genetically modifying animals to create monsters in this time and also having intimate relationships with the women on Earth and creating these mighty men, these heroes that were not quite mortal because they were born from angels.
So Enoch kind of gives us a weird little take on this.
And so I'm going to go to the book of the Cave of Treasures.
I'm going to read out of this.
What kind of described. Because going through this genealogy from Enoch, there's some things that are happening right around this time that I think we need to understand.
So here we are.
This is the book of the Cave of Treasures. And it's talking about the time it's going through the patriarchs, and it gets down to Jared.
Now let's.
[00:43:22] Speaker A: Is this the Jared and the Boats?
[00:43:25] Speaker B: No, bummer. This is Jared from Seth's descendants before we get to Jared and the boats.
[00:43:32] Speaker A: Whatever.
[00:43:34] Speaker B: Okay, now, according to the book, let me give you just a little bit of preface here. According to the book of the Cave of Treasures, Adam and Eve first lived in Eden, which is in a mountain environment.
And this isn't just the book of the Cave of Treasures. This is just how our understanding, even how gravity works with water flowing out of Eden to go fill the earth, right? So when they are cast out of Eden, it is interesting that you have not just a fall as an apostasy or falling from grace, or falling away from God, but literally, physically, you're having a descent, a fall coming out of the mountain, down into a lower mountain, or you're physically descending. And you see this. When Satan was cast out, he was cast down to the earth. So he had a literal fall with his symbolic fall. And then you see that with the serpent that beguiled Eve, who used to be walking on two legs. And then the legs are taken away and it's cursed to go upon its belly and dust thou shalt lick all the days of thy life. You have this physical fall.
Well, we're going to have. We've talked about the fall of Satan. We've talked about the fall of Adam and Eve. Now we're going to be talking about the fall of their children.
According to the book of the Cave of Treasures, Cain, when he slew Abel, was cast out of the society and went down. So you see this in Genesis when they talk about his descendants being tent dwellers.
These are the ones that dwelt in the tents.
And so they created a society down in the valley below from where Seth and his righteous posterity lived.
And so you've got this demarcation or the separation in two different societies. And the ones that are living down in the valley are the ones that, again, as we read the Old Testament and you read about Lamech, and you read it in the book of Moses, that Lamech killed for the sake of the oath and these secret combinations.
And every man knew his brother in order to be a part of this society, and the things that they were doing in order to get gain, to kill people and to do wickedness. And Satan was kind of ruling over them.
And so they called these people the men, if you will.
While the people that were up on the mountain that had not fallen, had not gone all the way down into the valleys that were still righteous, they called them the B' Nai Elohim or the children of God.
And it is interesting, anytime you see sons in the Old Testament, you could translate it as children.
It is the same word in Hebrew.
B' nai Elohim, the children of God and the sons of God. It's the same word.
If any of you have studied other languages, you might have picked up on that. And if you have a masculine plural, if you have a mixed audience, you can group it into that masculine plural. So this society up there that were righteous were calling themselves the children of God, while the people in the valley below were calling themselves the children of men.
And when God is frustrated and he says here in Genesis that he is going to restrict their age to 120 years, you will notice after that statement, you said it at the beginning of this podcast, Nate. Noah lived 500 years. And that is after this statement.
And look at how long Shem lived. Look at how long Abraham lived. Look at how long these righteous people lived. They were several hundred years after God said he was going to shorten the life.
But look at the, look at who he's talking about.
If we go back to Genesis, he specifically says he's going to shorten the lives.
Let's see. And verse 5. And God saw the wickedness of man which was in the earth. And the every.
Sorry, skipped it.
And the Lord said, okay, that the sons of God. Let's see, verse three. And the Lord said, my spirit shall not always strive with man for that he also is flesh, yet his days shall be 120 years. And when you're talking about it, he's talking about the daughters of men. He's talking about men, not the children of God, but the children of men down here in the valley.
The people that are wicked below, he shortens their lifespan. But the people that are righteous above, they are still living for a long time.
Now where this gets interesting to me is where else do you see society that looks at a people that lives in the top of a mountain who are immortal?
If you.
In the time of Enoch, Adam dies, but he hadn't died yet at the beginning of Enoch.
And the people in the mountain. So let me go to the cave of treasures, see if I can make some sense of all of this and try to tie it all up for us.
Meanwhile, the fornication reigned among the daughters of Cain. And without shame, several women would run after one man and one man would attack another. And they committed fornication in the presence of each other shamelessly.
For all the devils were gathered together in that camp of Cain. And unclean spirits entered into the women and took possession of them. The old women were more lascivious than the maidens. Fathers and sons defiled themselves with their mothers and sisters. Sons respected not even their own fathers and fathers made no distinction between their sons.
Wickedness in this camp.
And Satan had been made ruler or prince of that camp. And when the men and women were stirred up to lascivious frenzy by the devilish playing of the reeds, which emitted musical sounds, and by the harps which the men played through their operation, by the power of the devils and by the sounds of the tambourines and of the sistra, which were beaten and rattled through the agency of evil spirits. And sounds of their laughter were heard in the air above them and ascended to that holy mountain.
And when the children of Seth heard the noise and uproar and shouts of laughter in the camp of the children of Cain, about 100 of them who were mighty men of war gathered together and set their faces to go down to the camp of the children of Cain. And when Jared heard their words and knew their intentions, Jared was one of the patriarchs. He became sorely afflicted. And he sent and called them to him and said unto them, by the holy blood of Abel, I will have you swear that not one of you shall go down from this holy mountain. Remember you the oaths which are fathers Seth and Enosh and Canaan and Mahalaleel. Yea, there's your love. That name made you swear. And Enoch also said unto them, hearken, O ye children of Seth. No man who shall transgress the commandments of Jared and break the oaths of our fathers and go down from this mountain shall never again ascend it. But the children of Seth would not hearken to the commandments of Jared, nor the words of Enoch. And they dared to transgress the commandments. And those hundred men who were mighty men of war went down to the camp of Cain. Here you have sons of God.
And when the sons of God went to the daughters of men, as it says in Genesis. I'll keep reading here in the book of the Cave of Treasures. And when they saw that the daughters of Cain were beautiful in form and that they were naked and unashamed.
And the children of Seth became inflamed with the fire of lust. And when the daughters of Cain saw the goodliness of the children of Seth, they gripped them like ravening beasts and defiled their bodies. And the children of Seth slew their souls by fornication with the daughters of Cain.
And when the children of Seth wished to go up again to that holy mountain after they had come down and fallen, the stones of that holy mountain became fire in their sight. And having defiled their souls with the fire of fornication, God did not permit them to ascend to that holy place. And moreover, very many others made bold and went down after them. And they, too, fell.
[00:52:14] Speaker A: Let me ask you something.
[00:52:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Ask away.
[00:52:19] Speaker A: What was the initial sin that made them leave to go down in the first place, in your opinion?
[00:52:25] Speaker B: Oh, that's the question. That's the right question.
They. They, in their holy indignation, were going down to put an end to the wickedness.
[00:52:35] Speaker A: Okay.
They were told not to.
[00:52:39] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:52:39] Speaker A: Why do you think they were told not to?
[00:52:43] Speaker B: Because the prophet knew.
[00:52:44] Speaker A: Knew what was going to happen.
[00:52:46] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:52:46] Speaker A: And in their own pride, they thought they were better.
[00:52:51] Speaker B: I'm not going to fall.
[00:52:52] Speaker A: That's exactly right.
[00:52:53] Speaker B: I'm not going to fall.
I can do this.
[00:52:56] Speaker A: That's exactly right.
And there's such a lesson in that.
Yeah.
I think it's. It's crazy how so many of these stories that we read about in, you know, Genesis and really throughout the whole scriptures always come back to just incredibly simplistic themes. Right.
Fear versus faith, pride versus humility and charity. Right. Like, in a weird way, it always all comes back to those things.
[00:53:31] Speaker B: Am I going to do it my way or God's way?
[00:53:34] Speaker A: Preach.
And here's the thing. Do you think God still loved the people down at the bottom of the mountain? Do you think he. Do you think he stopped loving them at that point? I don't.
[00:53:44] Speaker B: Well, that's what Enoch learned. He thought he hated them all and written them all off.
[00:53:48] Speaker A: But again.
So, again, we always assume. I think not always, but we have a tendency to sometimes assume that because the prophet said, hey, don't go down there, that that means that for forever, there was no plan of ever redeeming those people. We don't know. We don't know that.
All we know is that at that time, they were told, don't do it, because we know what's going to happen.
And they said, no, no, no, no. We're ready.
[00:54:18] Speaker B: We're bold.
[00:54:18] Speaker A: We're better. I mean, we read about this in, in the war chapters in Alma, right?
[00:54:23] Speaker B: When you.
[00:54:23] Speaker A: When you have groups or armies of people that think that they know better and think that they're more prepared and they leave, like we've talked about, symbolically, but they. And physically they leave the high ground where they were safe and they were doing what they're supposed to because they believe that they are prepared for things that they're not prepared for.
And, and it's in it, in this case, as if in most. It always comes back to pride.
[00:54:58] Speaker B: It does.
The eternal battle and trying to.
I mean, how many times do we just want to finish what we are doing or do what we are doing and then listen to God because we know what we are doing.
You don't get it. Just let me do this and then I will listen to you.
The prophet says, put God first.
Part of what makes it so believable to me is the fact that when they are going down, remember it is Jared.
He is the one that is trying to talk them out of it. And the Hebrew name Jared in English means to go down.
So having that name and corresponding with these events and tying it back in the Bible, I do not know. It is an interesting story, and to me it helps me understand the context of this so much better.
It is not that the Old Testament here is being sexist. In this case, you are talking about a group of warriors descending down from the mountain to go put an end to this wickedness, and yet they see the daughters of men. It is different. They are not calling themselves by God's name anymore. They are calling themselves by another name. They are not the children of God, they are not the daughters of God and they defile themselves here.
There is something physically different about these people.
If the people on the mountain are living to close to a thousand years and the people in the valley are living one tenth of that lifetime, there is something different.
So I compare this story that talks about the children of Seth going down the mountain to the story of Enoch that talks about these angels that are coming down. I don't think it is heavenly beings.
I don't think angels, angels. So many times in the Old Testament is used synonymously to refer to men that are sent to go do something. God's messenger, not necessarily a heavenly being. I don't think we have heavenly beings that are interacting with man and creating super beings. I think you have these physical superior beings because they were righteous and they were blessed with long lives, with power, with. With whatever the case may be.
And they're coming down and they're mixing, and now they're giving birth to this hybrid, this man that is more powerful than what they're used to, because that was the power they were coming from.
And the story, I read it, and I can't help but think about Greek mythology.
As the Greeks looked at Mount Olympus, which is a mountain they couldn't ascend, and on there, there lived a society of gods.
And wouldn't you think the people in the top of the mountain, if your kids and your grandkids and your great grandkids and they all die?
And so I guess I'd have to look at that the other way around. If your dad and your grandfather and your great grandfather have all passed away, yet the person up on the mountain is still living and still youthful, you look at them and say, that's a God. Yep.
And when the gods come among your people and start to fornicate and give birth to children, what's the legend of Hercules, Zeus coming down?
And now you have this mighty man, man of renown.
So I go back to these verses in Genesis that made absolutely zero sense.
And let's just read them again with that context. And it came to pass when the men began to multiply on the face of the earth, that the daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair, and they took them wives, all of which they chose. And the Lord said, my spirit shall not always strive with man, for he also is flesh, yet his days shall be 120. So the Lord's mad about these marriages that are taking place.
And there were giants in the earth in those days. And also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, they bare children to them, and they became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. So I wonder if the giants, in that case, the Hebrew word being Nephilim, the fallen ones, aren't the ones that came down from the mountain, aren't the ones that you have this race of people that could live 900 years versus these men that were only living 100. And now you're having children born to them that live longer, that are more powerful, that are physically taking some of the characteristics of this mountain society and creating this hybrid race of mighty men, men of renown, like Hercules.
[00:59:53] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:59:55] Speaker B: And the Hercules myth is based off of, they say, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the old Babylonian Gilgamesh epic. I know we've talked a little bit about this last year, and maybe it's worth Giving a little bit of a refresher here.
[01:00:08] Speaker A: Just a quick one, because we are running out of.
[01:00:10] Speaker B: Running out of time. We'll wrap this up.
Gilgamesh was a mighty man, man of renown, super powerful. Stood, stood higher and more powerful than. Than. Than most people.
And there was a wild man that came among him. And this wild man's name was Yankee Do.
[01:00:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I forgot about Yankee Doodle.
[01:00:30] Speaker B: Yeah, good old Yankee Do.
So he's out jostling with the beast at the watering hole, and the people are like, hey, what's with this crazy guy? We need to try to tame him. So Gilgamesh takes on the challenge, decides to entice him into the city by sending out women.
Yankee do comes into the city, Gilgamesh wrestles him and realizes, hey, this, this guy is powerful too. And they become good buddies because they kind of respect each other. And Gilgamesh helps to civilize and tame Yankee Do.
They become good friends, they go on all sorts of crazy adventures. Yankee do dies, and Gilgamesh is left distraught and says, what is the meaning of life? If we can all die, what do I. And he decides to change his whole focus and try to find a way to find everlasting life. And he hears about a guy named Upnapishtim who had survived the flood, and he wants to go talk to up Napishtim and find out the key to eternal life.
Kind of this crazy story. The reason why I bring it up is because there is a book in the Dead Sea Scrolls called the Book of Giants, and it talks about Enoch and it talks about these giants that were living back then, and it names one of the giants by name and calls him Gilgamesh.
[01:01:54] Speaker A: No way.
[01:01:55] Speaker B: Which is crazy to me. You don't see this cross cultural references very often. But to be citing this Babylonian myth as Gilgamesh was one of these giants, these mighty men or men of renown that lived at this time.
It's kind of cool.
Yeah, it's dope, for what it's worth.
So I look at these stories and I see Greek mythology or Babylonian mythology, and all of them talking about this origin and where we came from, and it always seems so different and so weird and so alien, and it makes you question the Bible and say, what about this? Is it even true? But if you look at it in the right perspective, you start to gather a little bit more information.
Now all of a sudden, instead of seeing two or three differing accounts, you see two or three parallel accounts that are adding credibility to the same original account, saying hey, at one point, there is a common source among all of these. And maybe there is more truth to the Bible than many people are willing to admit today.
For what it is worth, that is my take on the Nephilim and who they are and what is going on. Killer, do we have time for Metatron?
[01:03:12] Speaker A: Hurry, hurry with Metatron. Metatron, of course, you waited till the very last for the best part.
[01:03:18] Speaker B: So there are a lot of texts that say that Enoch in all of this, Obviously, there's a lot of texts that say that he went and he lived with God and he got caught up with God. But there are some people that had visions of Enoch sitting throned next to God.
And this was something that a lot of the Jewish rabbis and other scholars had a hard time accepting. They say sitting on a throne at the right hand of God was Enoch, whose name was Metatron.
As far as names, angelic names go, I mean, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, not as cool as Metatron.
[01:03:59] Speaker A: Metatron is pretty dope.
[01:04:01] Speaker B: It's a good name. And Enoch takes this name in Islam. Metatron is the angel at the veil, which is kind of cool. Anyhow. When they look at him and they see him sitting on a throne at the right hand of God, made a God, they say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Nobody can be made God. That's not right.
How do we explain how somebody can be sitting throned next to God that's not God? Because they didn't believe in this deification.
And so they came up with this idea that Metatron or Enoch was the scribe of God simply because he was sitting next to him. He had to have been the scribe taking notes. He couldn't have been made God, even though that's not at all what the. What the visions or the writings were explaining or giving him credit to. But going back, I guess, to kind of wrap all of this up, it's cool that the final story with Enoch in these instances doesn't just end with him going to the presence of God, but goes to him becoming a God. Kind of the end story of Hercules when he gets his validation, being able to go back up into Mount Olympus and becoming a God. The hero story, eventually to become a God is the ultimate validation. And let me end with Adam and Eve as they're bringing all of their posterity because Adam is dying in the early days of Enoch. It doesn't say anything about this in Genesis, but we have accounts of it and it talks about it in Doctrine and Covenants. It says that Adam grabbed his posterity, pulled them all together, Prophesied and gave them a blessing. And I'm just going to read short excerpt from that.
As Adam was about to die, he gathered his children. And this is what he said to Seth. He said, and he said to Seth, his son.
He spoke to me about this in paradise, this being God speaking to Adam after I picked some of the fruit in which death was hiding. And God says to Adam, adam, Adam, do not fear. You wanted to be a God. I will make you a God. Not right now, but after a space of many years. I am consigning you to death and the maggot and the worm shall eat your body. And I answered and said unto him, why, my Lord?
And he said to me, because you listened to the words of the serpent. You and your posterity will be food to the serpent.
But after a short time, there will be mercy on you because you were created in my image. And I will not leave you to waste away in Sheol.
For your sake, I will be born of the Virgin Mary. For your sake, I will taste death and enter into the house of the dead. For your sake, I will make a new heaven and I will be established over your posterity.
And he tells them, I will make you and your children God's. And that is the conclusion of Adam's life, his message to his children. And Enoch kind of lives that out. And going back to what you were saying earlier, Nate, when we're talking about Satan and the great lies that he has this idea that Satan is saying, God does not want you to be like him. Take some of this fruit, take some of this knowledge. God wants to hold all the glory and the power to himself and not share it with you. Let me give you a shortcut to being God, when all the while God is inviting us to come and partake in his way, to actually become God. As we look at that transformation that Enoch goes through and learning charity and learning what it really means to be a God and to have charity over what he used to consider the residue of the earth, but now sees people for who they really are. Children of a loving God.
[01:07:54] Speaker A: Fantastic.
Good work this week. What are we talking about next week?
[01:07:58] Speaker B: Noah.
Noah.
[01:08:05] Speaker A: Let's bring that part of it back in.
Good work, as always. If you have any questions or comments, please, as always, feel free to hit us
[email protected] we always love getting your feedback and your emails and whatnot.
Thanks again for listening and until next.
[01:08:25] Speaker B: Week, see ya, Sam.
