My Dear Young Friends

 •  6 min. read  •  grade level: 8
 
Enoch’s translation, as you have proved from the following Scriptures, is a type of that blessed Hope which is given by God to His people now, and which His Apostle Paul reveals to us by the word of the Lord. “Behold, I show you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump.” John 14:2, 32In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. (John 14:2‑3); 1 Cor. 15:49, 51, 52; 149And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. (1 Corinthians 15:49)
51Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. (1 Corinthians 15:51‑52)
5Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? (1 Corinthians 3:5) Thess. 4:15-17; Phil. 3:20, 2120For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: 21Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself. (Philippians 3:20‑21). What a blessed thing to be ready with our loins girded and our lamps burning, to go in with the Bridegroom, and what a solemn and awful thing to be without oil in our lamps, without the Holy Ghost within us, and to be shut out when the Bridegroom cometh. The Lord lay these realities upon the consciences and hearts of my young friends.
We come now to Noah, the third life in Genesis. Noah walked with God in a day of universal violence and corruption, but God did not take him to Himself, as He took Enoch; His purpose was to preserve him through the time of His judgment on the world for future blessing. God never repents of His promises, whatever be the evil in which His people are found. When sin first entered the world, did He not speak of the seed of the woman bruising the serpent’s head? And now that He is about to destroy all flesh from off the earth, because of men’s terrible corruption, will He fail to preserve a seed from whom the Redeemer shall come; No, indeed, blessed be His name, for the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. When Noah was born, sixty-nine years after the translation of Enoch, his great grandfather, Lamech, saw, by faith, in his newborn son, a promise of rest and comfort to the earth, which the Lord had cursed for man’s sake. In faith he called his name Noah, Rest―and Noah lived to make good his name and give rest to the ground after the flood of judgment had been poured out. Noah walked with God, we read, and was perfect in his generation. Noah was a godly man, and a preacher of righteousness. He was the only man who feared God’s word about the coming destruction of the world. The ungodly mocked at the word of God, and would not believe that they and the world they lived upon, would soon be destroyed by God, but “by faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house: by which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.” Heb. 11:77By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. (Hebrews 11:7). God’s saints are the confessed sinners in the Bible. The wicked deceive themselves by mocking at sin, and calling evil good, and darkness light. This is the course of this world. A young person living in pleasure is called by the world “gay,” but God says such an one “is dead while she liveth.” 1 Tim. 5:66But she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth. (1 Timothy 5:6). A man who heaps up riches, the world calls fortunate and prosperous, but God says the rust of his gold and silver shall be a witness against him, and shall eat up his flesh as it were fire. “Ye have heaped up treasures in the last days.” James 5:33Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. (James 5:3). Many hope to go to heaven when they die, because they are not worse than most men, and are better than some This is believing Satan’s lie. Doubtless then, were many such who would not believe that God would destroy them by the flood till the waters rose and swept them away with their refuges of lies. But Noah, righteous man, and one who walked with God, said by his act in building the ark what David said with his mouth, “Enter not into judgment with Thy servant for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified.” He was moved with fear and built an ark as God had bidden him; he entered the ark as a sinner, to save himself and his house from God judgment upon a sinful world, in which he lived. The ark was God’s way of salvation, and Noah entered with his house by faith. He trusted God’s word against all present appearances. He acted in the faith of things not seen as yet, and he built a ship on dry land, and made it watertight, pitching it within and without with pitch, in prospect of the coming flood. He made no masts; he put no rudder on its stern, for God was to pilot it, and so he only made a window in the top, and God shut him in, and there he rested in faith, while the waters lifted him and his ship above the earth and its mountain tops, and thus, without steering it himself, or even knowing the course it was taking, he and his family and the land animals rode safely over every surging billow, till the ark rested on Mount Ararat, and God bade him come out on the dry land. They had been a year in the ark, and there had been no death in it, but outside every living soul had perished in the waters. Surely, we may say, this points to Christ, the living and true ark, in whom there is no death, and out of whom there is no life. “He that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” John 3:3636He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. (John 3:36). As Noah left the ark, he took the clean animals and offered a sacrifice to God, thus owning himself a sinner saved by mercy and through atonement. Genesis 614They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort. (Genesis 7:14); 7; 8.
And God smelt a savor of rest in Noah’s sacrifice, and promised He would not again send a flood, or curse the earth as He had done. Let us take warning by what God has already done to this earth. We came from Noah’s family, who by Noah’s faith were saved from the deluge. Have my dear young readers believed as Noah did, and taken warning from God of things not seen as yet, and fled to Christ, the only Saviour, from the wrath to come? The world is as unbelieving now as to the day being fixed for the pouring out of the fire of God’s wrath at the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ, once crucified by man, as the world of old was in Noah’s days. 2 Thess. 1. For one hundred and twenty years Noah warned his fellow sinners of the coming flood, and they went on eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, till the flood came and took them all away; so also, says the Lord, will it be when the Son of Man comes. But as God had a little family of saved ones then, so has He a little flock now, who by His grace have turned to Him from idols, to serve the living and true sod, and to wait for His Son from heaven, THEIR DELIVERER FROM THE WRATH TO COME. 1 Thess. 1:9, 109For they themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God; 10And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come. (1 Thessalonians 1:9‑10). My dear young reader, are you one of them?
Your affectionate friend, UNCLE R.