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GREG -
A guy at work was saying that Methuselah wasn't the oldest man in the bible; that his dad Enoch was, because he was translated, and is still alive. I asked him if he really believed that? I told him, if that was true,flesh and blood would have entered heaven. The new testament says that can't happen!(flesh and bone can, as in jesus' s ascension ). As I pondered it all,the question is: what is being translated? I know Enoch didn't see death, but he probably tasted it? It can't be the same as death and resurrection because Jesus wouldn't have been the first. I understand the whole city of Enoch was translated and others. I don't understand what it means? It makes some since about Moses and Elijah's translation(they needed their bodies to restore priesthood keys) why the whole city? Is that the 144,000 in revelations. How can anyone be bored, when they have the scriptures? (forever searching : )
JOEL -
According to the D&C:
"Enoch was twenty-five years old when he was ordained under the hand of Adam; and he was sixty-five and Adam blessed
him.
And he saw the Lord, and he walked with him, and was before his face continually; and he walked with God three
hundred and sixty-five years, making him four hundred and thirty years old when he was translated." (D&C 107: 48-49)
The Prophet Joseph explained the special mission of Enoch and the doctrine of translation as follows:
"Now this Enoch God reserved unto Himself, that he should not die at that time, and appointed unto him a ministry
unto terrestrial bodies, of whom there has been but little revealed. He is reserved also unto the presidency of a
dispensation.... He is a ministering angel, to minister to those who shall be heirs of salvation, and appeared unto
Jude as Abel did unto Paul; therefore Jude spoke of him (verses 14, 15)
Many have supposed that the doctrine of translation was a doctrine whereby men were taken immediately into the
presence of God, and into an eternal fullness, but this is a mistaken idea. Their place of habitation is that of the
terrestrial order, and a place prepared for such characters He held in reserve to be ministering angels unto many
planets, and who as yet have not entered into so great a fullness as those who are resurrected from the dead." (TPJS,
170)
So apparently Enoch and his people reside in some sort of Terrestrial sphere (wherever that is), where many other
ministering angels reside.
Translated beings experience a long-term change to their mortal bodies (posessing flesh, bone, and spirit but no blood) ; making them resistant to sorrow, disease or death which ends only when they pass from mortality to immortality (3 Ne. 28:8). Transfiguration, while a similar change in some ways, is momentary, making it possible for mortals to survive the presence of God(Matt 17:1-9, ).
A translated being is similar to a resurected person with the exception that a translated being has never died, and has a body with less power than a resurrected being. Among those translated are Enoch and the city Zion
(Moses 7:18-23, 27), Elijah, the apostle John (D&C 7), and the three Nephite disciples (3 Ne. 28:4-11, 15-40).
The Prophet Joseph Smith said, "Translated bodies cannot enter into rest until they have undergone a change
equivalent to death" (TPJS 191). However, translated beings probably do not "taste of death" when they are translated
(3 Ne. 28:7), nor when they do finnally pass to immortality. It is possible that they will simply change in the
"twinkling of an eye" when the resurrection comes; the same as will happen to others who live during the Millennium
(3 Nephi 28: 7, 40 D&C 101: 31).
In regards to being the oldest man that ever lived, I suppose it depends on your deffinition of "alive". Enoch is of
course alive in the sense that he continues to posess a body of flesh, bone, and spirit (no blood), and did not taste of death,
but could be considered dead in the sense that he and his people no longer live on this mortal earth.
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