Pastor David B. Curtis
Pastor David B. Curtis
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We are continuing our verse by verse study of the book of Jude. As we have been saying Jude is dealing with the subject of apostasy and warning the Church to battle for the truth in a world of apostasy and spiritual defection. This week the US of America has had a visit from one of the world's leading apostates, the Pope! I know, I know, we live in a world of political correctness and we are only allowed to say nice things about people but Yeshua didn't function this way, notice what he said to the religious leaders of his day:
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Matthew 23:27 NASB
He wasn't afraid to tell it like it was, why should we be. Jude says that these apostates, "deny our only Master and Lord, Yeshua the Christ"—and so does the Pope. You may be thinking how does the pope deny Christ? He denies Him by teaching that His death on the cross was not sufficient to save man. Catholic doctrines states, "Faith in Christ alone is not sufficient to save you; you must add to it your good works."
Can a person be saved apart from believing the gospel of Yeshua the Christ? Is a person a "brother in Christ" who does not believe the gospel? What should our position be on a person who preaches a false gospel? Is Roman Catholicism simply another Christian denomination? Please listen carefully to this doctrinal statement of the Catholic church:
"If any one saith, that man is truly absolved from his sins and justified, because that he assuredly believed himself absolved and justified; or, that no one is truly justified but he who believes himself justified; and that, by this faith alone, absolution and justification are effected; let him be anathema."
This is a quote from the Council of Trent Canon 14. According to this, every Christian in the world stands under the official, never changed curse of the Roman Church, and we need to be aware of that fact. According to the Catholic church, those who believe in justification by faith alone are anathema.
Canon 9 of the Council of Trent states categorically:
"If any one saith that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to the obtaining [of] the grace of Justification, and that it is not in any way necessary, that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will; let him be anathema."
Now you might be thinking, "But the Council of Trent met a long time ago, hasn't Rome since modified its position?" No, it has not! The Vatican II documents as well as the new Catechism of the Catholic Church reinvoke the theological position of the Council of Trent, condemning the gospel of justification by an imputed righteousness.
Pope Francis, as the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, remains committed to a false gospel that insists upon good works as a necessary condition for justification. He is the head of a false church that is opposed to the true gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
Francis holds that Mary is mediatrix and co-redemptrix with her son Jesus, that Scripture is insufficient and must have the tradition of the church added to it, that even Christians who die may have to endure Purgatory, that Christ is sacrificed anew each time the Mass is celebrated, and so on. But no false teaching is more scandalous than his denial of justification by grace through faith alone.
"Poverty is at the very center of the Gospel," Pope Francis declared. "If we remove poverty from the Gospel, no one would be able to understand anything about the message of Jesus." The poverty Francis is talking about is not spiritual poverty, but economic poverty. But does material poverty have anything to do with the gospel of Christ?
Pope Francis gave a sermon on June 25th 2014 in Rome:
"Dear friends, let us ask the Lord, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, for the grace to never fall into the temptation of thinking we can make it without others, that we can get along without the Church, that we can save ourselves alone, of being Christians of the laboratory. On the contrary, you cannot love God without loving your brothers, you cannot love God outside of the Church; you cannot be in communion with God without being so in the Church."
While Francis washes the feet of prisoners and kisses the faces of the deformed, he does so out of and toward this false gospel that leads not toward Christ, but directly away from him. Good deeds done to promote a false gospel are the most despicable deeds of all. We must stand against apostasy, even if the apostate is one of the most adored men in the world.
In our text for this morning Jude writes,
It was also about these men that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, "Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him." Jude 1:14-15 NASB
Jude reminds his readers in verses 14 & 15 that Enoch had prophesied judgment would come upon apostates. This quote was taken directly from the Book of Enoch:
Enoch 1:9 And behold! He cometh with ten thousands of His holy ones to execute judgement upon all, and to destroy all the ungodly: And to convict all flesh of all the works of their ungodliness which they have ungodly committed, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.
The bible does not record this prophecy of Enoch in any other place, but the fact that Jude was inspired by the holy spirit to write this down indicates that it is the truth.
So this is the oldest prophecy uttered by a prophet of Christ's judgement coming. Prophesied by Enoch before the flood of Noah's day.
"It was also about these men"—"these men" refers back to the hidden reefs of verse 12, these are men who have crept in among the church unnoticed. The word "also" tells us that Jude considers Enoch to be similar to him in that Enoch warned against apostates just as he is doing.
"Enoch"—was a contemporary of Adam for a little over 300 years. Can you imagine their conversations? Adam could have told Enoch about the Garden of Eden and his fellowship with Yahweh and the divine council and also about the consequences of his sin. They had 300 years to talk about spiritual things. Maybe Adam's stories of how he walked with God drove Enoch to know and walk with Him. Adam was dead and Enoch was gone before Noah, the only other man who is said to have walked with God was born.
As we have seen in our previous studies, Enoch walked with God. The Septuagint of Genesis 5:24 uses the verb euaresteo and translates it "Enoch was well-pleasing to God." This is the same word the writer of Hebrews uses in 11:5 when he says that "Enoch...was pleasing to God." Last week I said that Enoch is the only man, apart from the Lord Yeshua, who it is written of him that he pleased God! Well, if you take the Septuagint into consideration you would have to add Noah to that list because it uses euaresteo of him also.
The writer of Hebrews and the Septuagint both use metatithemi, to say that God took him. Metatithemi literally means: "to put in another place." Enoch took a walk with Yahweh one day and walked right into eternity...walked right into Yahweh's presence.
"In the seventh generation from Adam"—this clarifies which Enoch Jude is talking about. We don't want to confuse Enoch with Enoch in Genesis 4:17, who was the son of Cain. They are totally different men.
The number seven is a significant number to the Jews, there was sacredness in the number seven. When Jude introduces Enoch as "the seventh from Adam,"this is not merely a number attained by adding up the lineage from the genealogy of Genesis 5: 3-19. The phrase "seventh from Adam"is a common identifier for Enoch used outside the Tanakh in Second Temple literature such as Jubilees 7:39, and the Talmudic Lev. Rab. 29:11. And surprisingly it is also used in Enoch:
Enoch 60:8 But the male is named Behemoth, who occupied with his breast a waste wilderness named Duidain, on the east of the garden where the elect and righteous dwell, where my grandfather was taken up, the seventh from Adam, the first 9 man whom the Lord of Spirits created.
This is Noah talking calling his grandfather Enoch the "seventh from Adam." Notice also that 1 Enoch views Adam as the first man.
Enoch "prophesied"—telling us that Enoch was a prophet of Yahweh. This prophecy of Enoch is the first prophecy recorded in Scripture given by a man, though it's not recorded until here, nearly at the end of the New Testament. There's a prophecy in Genesis chapter 3, but that prophecy was the prophecy about the seed of the woman who would bruise the serpent's head. That wasn't given by a man. Yahweh spoke that one. So this is the first prophecy given through a man. And it concerns the Lord coming in judgment. It's a Second Coming prophecy. And it just so happens that the last prophecy recorded in Scripture given by John is:
He who testifies to these things says, "Yes, I am coming quickly." Amen. Come, Lord Yeshua. Revelation 22:20 NASB
So the first prophecy given by a man in the Bible is about the coming of Christ in judgment and the last prophecy given through a man is about Christ coming in judgment.
The word prophesied is first in the Greek sentence, emphasizing the importance of the prophetic message. The Greek text reads, "Prophesied moreover as to these seventh from Adam Enoch saying, Behold has come Lord amidst holy many thousand of his."
If Jude under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit said that Enoch said that, then guess what? Enoch said that. Douglas Moo's commentary on Jude. He writes:
"To be sure, Jude claims that Enoch 'prophesied.' But this word need not mean 'wrote an inspired prophetic book'; it could well mean simply 'uttered in this instance a prophecy.'" [Douglas J. Moo, The NIV Application Commentary: 2 Peter and Jude (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996], 272-74.]
He's right, saying Enoch prophesied doesn't necessarily mean he wrote a book. Notice that Jude doesn't say, "The book of Enoch says" but "Enoch prophesied." Often in Scripture the writers will say that a book says something, such as:
Therefore it is said in the Book of the Wars of the LORD, "Waheb in Suphah, And the wadis of the Arnon, Numbers 21:14 NASB
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. Joshua 10:13 NASB
So Moses quotes from the book of the Wars of Yahweh and Joshua quotes from the book of Jashar but Jude doesn't do that he says that "Enoch prophesied." So some say that this means he is not quoting from the book of Enoch but from Enoch himself. How does Jude know about this prophecy? Did God tell him? Possibly, but I would tend to think that since much of Jude's material comes from the book of Enoch that Jude got this prophecy from the book of Enoch.
So by saying, "Enoch prophesied" maybe Jude is saying Enoch was the author of the book of Enoch. I'm not saying that Enoch wrote it down but maybe others took the oral tradition of what Enoch said and wrote it down. Noah's family must have known this quote, because it survived the Flood. Some believe 1 Enoch contains the actual words of Enoch and that it was handed down through the ages. There is no real way to know for certain if that is so.
Tertullian, who wrote at the close of the first and at the beginning of the second century, while admitting that the "Scripture of Enoch" is not received by some because it is not included in the Hebrew Canon, speaks of the author as "the most ancient prophet, Enoch," and of the book as the divinely inspired autograph of that immortal patriarch, preserved by Noah in the ark, or miraculously reproduced by him through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Many argue that just because Jude uses this quote from Enoch that doesn't mean that he is endorsing the whole book as truth. And there are cases where apostles quote a saying as a singular cultural reference without connection to the rest of the source. For example Paul quotes the Stoic Aratus on Mars Hill this way:
for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we also are His children.' Acts 17:28 NASB
Paul also quotes Epimenedes of Crete:
One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, "Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons." Titus 1:12 NASB
Paul also quotes Menander in:
Do not be deceived: "Bad company corrupts good morals." 1 Corinthians 15:33 NASB
Notice that this is in quotes because it is a line known to have come from a Greek poet by the name of Menander. So the authors of Scripture often quote others without endorsing all they said, but the difference here is that Jude does not merely quote a verse from the book of 1 Enoch. He also follows the content patterns of 1 Enoch along with allusions and echoes of its phrases and language throughout his epistle.
Jude also echoes 1 Enoch in its primary apocalyptic theme of the punishment of the ungodly. Both texts are addressing the evil of their day as an unveiling or fulfillment of past prophetic proclamation. They both appeal to ancient examples of judgment as the promise of judgment upon the present ungodly.
In verse 6 Jude says that the angels "abandoned their proper abode". But who are these angels, what is their proper abode, and what is their violation? Jude's reference is directly dependent on 1 Enoch 6-19, which is the earliest extant account of the fall of the Watchers and he shows himself closely familiar with those chapters.
Jude says, these angelic beings who rebelled against God were put in "eternal bonds for the judgment of the great day"(v. 6), or as 1 Enoch says, they were "bound underneath the rocks of the ground until the day of their judgment"(1 En. 10:12). Jude relies heavily on 1 Enoch he must have trusted it's contents.
The Jewish historian Josephus reports a detail concerning how Biblical authors like Jude came to know about historical events before and immediately after the flood.
Josephus reports that Enoch's son, Methuselah was an ancient historian. During his exceptionally long lifespan, Methuselah wrote the history of the world since Adam on two large stone obelisks. These obelisks stood on earth somewhere in Arabia during the years leading up to the flood.
I think it is significant that Jude doesn't call Enoch Scripture, graphe, nor does he introduce the quote with, "It is written," which is a pretty typical way to introduce Scripture:
And He said to them, "Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: 'THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS, BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME. Mark 7:6 NASB
Jude just says, "Enoch Prophesied", he was a prophet, many of Yahweh's prophets wrote books or what they said is recorded in Scripture. Maybe, just maybe, Enoch's prophecy is written down and we find it in the book of 1 Enoch. We can argue whether we think 1 Enoch should be in the cannon and we will always disagree but one thing we should be able to agree on in the importance of the book of 1 Enoch in understanding the thinking of the Second Temple period.
R.H. Charles one of the earliest experts on the Pseudepigrapha and Enoch points out, four titles appear for the first time in 1 Enoch's Book of Parables applied to a personal Messiah. [Charles, Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, vol. 2, 178]
"Christ" or "The Anointed One" applies to priests or royalty in the Tanakh, but is transformed into the ideal Messianic King first in 1 Enoch 48:10 and 52:4 before the New Testament. "The Righteous One" and "the Elect One" likewise first appear with Messianic designation in 1 Enoch 38:2; 53:6; 40:5; 49:2 and others. Even the "Son of Man" was transformed in his identity from Old Covenan king to New Testament judge by way of 1 Enoch.
Nickelsburg lays out evidence for the influence of 1 Enoch on the New Testament appropriation of Son of Man Christology. Though Daniel 7 is clearly a source for Yeshua' self-designation as Son of Man, Nickelsburg argues that it cannot explain the totality of the Son of Man doctrine as portrayed in the Gospels, a doctrine that reveals development in the Intertestamental period through 1 Enoch in particular. [Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: a Commentary, 83.]
Jude says that Enoch prophesied saying, "Behold, the Lord came"—Jude uses "behold" to cause us to focus our attention on the following prophetic pronouncement. Jude is talking here about the second coming of Christ. In the New Testament there are
over three hundred references to the Second Advent of the Lord Yeshua the Christ, and this is one of them.
1 Enoch says, "And behold! He cometh with ten thousands of His holy ones
To execute judgement upon all..." But Jude says, "The Lord came"—this is aorist active indicative, not "will come" (future tense) but "came" (past tense). So the verb "came" is aorist tense but in this context describes an event that is yet future. This event (Christ's coming in judgment in Jude 1:15) is so certain that Jude describes it as past tense. This use of the aorist tense is referred to as proleptic aorist. Daniel B Wallace says "The aorist indicative can be used to describe an event that is not yet past as though it were already completed. This usage is not at all common, though several exegetically significant texts involve possible proleptic aorists." [Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics]
S.L. Johnson writes, "They were described in the past tense because it was so certain that they would come to pass and so that use of a tense of completed action, a perfect tense, to describe events of the future, clearly from the context they were future, was called in Hebrew grammar as the prophetic perfect. Now that is what we have here."
The Lord (kurios) here is none other than the Lord Yeshua the Christ, returning as King of kings and Lord of lords.
"With many thousands of His holy ones, to execute judgment upon all"—this coming is a judgment coming and Christ is not coming alone. "Literally, in or among holy myriads." [Vincent's Word Studies]
The preposition "with or among", presents the coming Lord as surrounded by a vast concourse of court attendants. Who are these holy ones? One commentator writes, "The word 'saints' refers to those who have been saved, those who have accepted Yeshua Christ." The word in the Greek is hagios which refers to holy ones, and here is a reference to angels not believers. Christ second coming was accompanied by angels:
"For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and WILL THEN REPAY EVERY MAN ACCORDING TO HIS DEEDS. Matthew 16:27 NASB
Christ comes with His angels, that idea is repeated over and over in passages dealing with the second coming.
Jude go on quoting 1 Enoch to say:
to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him." Jude 1:15 NASB
The word "execute" is a translation of the Greek word poieo meaning, "to accomplish, to fulfill, to perform, to carry out." The word for "judgment" actually refers to the act of judging, or administrating justice. The phase "upon all" refers to all those who are apostate unbelievers.
The Greek word translated "convict" is elegcho, which means, "to convict, or to expose." In exposing or convicting the apostates, God is carrying out justice.
The word "ungodly" is used four times in this verse and means, "wicked, sinful and godless." Of all their ungodly (asebeia) deeds (more literally works of ungodliness)
The word harsh is from skleros which literally means hard, stiff, dried up, dry, severe.
Ungodly sinners is placed last in the Greek sentence for emphasis. Literally it reads "sinners, godless persons." They are not just sinners but "ungodly" ones at that! Ungodly is the key word in this passage and describes their basic sinful attitude of refusing to have a proper reverence for God.
Just about every reference in the New Testament to the Lord's coming has a time stamp on it. But there is no time indicator here in Jude unless we take his proleptic aorists as a sign it would be soon. When did Enoch think the Lord would return?
Enoch 1:1 The words of the blessing of Enoch, wherewith he blessed the elect and righteous, who will be 2 living in the day of tribulation, when all the wicked and godless are to be removed. And he took up his parable and said —Enoch a righteous man, whose eyes were opened by God, saw the vision of the Holy One in the heavens, which the angels showed me, and from them I heard everything, and from them I understood as I saw, but not for this generation, but for a remote one which is 3 for to come. Concerning the elect I said, and took up my parable concerning them:
The Holy Great One will come forth from His dwelling, 4 And the eternal God will tread upon the earth, (even) on Mount Sinai, [And appear from His camp] And appear in the strength of His might from the heaven of heavens. 5 And all shall be smitten with fear And the Watchers shall quake, And great fear and trembling shall seize them unto the ends of the earth. 6 And the high mountains shall be shaken, And the high hills shall be made low, And shall melt like wax before the flame 7 And the earth shall be wholly rent in sunder, And all that is upon the earth shall perish, And there shall be a judgement upon all (men). 8 But with the righteous He will make peace. And will protect the elect, And mercy shall be upon them. And they shall all belong to God, And they shall be prospered, And they shall all be blessed. And He will help them all, And light shall appear unto them, And He will make peace with them'. 9 And behold! He cometh with ten thousands of His holy ones To execute judgement upon all, And to destroy all the ungodly: And to convict all flesh Of all the works of their ungodliness which they have ungodly committed, And of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.
Doesn't this sound a lot like:
"But immediately after the tribulation of those days THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED, AND THE MOON WILL NOT GIVE ITS LIGHT, AND THE STARS WILL FALL from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. "And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the SON OF MAN COMING ON THE CLOUDS OF THE SKY with power and great glory. "And He will send forth His angels with A GREAT TRUMPET and THEY WILL GATHER TOGETHER His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other. Matthew 24:29-31 NASB
When was this to happen? Yeshua tells us in:
"Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Matthew 24:34 NASB
This verse is devastating to a futuristic eschatology, so let's examine it carefully and make sure we understand exactly what Yeshua is saying. Let's start by examining the meaning of the word "generation". Generation, in our text, comes from the Greek word genea. In Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of the NT, we can see that "genea" means: "The whole multitude of men living at the same time." William F. Arndt and Wilber Gingrich (A Greek-English Lexicon of the NT and Other Early Christian Literature) define "genea" as, "basically, the sum total of those born at the same time, expanded to include all those living at a given time. Contemporaries."
If you look at the way Yeshua used the word "generation," I think it will be abundantly clear that it always refers to His contemporaries, the Jewish people of His own period. In etymology and usage, "generation" means: "those born at the same time, contemporaries." In biblical thought, a generation is forty years.
Some have tried to twist the etymology of the word "generation" to make it mean "race,"and try to make Yeshua say that all these things would happen before the "race" of Jews had passed away. By doing this, they think they can expand the time of the Second Coming by thousands of years. There is no biblical or linguistic justification for such a position. Generation does NOT mean race!
C.I. Scofield, in his Bible's reference to this verse (Matt. 24:34), recognized this and actually SWITCHED the definition of the word from that of genea to that of genos, which is an entirely different word!
What Yeshua meant by all those things happening in that generation, including the parousia of Christ, was that they would all happen while some of those folks to whom He preached were still alive, just as He said they would be. Christ lived in the last days and at his second coming the last days ended. It was the last days of the Old Covenant, and it ended in AD 70 with the destruction of the Jewish Temple.
People, If we understand this, we will understand that we are NOT living in the last days or end times. And if we understand this it could save us a bunch of anxiety as we listen to the constant drone of the prophecy preachers who continue to cry, "The end is near!"
This past Wednesday was September 23, which was the Day of Atonement which Jonathan Cahn said was to be the last day of Shmita where there was supposed to be a financial collapse in America. Thousands upon thousands of Christians believed Cahn's false prophecy. Well the day Cahn predicted came and went and nothing happened. Cahn is a false prophet, an apostate, he is a cloud without water.
Jonathan Cahn was confronted on a TV program, when one of his major promoters discovered that his date-setting predictions (of supposed coming calamities on America) ended up denying Jesus as the Messiah had him admit he based his book using calculations based on his own privately concocted new Hebrew Calendar, which never even existed. Translation: Cahn made it all up! And on the calendar he made up it was impossible for Yeshua to be the Messiah.
Tomorrow, September 28, is the final blood moon. Hagee started his series on "The Coming Four Blood Moons" by reading Joel 2:30-31 and Acts 2:19-20 and says that these four blood moons that run from April 15, 2014 to September 28, 2015 are what Joel and Peter were talking about. He says, "They will be a world shaking event."
Well tomorrow is the last blood moon. So then what? As I said back on August 4, 2013, "When these four blood moons come and go, Hagee will change his view, set some new dates, and keep right on preaching to his faithful undiscerning crowd."
Most believers believe that God will fulfill his promises made in the book of Revelation, but they don't believe that God will fulfill them in the time that He said He would:
The Revelation of Yeshua the Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bond-servants, the things which must soon take place; and He sent and communicated it by His angel to His bond-servant John, Revelation 1:1 NASB
The Greek word translated "soon" here is from the Greek word tachos. According to the Arndt and Gingich Lexicon, tachos is used in the LXX and certain non-canonical writings to mean: "speed, quickness, swiftness, haste." John uses the same word in Revelation 2:16; 3:11; 22:6,7,12,20. John also uses the Greek word engus:
Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and heed the things which are written in it; for the time is near. Revelation 1:3 NASB
Engus, which is translated here as: "near," is also used in Revelation 22:10. This term speaks of temporal nearness, and John uses it to bracket the book.
To deny that God will fulfill His promises is to deny the inspiration of Scripture. Do you agree? Well, I believe that to deny the time statements connected with many of the promises is also to deny inspiration.
Contrary to popular opinion, we are not living in the "last days," but the first days of the New Covenant age. The New Covenant age is "the eternal covenant."
Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Yeshua our Lord, Hebrews 13:20 NASB
An eternal covenant has no "last days." We are living in the first days of the eternal age. The "last days" spoken of by the biblical writers were the "last days" of the Jewish Old Covenant age, which became obsolete and passed away in the A.D. 70 with the judgment and destruction of Jerusalem.
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