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deeper meaning than "piety" or the lack of this virtue. This depth of meaning is evident
in Jude's epistle where the three words asebeia, asebeo and asebes are found six times.
"Ungodly men, who turned the grace of God into lasciviousness" (verse 4).
"To convict all that are ungodly, of their ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly
committed, by ungodly sinners" (verse 15).
"Mockers who walk after their ungodly lusts" (verse 18).
The sin of angels, Sodom and Satan, together with the sin that shall be judged at the
coming of the Lord, is denominated ungodliness. Peter confirms this, for in his second
epistle he speaks of the angels that sinned in the time of Noah, and of Sodom, Gomorrah,
and Balaam, and speaks of the flood coming upon the world of the ungodly. Sodom and
Gomorrah are examples of those that live ungodly; Lot is an example of the deliverance
of the godly, and of the fire reserved by the Lord for the day of judgment and perdition of
ungodly men (II Pet. 2:, 3:).
We must refer to II Peter again after we have pointed out the necessity of an
important revision of Jude 14, 15. A literal rendering of the words of Enoch must read:
"Behold, the Lord came." While the true rendering of the aorist of the Greek verb is still
somewhat of a moot point, the rightness of the above rendering is confirmed by the
general usage and rendering of the A.V. The interested student may test this by noting
the occurrences of elthe (part of the verb erchomai, "to come"), which is usually
translated "came". If Enoch said, "Behold, the Lord came", he must have been referring
back to some judgment that was past when he spoke. To what could he refer? The
judgment of the flood had not then taken place, neither had judgment fallen upon Babel.
The description given of the judgment could not refer to Gen. 3: or 4: To what then
could it refer?
The reader will probably have traveled back in mind to Gen. 1: 2, to the katabole
kosmou, "the overthrow of the world". This connection is more than countenanced by
Peter in his second epistle which we have already found to be parallel with that of Jude.
The second coming and the overthrow (Gen. 1: 2).
Jude says:--
"Remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus
Christ; how that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should not
walk after their own ungodly lusts" (verses 17 and 18).
Peter says:--
"I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance. That ye may be mindful of the
words which were spoken before by . . . . . the apostles of the Lord and Saviour . . . . .
there shall come in the last day mockers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where
is the promise of His coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue right
through as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are
ignorant of, that by the Word of God the heavens are of old, and the earth standing out of
the water and in the water: whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with
water, perished" (II Pet. 3: 1-6).