The Blessing and the Coming Judgment

These are the words of Enoch's blessing — the blessing he offered to the righteous and chosen people who would still be standing in a future time of trouble, when wrongdoing would finally be confronted and the corrupt removed from the earth.

Enoch was a righteous man whose eyes, the ancient account says, had been opened by God. He was shown a vision of the Holy One in heaven. Angels revealed it to him. From them he heard, from them he understood, and he saw not what belonged to his own generation but what would come to pass in a distant one still far off.

He carried the vision quietly for a long time before he spoke of it. When he did speak, he did not speak to the powerful people of his own day. He spoke over their heads, past their kingdoms and their reputations, toward readers who did not yet exist. He arranged his words as a parable so that they could survive the long distance between the moment he received them and the moment they would finally be needed.

For their sake he spoke — for the chosen, not for those who lived beside him — and he took up his parable and said: God of the universe, the Holy Great One, will come out from His dwelling. The eternal God will tread upon the earth, upon Mount Sinai, and appear in the strength of His might from the highest heaven.

All shall be smitten with fear. The Watchers shall tremble. Great trembling and fear shall seize them to the ends of the earth. The high mountains shall be shaken, the lofty hills shall be made low, and they shall melt like wax before the flame. The earth shall be wholly torn in pieces, and everything upon it shall perish, and there shall be a judgment upon all.

The rivers shall turn from their courses. The deep places of the sea shall be uncovered. The stars of heaven shall be disturbed in their setting, and the whole of the ordered world shall answer, for once, to the presence of the One who set it in motion. What people had assumed to be permanent will be shown to have been leased, not owned.

But with the righteous He will make peace. He will protect the chosen and mercy shall be upon them. They shall all belong to God. They shall prosper and be blessed, and the light of God shall shine upon them.

And behold, He comes with ten thousand of His holy ones to execute judgment upon all. He will destroy the ungodly and convict all flesh of everything the sinners and ungodly have done and spoken against Him. Every hard word spoken by ungodly sinners against the Lord — every proud, every defiant, every hidden word — will be brought forward and answered for.

Nothing whispered in a private room will remain private. Nothing arranged behind closed doors will remain concealed. The accounting is not a threat added to the vision at the end; it is the vision. What Enoch has been shown is a world in which the ledger, at last, is opened.