The Last Day from the Earliest Times

It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

Jude 14-15

The detail that he was THE SEVENTH FROM ADAM, Manton says, was “to distinguish this Enoch from the other Enoch, the son of Cain, who was the third generation after Adam (see Genesis 4:17).”1 This explanation should suffice. For other evidence that this Enoch is distinct from the son of Cain, one may consult Genesis 5:21-24, Luke 3:37, and Hebrews 11:5. The great difficulty of the passage here comes from Jude’s use of the word PROPHESIED. In both cases of extra-biblical citations—1 Enoch and The Assumption of Moses—we have seen that there is no difficulty in a canonical author drawing from what is not canonical. However, here Jude specifically uses this word which, one would think, depends upon the same divine authority as Scripture. My basic response is So what? Luke speaks of the prophecy of Agabus in Acts 11:28. Its words did not constitute a separate canonical book. Why should it? The burden of proof is on the one who would maintain that a true prophecy always demands canonical status of the words cited. They do not in other cases. On what basis must they here? The truth is, there is no good answer to this challenge. 

Moreover Jude claims that Enoch’s words were about these false teachers of his day, yet the immediate sense is of those in another day. But this is no difficulty either, as Jesus did roughly the same. 

“Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men’” (Mat. 15:7-9; cf. Isa. 29:13).

It may then be objected: If extra-canonical prophecy may exist in the times of the Bible being written, why can it not exist afterwards, as the Pentecostals and Charismatics believe? The answers are several, but at the heart of it is the very nature of prophecy culminating upon Christ, The Prophet, who was to come (cf. Deut. 18:15). It was not simply that the greatest must be the last, but that prophecy represents the revelation of God’s truth and His promises. But such has now come in fullness: Christ is that Truth (Jn. 14:6) and the fulfillment of all promises (2 Cor. 1:20), so God has made the mode of revelation flow from His chosen vessels of old to its Source—“Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Heb. 1:1-2). The whole point of prophecy was teleological and Christological, and it cannot be Christ-terminating if it seeks out some other course beyond Him. Aside from all of that, as Green helpfully remarks, “Jude is not simply quoting, however, but adapting his material.”2

While Calvin may have lacked the discoveries of the text of this Enoch which followed, his theologizing on Jude’s use is worth noting: 

“Were any one to ask, that since similar sentences occur in many parts of Scripture, why did he not quote a testimony written by one of the prophets? the answer is obvious, that he wished to repeat from the oldest antiquity what the Spirit had pronounced respecting them: and this is what the words intimate; for he says expressly that he was the seventh from Adam, in order to commend the antiquity of the prophecy, because it existed in the world before the flood.”3

So what about that prophecy—what is its ultimate substance? The moment of the return of Christ and of the conquest of his enemies is highlighted by the presence of ‘a myriad of his holy ones’ (ἁγίαις μυριάσιν αὐτοῦ). The word μυριάς can mean “many thousands” or “ten thousand” or simply a “myriad,” as Strong’s has it, “From murioi; a ten-thousand; by extension, a ‘myriad’ or indefinite number — ten thousand.” This is the sense in Daniel 7:10, “a thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand (μύριαι μυριάδες — LXX) stood before him” (cf. Deut. 33:2-4).

Now why the other expression? HOLY ONES (ἁγίαις) would more typically mean the “saints,” yet the context of these being agents of vengeance makes it natural to read this as the angels, especially given the context of how they are spoken of by Enoch. Calvin was of the opinion that it can be both “the faithful as well as angels, for both will adorn the tribunal of Christ, when he shall descend to judge the world.”4 He could appeal to 1 Thessalonians 3:13, “at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.”

Matthew 16:27 is one such canonical passage to which Jude could have appealed for the angels: “For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.” Likewise in Paul’s words,

“when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God” (2 Thess. 1:7-8).

In the Parables of the Tares and the Net, it is the angels who are especially mentioned as the agents who will “sort” out the righteous from the wicked, the latter to be cast into hell (Mat. 13:39, 41, 49-50).

The Reward of Scoffers

The judgment on “all” or “everyone” here seems, contextually, to mean the ungodly. This is the view of Manton also, who adds, “Judgment is not executed upon the saints but for them.”5 Here is another one of those parallels to 2 Peter. In chapter 3 of that epistle, the context of the statement about the Lord’s return—both its timing and its justice—is that, 

“that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation” (2 Pet. 3:3-4).

Jude seems to have some of the same people in mind. Although we cannot say for sure whether the same content of scoffing was in their mouths as it was for those faced by Peter—nevertheless, what we have is a fitting justice for scoffers. Green suggests that these heretics denied not so much the coming of the Lord, but “that when he came, it would mean trouble for them.”6 That would follow from their antinomianism. If true, they would stand in another Jewish tradition—that of the false prophets in the times of Amos, who held to a Day of the Lord, but one which was only good news and contained no reason for dread. 

He will use the word for “mocker” or “scoffer” (ἐμπαίκτης) down in verse 18, showing an even closer parallel to Peter. In verse 15, he heaps up a fourfold use of the word UNGODLY—roughly following the last words of 1 Enoch 1:9—but the emphasis, since they are self-appointed teachers, is this exact idea: harsh things … spoken against him, namely, against the Lord. Manton observed that,

“not only the deeds of ungodly people but their words will be judged. Words do not perish with the breath of which they are uttered. They remain on the record, and we must give an account of them on the last day, ‘But I tell you that men will have to give an account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken’ (Matthew 12:36).7 

Manton’s focus was on words not dying legally: that the scoffer cannot hope in any of his words slipping out of the courtroom. They are locked in for a final display. But the very same endurance of ungodly words shows us why it is just that it be so. Paul says of sinners, “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive” (Rom. 3:13). To scoff at heaven is to lure to hell. None of our words are neutral, and no conversation is inconsequential. The feet that we sit at we will follow—“A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40). The scoffer is the street teacher. His ideas and vocabulary are too underdeveloped for academia, yet he has the wider audience for it, as his vulgarity plays to the masses. So, he may be given the heavier millstone on that Day since he can reach down all the more to the little ones. 

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1. Manton, Jude, 177.

2. Green, The Message of 2 Peter and Jude, 206.

3. Calvin, Commentaries, XXII:443.

4. Calvin, Commentaries, XXII:443.

5. Manton, Jude, 181.

6. Green, The Message of 2 Peter and Jude, 208.

7. Manton, Jude, 183-84.