Today I read Moses 6 which lists the genealogy of Adam's righteous posterity. It also is the first half of the mission of Enoch, the second half being in chapter 7 of the book of Moses. Enoch is an interesting character to study and the bulk of what we have and know about him in the standard works is here in Moses 6 and 7. He is the first recorded missionary. I'm sure Adam had it, but to my knowledge, he is the first recorded man to hold the sealing power. He is another person I can't wait to meet.
Most of the world think that Abraham is the first person that the Lord revealed His Gospel to because in the Bible that is the way it reads. Or perhaps they think that John the Baptist was the first prophet to baptize by water or maybe Alma the Elder. However, Enoch teaches us that Adam was baptized in the beginning and he preached repentance and baptism by immersion for the remission of sins. Adam was taught from the beginning that a Savior would come and that He would atone for the sins of the world. Adam had the fulness of the Gospel that was later taken away from the Israelites because of their sins.
In a way, I find that a comfort to know that there is nothing new and all things were had since the beginning. In fact, and I could be entirely wrong on this point, but I think the only thing new that Christ introduced when He was on the earth that wasn't had in the past was temple work for the dead. I know of no place where it talks about people doing work for the dead before Christ walked on the earth. Everything else in the Gospel was taught to Adam and his posterity.
The Lord has also followed His pattern since the beginning. He called a prophet, Enoch, and purposefully chose the person who was young and as Enoch put it, "despised of all men" because he was slow of speech. Now, we don't know what he meant by slow of speech. Perhaps he had trouble talking because of a speech impediment like Moses. Perhaps Enoch was not good at making grand speeches like the rest of his family was. We don't really know. But it was apparently general knowledge that he was slow of speech, and surprisingly enough he apparently was looked down upon for it. But the Lord does not look upon man as others do as we learn in the Old Testament with David. Perhaps Enoch was more humble than most others because of his impediment and status among his family.
Whatever the reason, we know that Enoch was very effective and was able to convert an entire city but it took over 300 years to do so. It's always interesting to hear people talk about the city of Enoch because inevitably I hear them saying one of two things. Enoch did it so why can't we or it's impossible to replicate what Enoch did. First, it is silly to say the former because as I just pointed it out, it took him over 300 years to do it. The latter is just as silly because others have done it, just not to the scale that Enoch did. Our goal in this life is to become like God and to grow as close to Him as we can. That is what Enoch did. He brought his people to Christ and that is exactly what we should be doing too. Our goal is to become a Zion society and the definition is in the next chapter, having one heart and one mind with no poor among them. Basically it is the second great commandment, to love our neighbor as ourselves. When we do that we are growing towards becoming Zion.
We'll talk more tomorrow about Enoch and the incredible vision that he saw as well as discuss more in depth his city that he built, Zion. It should be a lot of fun. Don't you just love history? Until tomorrow.
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