This is the Chancellor's Program. At his homegoing in November 1997, Dr. Bob Jones, Jr. left a legacy of lifelong ministry to students as Chancellor and former President of Bob Jones University. He also left a wealth of recorded sermons which we now present on the Chancellor's Program. Today's message was preached during an evangelistic service held on the campus September 2, 1987. Speaking from the book of Genesis, chapter 5, verses 23 and 24, Dr. Jones delivered this sermon titled, Enoch Was Not. I always feel a tremendous burden in these opening night revival services, evangelistic services, which we hope will be revival services. It's a terrific responsibility to talk to you on your first night here, particularly you who have come for the first time. You sit here with different backgrounds, different experiences, different heritage, and yet somehow you all have basically the same needs. Oh, I don't mean by that you all need exactly the same thing, but I mean each of us has a definite need of the guidance and grace of God in our lives and to be surrendered to the Lord Jesus Christ so that we shall live for him and be blessed by him through the power of his Holy Spirit. You're living in very strange days, young people. Every year, the students who come to Bob Jones University come over more obstacles and come in spite of the world around them. In that sense, you have to have more character than the generation before you. And yet at the same time with this character that enables you to come here, where everything is different from the world and contrary to the world, though you are enabled by God's grace and your own determination to come here, you're also bringing with you certain temptations and certain pulls from the world that the generation of college students just before you did not have, at least to the same degree you have. We are very sympathetic to your struggles. The thing that is hard for us to be sympathetic to is when you do not struggle. As long as a young person tries, tries earnestly and tries hard, you can be extremely sympathetic and helpful. But when a student is willing to just drift along, and has no desire to make an effort to be what he can be and to acquire all he can acquire from his school year, it's hard, I must confess, to be sympathetic. And our prayer for you this night is that you'll come here with a determination to be all you can be by God's grace. And that means you'll be more tomorrow than you were today, and more next week than you were this week. Because there must be a constant climbing up a growth in grace, an expansion of horizons, and a muscle to the soul being tougher and harder each day and each week if there's to be progress made. And our prayer for you is that's what will mark you in this year. I call your attention tonight to two verses in the fifth chapter of the book of Genesis. The book of beginnings is a good place to begin the school year. Genesis chapter 5, verses 23 and 24. Twenty-three, twenty-four. And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years. And Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. Here is a large part of the biography of a man who lived long before the flood. A man who was the seventh from Adam, that is, he's the seventh generation to be born on the earth. A man who lived a year of years, for we are told that he lived 365 years, a very short life on earth for the people before the flood. We have a very strange attitude about this antediluvian age. We think of it as a brief time because so few chapters in the Bible discuss it. We have somehow an inclination to think of it as a very brief period of history, but yet it extended almost 1700 years, and almost two-fifths of man's time on the earth will live before the flood. That's difficult to comprehend, but nonetheless it's so. And if you'd like to make an interesting study, you can take these ages, as they're set down here, the length that man lived, you can trace out generation after generation and see how broad a period it is. Men lived great lengths of days, and the times passed, but it was a lengthy period. It was a period when sin abounded in the earth. In fact, it was a day very much like our day. And the people who served God in that ancient day had to stand up against the same obstacles that you have to stand against today. It was a day in which there was great licentiousness, great looseness, great sin on the part of the men on the earth. In fact, this sin came to the place where God said, I'm going to destroy both man and beast, and the creeping things, and the foul of the air, and everything I've made, I'm going to take him off the earth, for I'm repentant that it I made it. It got so bad that God couldn't stand it. We're told in the early verses of this chapter that God saw everything that he made, and behold, it was all very good. And when you get over to the sixth chapter, you find that God says, He's sorry he made it. It's so bad, and wickedness is so great. So here, in this time, good became bad, purity became impurity, Grace became sin, and the whole world fell apart. And we are told that it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man. And we know that the coming of the Son of Man must be getting close, because so many of the things that mark this antediluvian world are taking place in our world. In the first place, it was a world that was very intellectual. Imagine men living five and six hundred years. How much they could learn? The average life of a man is about—useful life, life of service—is about one generation. That's normally considered thirty-five years, three generations to a century in modern times. A man spends some twenty, twenty-five years getting his education. That is, if he's going to be a scientist or a physician or a professional man, an engineer. And he's supposed to retire by the time he's 60 or 65. So that leaves him a brief time from, say, 25 to 60. And during that time, he makes his contribution to the world. A man who's a scientist makes experiments. He begins with this, and he tries this, and he tries that, and he tries the other. And he follows through the theories that he has, and he may discover something. But he cannot discover it and bring it to its final conclusion. And he passes from the scene today. Somebody else comes along, uses his notes, someone who studied with him, and they try to take up where he left off and go on. But that's not the same thing as one man having seven, eight hundred years to work out the problems. Think how much knowledge could abound on the earth, and the Bible tells us that it did. Think how much they could have learned from Adam. Now here's a man who was sixty-five when Adam died. Adam lived all these generations, lived past the time of normal human life as we judge it today. What he could have been! What a preacher he could have been! He knew God in innocency. He talked with God face to face as an innocent, new-made creature, come fresh from the hand of God and in-breathed with God's life. How he knew God! He shared God's secrets. And how brilliant he was! He named the creatures of the earth. He called them all by name. He understood science and all sorts of things that we cannot understand today because he shared God's secrets. He got them straight from the mouth of God. And then sin came, and sin wrecked his garden and destroyed his world and brought him to death, brought the curse of death upon all those who have been born of his loins in the generations yet to come. He lost the garden. He saw the punishment of God upon sin, and yet he knew the promise of God's redemption, and the skin of the lamb was put upon his loins as a token and a promise that God would send a Redeemer who would redeem him. So he knew innocence, he knew the tragedy of sin, he knew the judgment of God, and he knew the grace and forgiveness of God. What an evangelist he could have been. He could have walked up and down that ancient world and preached the gospel as no man ever preached it. But there's no record that he did. All we know is that he came out of the garden, became a farmer, raised sons and daughters. sought to replenish the earth as God commanded him. But every one of those sons and daughters went back to the dust from which Adam had come." But what a scholar he could have been. And think how much he could have passed on to his descendants. Those men in that generation could have been very brilliant. They were also people who were marrying and giving in marriage and eating and drinking. Does that sound modern? Some years ago, I was checking into the airport in Los Angeles, and the head of me in the line was a silver creature. Silver hair, silver minks, silver boots. And when she turned around, I recognized her. She was one of the Gabor girls. I don't know which. They all look alike to me, but she was one of them. She looked sweet and innocent, which is unusual. Most of these Hollywood people, if you see them face to face, they won't stop a clock, but they'll make it run backwards. And most of them are quite horrible and ugly looking. It's wonderful what the makeup men and the lighting men can do. But she was sweet and young and innocent. I don't know how old she is. I think she must be close to 60, maybe 60. I don't know. You take the age they give you and add 20 to it, and you've been very charitable. I don't know how old she is. But I read recently where one of those sisters, and I think it was this one, married her eighth husband. Now, let's, to be charitable, let's say at that time she was 60 years old. She didn't marry the first time, I'm sure, before she was 12 or 15 at the earliest. So let's take 15 years off of 60. How many husbands she's had in that span of time? Think how many she could have had if she lived to be 820 years old. God knew what he was doing when he cut the space of man's life after the flood. And all we know about these people in their daily life is that they were giving way to free reign to all of the impulses of the flesh. Eating, gluttonous, drinking. They were not drinking diet Pepsi, I'll tell you that. We had a Bible conference speaker here when I was a student, a very good man, who was a great blessing. But he used to say that fermentation was not known before the flood, and that Noah, when he came out of the ark and got drunk, did not know that that wine had fermented and would make him drunk. Now, he was a great Bible teacher, that man, but he was dead wrong on that point, because the conditions before the flood were such that fermentation had rapid course. Great cloud cover over the earth, moist, dry by change, dews coming up out of the ground at night, and then the heat coming down through that cloud cover by the day. It was a time when fermentation was advanced. Unfortunately, no one knew very well what he was doing, for this was a generation given over to drunkenness. Gluttony, drunkenness, and the lust of the flesh. Does that sound modern in this day? I can remember when a woman who got divorced was looked upon as scant in society. Now in some little towns a woman has to have at least five husbands before they elect a president of the bridge club. That's the regard today of the lust for the flesh and of living illegally in the sight of God, for God forbids divorce. Now here we have a situation, a terrible situation in these days, brilliant, highly advanced, You read here about three men, sons of one father. Their names are Jabal Jubal and Jubal Cain. May I point out to you that they are the sons of the ungodly line, not the godly line. And these three men became the founders, as it were, of three great professions. First of all, there was Jabal who kept sheep and oxen. Doesn't mean he's the first man that ever had a herd. It simply means he was an expert and all followed his teachings to have advanced farming. And if you have sheep and herds, you have to raise fodder and feed for them. He was a man who was a master. They knew something about advanced agriculture. And then there's a man named Jubal. Now our word Jubilee comes from his name. It means joy and jubile, we are told, as the father of such as make music on the harp and the organ. Interesting that those two instruments should be mentioned, because out of the harp and the organ come all the instruments of a great symphony orchestra. A piano is the development of the harp. A harp makes music because strings are struck, are plucked, or rubbed over with a bow of some kind. The organ is the development out of the small hand organ. and all the great symphony instruments that make music because of wind passing through pipes. The French horns, the trumpets, all of those instruments, even the oboe and the flute, are developments of this organ. Now here they are, all there, the great instruments. And then there's another man came along, Tubal Cain. Tubal Cain, we are told, is the father of such as work in brass and iron. That's significant. When I was in high school, I was taught that the Bronze Age came before the Iron Age. Now, bronze is an alloy of brass, and that men worked with brass long before they came to understand how to work with iron. But here before the Flood, we find men working in both metals, and the implication is they understood how to work in all kinds of metals. They used to tell me in school, that the Greeks had bronze helmets and bronze shields and bronze swords, and they were easily bent or pierced. And the Roman came along with iron swords and iron instruments, and they were able to defeat the Greeks because their weapons were better. But here we find them working with both of the same kind. That means there's manufacturing. If you have someone working in instruments, they don't only make—working in metals, they don't only make instruments of war, they make instruments of peace. Bronze wheels for chariots. and steel belts for those wheels. They were working in all the highest forms of metallurgy. How do we know that they did not have, or that they did have, better alloys than we have today? They may have understood some alloys that civilization has entirely forgotten. They may have been able to make speedy means of transportation. Now everything is mentioned here except the fourth element of civilization. But you don't have these other three without having four. The fourth is economics. You have to have money or exchange or some means of transfer of funds or of produce if you're going to have a civilization. If somebody makes farm machinery, the farmer has to acquire that machinery by selling him something, maybe cattle. And if you're going to raise produce, you have to have some way to sell and dispose of that produce and get the things you need. So that always follows. And here we have the elements of a high civilization. I'm going to leave this now, but I want to impress upon you the fact that this was a day so very much like ours. And here's a man, Enoch, who was not conformed to that age. Conformity is the cry of the world today. You dare not be different if you don't go along with other people, if you don't live like those who sit beside you in class live. If your life is not a model of conformity to the world, you're looked upon like a strange creature. And as chickens and turkeys will turn and peck any animal, any fowl in the cage with them that's different from what they are, that has the least sign of bleeding until they destroy them, so the world seeks to destroy those who are different from the rest of the world. Now, you're going to be conformed to something. You're going to be conformed to the image of the world, or you're going to be conformed to the image of Christ. We are not to be conformed to the world, but we are to be transformed, the Bible tells us, into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. You have to make an effort not to be conformed. If you go for your pleasures to the same place the world goes, you'll be like the world. If you associate too lightly with the people of the world without witnessing strongly to them of Jesus Christ, you'll become like they are. If you listen to their music, your mind will become as warped and as sick and as twisted and as illogical as the minds of the world. We are living in a day when man is trying to be like the world, and the temptation of young people is to be like the world. You may wonder why we emphasize so strongly the danger of rock music here, because rock music is one of the opiates of the world, and rock music can destroy your life and pull you away from God almost quicker than anything else. the dress of the world, the opinion of the world, the life of the world, the pleasures of the world, the amusements of the world, all these things are at war against God. Listen, you live in a world that's in armed rebellion against the Almighty. And the sad thing about it is, it's a generation when people talk most about being Christian. I listened on television a week or so ago to some of the sessions of that big charismatic circus they had down in New Orleans. It was the most disgusting, unscriptural, insulting to Almighty God of anything I ever saw. All in the flesh, working up or trying to work up some kind of a spiritual demonstration. People dancing in the aisles and cavorting around, immodesty, confusion, noise, unscriptural statements made, and ungodly men speaking. What a terrible scene it was, and I thought how typical that is of this day. And they say that by the year 2000, over 50% of the world's population is going to be Christian. Don't you believe it, young folks? The world is no friend of grace, and there is very little genuine Christian experience abroad in the world. And if men say to you, I'm a Christian, you measure it by their life to see how Christian they are. And you measure their lives by the Bible, which is the Word of God. And any man whose life is at enmity against God's Word, that man is likely not to be a saved man. Because a child is like his father. And if you are born again by the Spirit of God, and if the Almighty is your Father, it will be evident in the way you live, and the things you like, and the kind of songs you sing. It will be evident in every aspect of your life. Well, here's a man who was unconformed to his day. He wasn't going to the parties. He wasn't getting drunk along with the rest of them. He was a man who was serving God in the midst of a day. And we're told in the book of Hebrews, for there's more about this man in the New Testament than there is in the Old, we're told in the book of the Hebrews that he had this testimony before he was translated, that he pleased God. He's the only man before the flood of whom God says that. Noah found grace. You find grace in the eyes of the Lord as you receive Jesus Christ. But my friend, you please God when you stand for Him in the midst of ungodliness and sin, when your life is in conformity with the holiness which God expects of His children. And here He is, this man. He wasn't the most popular man in his day. I dare say he was one of the most unpopular. I do not believe he's the only man who had faith in God. I don't believe he was the only faithful follower of the Lord in that day. I believe there were others. But this man was outstanding because in no wise did he let his life conform to the evil day in which he lived. Unconformed. And because he was unconformed, he was uncorrupted. The only way you are going to avoid the corruption of the world is to stay away and apart from those things in the world which produce corruption. You can't live like a sinner and not become corrupted by sin. You can't embrace the devil and not be smelling of the sulfur of hell itself. You always become like the people with whom you associate. And those people whose company you enjoy, you enjoy because there's something in your heart that responds to their sins. And as you respond and do not avoid it, more and more you'll become like them. He was not conformed, but thank God he wasn't corrupted either. You know what he was doing? You can find out what he's doing as you read over in the book just before the final book of Revelation, over in that little book of Jude. Isn't it strange that this man, whom so much is said of in the fifth chapter of Genesis, is also mentioned in the book of Jude way over at the end of the New Testament? What does it say about him? It says not directly about him, but first of all about the men who are the religious corruptors of our day, the apostates, the unbelievers, the men who go to Columbia to welcome the Pope and fawn on him. And there are Southern Baptists, members of other denominations, who will be down there a week from Friday making fools of themselves before the old apostate Antichrist. And they're as apostate as he is. These are they. of whom Enoch, the seventh from Adam, testified, saying," and what does he say about them? Nothing good. He speaks of ungodly men, ungodly deeds committed, ungodly words spoken, and these ungodly men who are a corrupt influence in our society. Isn't it wonderful? Enoch looked all down the years, past the flood and through the period of our Lord's sojourn on earth, right down to the age in which we lived, and Enoch saw the apostates of our day. Why? Because there were men just like them in his day. And he pointed these men out, and he said, these are going to be like those men who were here at the time of the coming of the Lord, for whom God is reserving judgment, who corrupt society. And that society was corrupt largely because of its religious leaders. Every society is. Where the clergy stand against sin, sin does not abound so much. Where God's people take a stand for the gospel, where they denounce sin, where they preach judgment and hell, there's a holding back of sin. For the Word of God, as the Holy Spirit broods over that Word, will hold back rottenness and corruption. But here's a man who's uncorrupted because he's faithful to God. He was handing out tracts. He was preaching on the street corner. He was denouncing all those things that displeased God and damned souls in that day. What a man he was! What a courageous man! How bold! How brave! I wonder where that old fundamental preacher is. Somehow he didn't get tracked to me today. I wonder where he is. Well, I'll tell you where he was. He was at home with God. God took him. God took him away. God took him off. You see, there comes a time when sin becomes so wicked that God's going to take away those who preach against the sin and who give them an opportunity for repentance by the preaching of God's grace. And as you come more and more toward the end of the age, you're going to find all kinds of follies take the place of the gospel of salvation, and the silly charismatic extremes take the place of the sound preaching of the Word of God against sin and of righteousness and of judgment. And all of these things are withdrawn as you come toward the end of the age, and the message becomes soft and corrupt as the preachers become soft and corrupt. And any preacher who speaks straight That man will be the object of scorn. I wonder where he is. Maybe at a party one night somebody said, I haven't seen that old nut for two weeks. I wonder where he is. One of the light women of the town says, well, I'm going to tell you. I haven't told anybody. Didn't want them to think I was crazy. But I was looking out my window the other night around six o'clock, hoping some man would come along. I could call in. And I saw the old fool walking down the road The beer truck came around the corner, but he vanished. He disappeared. Now, Jesse May, you know you were drunk. I wasn't drunk. I'd only had three martinis. I was as sober as a judge. Wasn't drunk at all. Oh, you know you were drunk. No, I wasn't drunk. And the driver of the beer truck speaks up and says, you know, I was driving that truck, and I came around the corner, and there he was, and I thought I hit him because he vanished. looked on top of the empty bottles and under the truck and all around, couldn't find him. I never had any use for the old nut, but I'm glad it didn't kill him. They looked for him, but he was not, for God took him, uncorrupted. Because he was unconformed and because he was uncorrupted, he was uncondemned. God took him home. Let me tell you, young people, the only way you can avoid condemnation is to keep yourself pure from the corruption of the world around you. There's a verse that's often misquoted because people don't quote it all. There are verses like that in the Bible. There is therefore no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. That's a great verse, but finish it because you haven't told the truth until you do. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. You'll save some of you, but you're living in a world that's corrupt, and you're almost as corrupt as the world. And you play in the stagnant pools and in the slimy waters. You indulge in the sins of the world, and you condone them, and you love the people who do those things. And the Bible condemns people who love iniquity. who not only love iniquity but take pleasure in those that do these things. You're in a corrupt and rotten world, and in your church maybe you've had preaching against it and maybe you haven't. For preachers today are not prone to preach against sin and condemn it. You may be from a Christian home where your parents don't know how far into sin you've gone. You may be a preacher boy. You live in a world where if you think you stand, you better take heed lest you fall. You live in a world where sin abounds, but thank God, grace can much more abound. He wasn't condemned. I expect to see this man, Enoch, in glory. He's one of the first people I want to talk to. Walked along one day, and he said, God, it's getting on toward night. Come go to my house. And God said, no, Enoch, I've been to your house every night. I'm going to take you home with me tonight. They just walked on home and he was in God's house in the land where there is no night. Wonderful to have the blessed hope to look forward to. But you know, if you're a sinner, you better dread the coming of the Lord Jesus. And if you don't like the coming of the Lord Jesus, if you don't long for it, it's because you've come to love the world or you're caught up in sin. You'll stand ashamed at His coming. There'll be some weeping and some gnashing of teeth when the Lord comes and finds those who Claim Him as Savior. Who say they're ready for Him to come. They're living in sin. They're living in iniquity. They're living like the world. They have no testimony. No desire to win souls. Hypocritical. Neither one thing or the other. There's nothing more miserable than a halfway Christian. You have enough of the world that you can't enjoy fellowship with Jesus. And you've just enough of the Savior that you don't feel quite at home in the world. Miserable creature. Half in, half out. By God's grace tonight, you can be dedicated to the Lord Jesus. You don't have to live. You don't have to say, look, I'm weak. I don't want to live like this, but I can't help it. Maybe you can't help it, but God can help it. And if you put your faith in Jesus Christ and trust Him and seek to live for Him, you'll find grace to live for Him. Oh, it doesn't mean you'll be perfect, but you'll soon lose your love for the world, and the taste of worldly things will be as bitter in your mouth as the garlic and onions of Egypt. It's wonderful what God can do. He's able to save to the uttermost all who come to God by Him. If you're here tonight unsaved, and maybe we have some who came here unsaved, you've never been born again, you've never had an experience of God's salvation, you can pass from death to life tonight. You can be saved. You can be born again. You can become a new creature in Christ Jesus. You can become a child of God on your way to heaven. And you're here defeated, Christian. Maybe some of you slipped into sin this summer and you began to find your testimony tainted and your Christian life befouled. You've been burdened about it. You hope nobody knows it. The sad thing is the Lord knows it. You better make it right with Him. He says if we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. But young folks, it isn't only a forgiveness of sin we need. and the removal of the guilt in our souls because of some sin, we need our natures cleansed and turned and directed toward God and toward God's Word and toward God's service and to the joys of Christian life. Let us pray. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we have rejoiced again tonight to see the evidence that Thy hand is not shortened that it cannot save, nor thine ear heavy that it cannot hear. And I thank Thee for graciously hearing the heart cry of those who were in this service without Thee and are now before Thee, before the cross, where the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses from all sin. And I thank Thee that Thou hast heard the heart cry of some children of thine who have wandered amidst the rocks and the crags and in the wilderness and find themselves apart from the sheltering fold of God. And I pray that tonight, Lord, because Thou hast graciously sought them and brought them back, that they shall be pleased to remain and feed in Thy pastures and at Thy hand. And for those, Lord, to whom Thou hast spoken and have not responded, I pray Thy continued voice. For no man can come except the Spirit of God draw him. So let the drawing power of the Spirit of God continue, even as we have seen it prevail, let it prevail yet in the lives of many. In Christ's name we pray, amen. You've heard a message by Dr. Bob Jones, Jr., who during the latter part of his life served as Chancellor of Bob Jones University. This message, titled, Enoch Was Not, was recorded at an evangelistic service held on the campus September 2nd, 1987. If you'd like a cassette copy, send a check for $7 to Campus Store, Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina 29614. This message is also available on the internet at WMUU.com. Listen each week at this time for the Chancellor's Program, sponsored by Bob Jones University.