Enoch, Elijah, And The Rapture

Q. How many years before the flood was Enoch “raptured”?  Any significance?  How about timing of Elijah’s “rapture”  in relation to any judgment event?  Are they “types” of the coming pre-judgment rapture of the Church?

A. Enoch was “raptured”  669 years before the Great flood. Scholars often point to his disappearance as a type of the rapture because Jesus said that the time of His coming would be like the days of Noah.  In both cases there are three kinds of people involved.  The one that perishes in the judgment (the unbelieving world) the one that’s preserved through the judgment (the Jewish remnant and Noah) and the one that’s taken away before the judgment (the Church and Enoch).  Furthermore, according to Jewish tradition Enoch was born on the day that would become Pentecost, just like the church, and his name means “teaching”, the primary role of the church (Matt. 28:19-20).

I think Elijah, being the only other one raptured, serves primarily as the fulfillment of the “two witnesses” principle  where a thing is established by the testimony of two witnesses (Deut. 19:15).  Enoch and Elijah give witness to the fact that it’s possible to be taken live into Heaven.