Genesis 5: Moses 6
Come Follow Me Family:
Most of Genesis 5 is a list of the generations between Adam and Eve and Noah. We read a lot of names, but we don’t learn much about them. Then we read about Enoch, six generations from Adam, who is described with this intriguing but unexplained line: “And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him” (Genesis 5:24). Surely there’s a story behind that. But without further explanation, the list of generations resumes.
Thankfully, Moses 6 reveals the details of Enoch’s story—and it’s quite a story. We learn of Enoch’s humility, his insecurities, the potential God saw in him, and the great work he performed as God’s prophet. We also get a clearer picture of the family of Adam and Eve as it progressed through the generations. We read of Satan’s “great dominion” but also of parents who taught children “the ways of God” and of “preachers of righteousness” who “spake and prophesied” (Moses 6:15, 21, 23). Especially precious is what we learn about the doctrine these parents and preachers taught: faith, repentance, baptism, and receiving the Holy Ghost (see Moses 6:50–52). That doctrine, like the priesthood that accompanies it, “was in the beginning [and] shall be in the end of the world also” (Moses 6:7).
OT Seminary Manual:
Adam and Eve fell because of disobedience to a law, and they were “shut out” from the presence of God (Moses 5:4). We read in Moses 5 how disobedience leads men even further away from God—as in the case of Cain, Lamech, and others. After Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden, they were taught to understand and live doctrines and make and keep covenants. They also learned which saving ordinances were required for them to return and live in the presence of God. Many of these teachings are found in Moses 6. The prophet Enoch taught his people these truths in an attempt to inspire them to repent of their sins and wickedness so they could be redeemed and brought back into the presence of God.
As children of God, we are entitled to inherit all that He has. When we sin, however, we become unclean, and no unclean thing can inherit the kingdom of God. The Lord taught Adam how to become clean and thus qualify to inherit eternal life. Enoch taught these same principles to his people.
OT Minute: Genesis
The first part of Moses 6 and Genesis 5 describes the final events in the life of Adam as a patriarch to the righteous branch of his posterity (compare Abraham 1:26). The focus of the account is on the birth of the righteous Seth and the beginning of the patriarchal line that will culminate, in the seventh generation from Adam, with the call of Enoch.
Joseph Smith’s “Book of Enoch” provides “eighteen times as many column inches about Enoch . . . than we have in the few verses on him in the Bible. Those scriptures not only contain greater quantity [than the Bible] but also . . . contain . . . [abundant] new material about Enoch on which the Bible is silent.”
Moses 6:5–23 describes the ideal family order established by Adam and Eve.
A celestial marriage order can also be inferred from 8:13, in which Noah and his righteous sons are formally given the title of “sons of God,” just as Adam was given the same title after having had “all things . . . confirmed . . . by a holy ordinance,” including the fullness of the Melchizedek priesthood after the “order of the Son of God.” The patriarchal order of the priesthood, “which was in the beginning” and “shall be in the end of the world also.
Speaking of the difference between Adam’s line of descendants and that of all other creatures that may have preceded him biologically, Nibley wrote: “Adam becomes Adam, a hominid becomes a man, when he starts keeping a record. What kind of record? A record of his ancestors—the family line that sets him off from all other creatures. . . . That gap between the record keeper and all the other creatures we know anything about is so unimaginably enormous and yet so neat and abrupt that we can only be dealing with another sort of being, a quantum leap from one world to another. Here is something not derivative from anything that has gone before on the local scene, even though they all share the same atoms.”
6:7. “this same Priesthood.” In the beginning, God established a patriarchal order on earth like the order that exists in heaven. Robert L. Millet and Joseph Fielding McConkie explained: “It was a perfect theocratic, patriarchal system with father Adam at the head. This system prevailed among the righteous from Adam to the time of Abraham and beyond.” In the last dispensation God has restored the higher priesthood and associated ordinances of the Abrahamic covenant that had been generally withheld from Israel (see Doctrine and Covenants 84:23–25). According to Lynn A. McKinlay, “today dedicated husbands and wives enter this order in the temple in a covenant with God. The blessings of this priesthood [are] given only to husbands and wives together.” Hyrum L. Andrus wrote that this restored order is “the Melchizedek Priesthood organized according to an eternal family order, rather than according to offices, quorums, and councils that comprised the Church as an instrument to build up the divine patriarchal order.”
Come Follow Me SS:
The Lord calls us to do His work despite our inadequacies.
Exodus 4:10–16; Jeremiah 1:4–10; 2 Nephi 33:1–4; Ether 12:23–29).
The depiction of Enoch as a seer who was
granted supernatural visionary ability is frequent in extra-biblical sources. In most of these
accounts Enoch is granted a visionary tour of the celestial world, whereas in others, as here,
his eyes are opened to behold spiritual or heavenly being
31:“Why is it that I have found favor in thy sight, and am
but a lad, and all the people hate me. For I am slow of speech. Wherefore
am I thy servant?”
32: And the Lord said unto Enoch, “Go forth and do as
I have commanded thee, and no man shall pierce thee. Open thy mouth,
and it shall be filled, and I will give thee utterance, for all flesh is in my
hands, and I will do as seemeth me good.
34: Behold my Spirit is upon you, wherefore all thy words
will I justify. And the mountains shall flee before you, and the rivers shall
turn from their course. And thou shalt abide in me, and I in you; there
fore walk with me.”
48 And he said unto them, “Because that Adam fell, we are; and by his fall
came death, and we are made partakers of misery and woe.
49 Behold Satan hath come among the children of men, and tempteth them to worship
him. And men have become carnal, sensual, and devilish, and are shut
out from the presence of God.
50 But God hath made known unto our fathers that all men must repent.
A prophet is a seer.
“Whom the Lord calls, the Lord qualifies.”
President Thomas S. Monson taught: “Some of you may be shy by nature or consider yourselves inadequate to respond affirmatively to a calling. Remember that this work is not yours and mine alone. It is the Lord’s work, and when we are on the Lord’s errand, we are entitled to the Lord’s help. Remember that whom the Lord calls, the Lord qualifies” (“Duty Calls,” Ensign, May 1996, 44).
Faith, repentance, baptism, and receiving the Holy Ghost prepare us to return to God.
The doctrine of Christ is central to God’s plan of salvation.
6:62
Although Latter-day Saints today typically use the term “plan of salvation” to refer to the cosmic journey of God’s children from and back into His presence, here and in other Restoration scripture (for example, Alma 24:14; 42:5) it refers to the process of sanctification through the atonement of Jesus Chris
6:66–68 The voice of the Lord ratifies Adam’s baptism by water and spirit and affirms that he is a priest after the order of the Son of God (compare Hebrews 7:3; Alma 13:7, 9; Doctrine and Covenants 78:16; 84:6–17). Not only the gospel but also the priesthood is thus projected by the text as reaching back into the earliest days of humanity
“Teach these things freely unto your children.”
Mosiah 4:14–15 and Doctrine and Covenants 68:25–28; 93:40–50?
Notes:
Moses 6:6 - A book of remembrance was kept to write by the spirit of inspiration. A Genealogy was kept. (Connection etween genealogy and priestood: family sealings/temple work?)
Moses 6:22-23: ...the genealogy of the sons of Adam, who was the son of God, with whom God himself, conversed. And they were preachers of righteoeusness and spake and prophesied and called upon all men/ everywhere, to repent. And faith was taught untoil the children of men.
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