The First Human Generations.

The fifth chapter of the book of Genesis is opened with the brief repetition of the history of creating the people (and here again is used the word "bara" — creation from nothing), as the council unity in the multitude, on the image and after the likeness of the council unity in God-Trinity.

"In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created." Then there is mentioned the number of years of life of Adam and is said about the birth of the righteous son of Adam and Eve — Seth: "Begat a son in his own likeness, and after his image; and called his name Seth."

The Lord created Adam and Eve in His image, after His likeness, and preserving this image and likeness (though harmed by the sin), Adam gives them to his progeny. "And he begat sons and daughters."

If in the previous chapter we noted the exceptional loving attention of the holy fathers to every word of the Bible, then here we shall mention, to what an extent are blind the most recent and little believing critics and researchers of the Holy Scripture.

In the book of Genesis, in the verse 4 of chapter 5 it is clearly written that Adam begat sons and daughters, and the contemporary critics are bewildered: how does the Bible see the multiplication of mankind, if Adam and Eve are mentioned to have only three sons? Whom did they marry? Surely, their sisters, without falling into the criminal incest, for such marriages at those times were caused purely by necessity, and not by perversion. Besides, mankind was young and fresh then, and the marriages of the closest relatives did not introduce into them the elements of degradation, which accompany the incest relations of the later times and present days.

Through the presence of the same freshness of forces in mankind one can explain the exceptional durability of the people of that time. The created originally for the eternal life people of the first human generations did not give into the unnatural for people expectations of death for more time. Adam lived for 930 years, Methuselah, the most long-living, 969 years.

Among the ten descendents of Adam until the Great Flood let us focus attention on Enoch, the seventh after Adam. Enoch means "dedication." "And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him."

Righteous Enoch is mentioned in the Book of Sirach: "Enoch pleased God, and was translated into paradise, that he may give repentance to the nations" (Sirach 44:15). About him says Apostle Paul: "By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him (took him alive to heaven; Hebr. 11:5). And Apostle Jude kept for us even the words of righteous Enoch: "Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him."

Blessed Theodorite says that the Lord freed righteous Enoch from death, in order to already testify to ancient, primitive mankind that "the definition of death is temporary and is subjected to extermination." Blessed Theodorite ends his narration about Enoch with the words, which are appropriate to be quoted: "So, we know that while alive he was translated. And that he lives now, but where and how — it is unknown, for the Scripture does not say about that."

With the name of righteous Enoch is connected some church legend, about which blessed Righteous Enoch did not face death. Meanwhile, on the Divine definition: "for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return," all people have to pass through the gates of death and we know that even More Honorable that the Cherubim, and beyond Compare more glorious that the Seraphim, the mother of God died to be resurrected by Her Son and God. Only about two people the Holy Scripture says that they did not face death: about righteous Enoch and Prophet Elijah. About the both of them one can say with the words of bless Theodorite: "They are still living, but it is unknown — where and how."

When in the last times the law violation will increase, love will disappear so that faith will become weak, then there will appear "the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth" (Rev. 11:4), which will testify to the Divine truth among rotten mankind. On the Divine plan, these two candlesticks will be killed by Antichrist and will resurrect on the third day. The Church teaching says that these two candlesticks, these witnesses will be St. Enoch and Elijah — those righteous of the Old Testament, who did not face death, precisely in order to fulfill the Divine act at the end of ages, when the spiritual forces of mankind will weaken.

The very sermon of righteous Enoch, as blessed Theodorite says, to the great extent has to do with the last, than with those preceding the flood, times: "Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all."