I think part of what I love so much about Enoch is the glimmer we get to see of the other side, and the reminder that earth is merely the trial run.  Living here on earth, trudging through the days in and out of making a living, providing and protecting, nurturing and being nurtured, sometimes the eternal seems so surreal. 

Section Three of Enoch is titled “The Astronomical Book”, and starts with chapter 72.  Most likely I will not adequately comment on the richness of this section – for it moved me beyond what I think I’m able to convey.  But I can’t help but wonder if we had set ourselves to learning according to the revelations of God versus the study of man, if our understanding and paradigm on earth would be very different than what it is in my lifetime?

I’m reminded of my hero George Washington Carver, and how his education was in the laboratory of nature with the instructor of the Holy Spirit.  If ever there was a humble man who emulated the divine inspiration for understanding nature and the elements of how this life was ordered, to me it is he. 

Enoch begins this section with a discourse on the path of the sun.  I suppose the possibility exists that it was allegorical, but I do not think so.  And if you don’t take his discourse allegorically or symbolically, your mind will likely tilt, because his description defies modern science.

To begin, he references the laws of the sun, moon and luminaries (stars).  Uriel is the host who is showing him such grand behind the scenes, and it is made plain the order is a natural law.  In fact, he says at the end of verse one,

“…and he [Uriel] showed me all their laws exactly as they are, and how it is with regard to all the years of the world and unto eternity, until the new creation is accomplished which endures until eternity.”

There is constant foreshadowing of a time after the time of earth.  Reading Enoch is an experience in learning of worlds that have been, worlds that are, and worlds that will be.  We almost have to leave behind preconceived ideology from the days of school rooms and lectures, and even the tidy lessons of Sunday School. 

Enoch calls the sun a luminary, and tells us the first law of the sun is “its rising in the eastern portals of the heaven, and its setting in the western portals of the heaven.”  Immediately we will have to consider that we have either been taught and/or believed a lie.  If the sun rises and sets out of portals of the heaven, then it is not stationary in the sky with globes revolving around it.

Enoch described six portals in both the eastern and western parts of the heaven, as well as multiple windows on each side of the portals.  He describes a sequence of days in which the sun departs one portal in the east, returns to one in the west for about thirty days, and then changes portals, which obviously shows the sun moves across the sky as the seasons progress.  It’s a fascinating depiction as it tells how the seasons move with the sun’s path, how the days get longer in some passages and shorter in others.

The chapter on the sun ends with:

“As he rises, so he sets and decreases not, and rests not, but runs day and night, and his light is sevenfold brighter than that of the moon; but as regards size they are both equal.”

When Enoch describes the moon’s course, he is very specific how the moon’s course runs separate from the sun’s, and how measuring time by the moon must take into account the discrepancies.  He explains that the moon falls behind the calendar record over eight years by eighty days.  And then he says something interesting, he addresses “world stations”.

I found some websites with people who have really taken some of these concepts Enoch shares and applied principles to them.  Here are a few I’d like to peruse sometime when I have more time:

Astronomy confirms the accuracy of the Book of Enoch

Revolutions of the Luminaries

Enoch and the still flat earth

What I also find interesting is that Enoch describes a year as 364 days (and as 52 weeks).  There are four intercalary days injected.  But it makes me wonder how off our calendars may or may not be from the variations over the millennia of measuring time into years….  For instance, if we failed to account for a year being 364 days by God’s calendar, just that one day over the course of 4000 years would make our calendars off by almost eleven years (10.9).  These are things that matter if we’re trying to keep God’s timetable.

Enoch segues into the course of the luminaries (stars) by explaining that the star courses set the intercalary days.  And then he says this fascinating thing (75:2):

“And owing to them men go wrong therein, for those luminaries truly render service on the world-stations, one in the first portal, one in the third portal of the heaven, one in the fourth portal, and one in the sixth portal, and the exactness of the year is accomplished through its separate three hundred and sixty-four stations.”

If we can temporarily set down our preconceived notions of the earth and its orbit around the sun, and just imagine, even if just to pretend, that Enoch’s descriptions are true, we find such fascinating courses of chariots and winds, windows and portals and world-stations. 

Remember when you read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for the first time?  I remember how I had to lay aside the laws of this earth as I was taught them, to embrace the world of Narnia.  It was similar but not the same.  It had elements that did not fit with the principles I was taught of earth and life by my earliest teachers.  This reminds me of that.  I don’t necessarily have to discard the original teachings I have of these concepts, but if I just set them aside to entertain a different way of looking at them, I may be able to glean something I would otherwise miss.

Wind has always been a mysterious concept to me.  What causes it?  Where does it come from and what causes it?  I know science has their theories, but Enoch puts science on its heels.  Enoch tells us the winds are found in the twelve portals that open to the four quarters of the earth, and to find these portals you must go to the ends of the earth!

He describes the purposes of the winds, some for good, some for harm.  He assigns the plagues to the winds.  And then he moves into the quarters….

How does a round globe have four quarters?  Enoch says the quarters are also called the north, south, east, and west.  He tells us what each quarter holds, calling the second quarter most special because the Most High descends from it, and it is also called the south.  The northern quarter is subdivided into three parts, a part each for:  man, seas & land, and the “garden of righteousness”.

Then Enoch circled back to the sun and moon, and gave us their names (two for the sun and four for the moon) and their luminous abilities.  Enoch concludes this section with three chapters that I personally subtitled “the transgression”.  Here are some passages I found especially noteworthy:

[80:2)  “And in the days of the sinners the years will be shortened, and their seed will be tardy on their lands and fields, and all things on the earth will alter, and will not appear in their time.”

I grew up a farmer’s daughter.  I know that this is true even in my lifetime.

Enoch goes on in verse four to say, “And the moon will alter her order, and not appear at her time.”  This tells me the original discourse Enoch gave on the plight of the sun and moon through the portals will change.  Six thousand years later, I do believe it has changed.

Verse five tells us the sun will burn more brightly “than accords with the order of light”, and the following verses add:

“And many chiefs of the stars will transgress the order (prescribed).  And these will alter their orbits and tasks, and not appear at the seasons prescribed to them.  And the whole order of the stars will be concealed from the sinners, and the thoughts of those on the earth will err concerning them.”  (This gave me pause.  How much error is in our ways and interpretations?)

Enoch continues to hearken his son, Methuselah, (and future readers), to walk in the ways of righteousness and not depart from it.  We’re to teach the wisdom of heaven to our children and them to theirs, that the way not be lost.  He says in 82:3, “And those who understand it will not sleep but will listen with the ear that they may learn this wisdom…”

When Enoch goes on to explain the four luminaries that correct the calendar by their intercalary insertions, he admonishes:

“Owing to them men will be at fault and not reckon them in the whole reckoning of the year:  yea, men will be at fault, and not recognize them accurately.”  What point in the future was he prophesying about?   A hundred years?  A thousand?

 It’s as though Enoch looked forward through the passage of time and saw a future time that the wisdom given to him and made available by the faithful who passed it along through the millennia would hit a point that error would prevail to the detriment of those who profess to be knowing. 

If the descriptions of Enoch be true, then what we know as truth is a lie.  The earth does not spin on an axis and traverse in an orbit around a stationary sun.  That’s a difficult pill for most to swallow.  I do not portend to tell another what to think or what conclusions should be made.  I only wonder if the story has been obscured over time with the increasing wickedness of man and interference of the fallen spirits, and if there is a way to peel back the layers of fallacy to arise at honest truth that stems from the source of all Truth, God Himself.  To receive that, what must we be willing to lay down in our beliefs in order to embrace truths that contradict such? 

Surely it is not a salvation issue whether we believe the principles science and education have indoctrinated us with, or if we choose to believe ancient scripts from patriarchs of the faith.  I say that because I don’t think such topics are worth the division they cause.  They don’t impact our salvation.  Let people evaluate the data as they must, and arrive at the conclusions that their pursuit of truth leads them.  If it’s not a salvation issue, if it doesn’t deny the Lordship of Christ, let’s walk in grace toward one another.

That said, there are numerous passages of Scripture itself that indicate maybe our thoughts have been hijacked by the “reason of man”. 

Joshua 10:12-14  (NASU)

Then Joshua spoke to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel,

“O sun, stand still at Gibeon, and O moon in the valley of Aijalon.” So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, until the nation avenged themselves of their enemies.

Is it not written in the book of Jashar? And the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day.  There was no day like that before it or after it, when the Lord listened to the voice of a man; for the Lord fought for Israel.

Now there’s no reason the Scripture couldn’t have called on the earth to stand still if it was rotating.  But it doesn’t.  It tells the sun to stand still and the moon to stop – for a whole day!  This was never corrected.  No translation staying as close to the original language as it could has altered that interpretation. 

And Revelation 7:1 practically reiterates Enoch’s discourse on the four winds in chapter 76.  Revelation says it like this:

After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth,

And Enoch says it like this:

And at the ends of the earth I saw twelve portals open to all the quarters of the heaven from which the winds go out and blow over the earth.

The word translated “corners” in Revelation 7:1 is also translated “quarters” in Revelation 20:8.  In the Strong’s concordance they are interchangeable as corners or quarters. 

Maybe there’s more to Enoch and his revelations than the Church at large has allowed to come forth.

All this to say, Enoch was a refreshing book for me to read, full of wonder and revelation.  It presents images and explanations that make the Scripture come alive, and exposes stale or stagnant teachings that may need revisited, reevaluated, and possibly rethought.