The Book of Enoch: The Lord, Jesus Christ, taught the merits of knowing this book along with other scriptures, as a means to avoid being in error and with the need to know the power of God along with it. As with any scripture, it is best to have the same faith as those who were first led by Jesus Christ, in order to maximise the benefits of knowing these scriptures. What persuasions did these early believers, especially the early apostles, have? The Book of Enoch captures this faith, this persuasion, very well; so well that many over the years have assumed it was written by either these early believers or by groups such as Essenes who were, it was thought, close in their beliefs to the first followers of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ. This was especially the view of those who translated it into English from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and Ethiopian Beta Jews who preserved it in their sacred Ge'ez language. Only when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered did it become apparent that it was older than Christianity and probably older than the Essene communities. The first believers such as Jude and other earliest church leaders clearly had persuasion that it was an authentic record of the true prophetic words of an ancient prophet from before the time of the Flood and Noah, the prophet and leader of civilisation named Enoch. Jesus told his hearers in particular the Sadducees that it was scripture. He said many things which borrowed the words of the Book of Enoch, clearly showing how highly he regarded it and how he held to its contents. I believe that as Christians started to hear words uttered under the powerful influence of the Holy Spirit they were persuaded that the Book of Enoch was a work of this same Holy Spirit. I believe this too. So we can learn much from the Book of Enoch if we hold to it in this way and believe God is behind it. Then we find its passages about the Son of Man (the middle section of the book) are assuring that Jesus is this one known spiritually by Enoch thousands of years before Jesus came. The book shows that there is a man from heaven who is greater than even the prophet Moses. Moses knew God as-it-were face to face from meetings with direct contact with God. This Son of Man knew God from meetings even with God in the throne room of God in Heaven, and God, in Enoch chapter 105, calls this elect one His own Son. So we can know that if the Son of Man is given to us as leader, we have the benefits of his direct access to God Himself. Moses foretold the coming of this one with such immediate access to God, and the apostle Peter proclaimed that this one is Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, after Jesus had been crucified and rose again. The Book of Enoch passages about the Son of Man are plainly to me one of the very best scriptural descriptions of Jesus Christ and who and what he is.
