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The reader may have missed the familiar comment which sees in Enoch's translation
the rapture of the church, but we trust he will have gained by having attention drawn both
to the difficulties of the case, and of its fitness with the theme of the Hebrews:
"Let us go unto perfection . . . . . leaving . . . . . a resurrection of dead ones . . . . . for a
better resurrection . . . . . and the spirits of just men made perfect."
That the prize of Phil. 3: may be considered parallel, the reference to "reward" in
Heb. 11: 6 will show, and that "to walk and please God" is the high goal of faith,
Heb. 11: and the bulk of the epistles testify.
No.46.
Noah and Abraham, Inheritors (11: 7, 8).
pp. 121 - 124
However personally we may feel the application of this or any other Scripture, we
deprive ourselves of much that is helpful in its interpretation when we lose sight of the
original purpose of its writing, and the conditions under which it was written. Heb. 11:
is so full of teaching that we are apt to isolate it from its context in the appreciation of its
present application. The aspect of faith that we are to consider under the names of Noah
and Abraham, while containing much that has a direct personal application to ourselves,
was nevertheless written in the first place to the Hebrews, and written to them in
circumstances that make the examples cited of supreme importance in the process of the
apostle's instruction to them.
The faith that inherits.
Among the items of prominence in the message to the Hebrews is that which deals
with the relation of faith to inheritance. Chapters 3: and 4: are devoted to the idea of
the necessity of faith in connection with inheriting. "So we see that they could not enter
in because of unbelief" (3: 19). It is time, however, that we saw for ourselves that
inheritance is the connecting theme of this second pair of examples:
"By faith Noah . . . . . became HEIR of the righteousness which is by faith" (11: 7).
"By faith Abraham . . . . . went out . . . . . to the place he should afterwards receive for
an INHERITANCE" (11: 8 not AV JP).
Without the Scripture before us, we should doubtless assign the position of "heir of
the righteousness by faith" to Abraham, rather than to Noah, as so much is said of him in
that connection in Romans and Galatians as well as in Gen. 15: The fact that Noah is
also associated with righteousness by faith, shows that from earliest days this principle
has been in operation, and but the more emphasizes that unpalatable fact, that "the law
made nothing perfect"; that Sinai is a transition, not a goal (Heb. 12: 18-24), and that the
gospel committed to Paul, which reaches back as far as Adam, and as wide as the ends of