Introduction
By 100 AD, all of the Apostles were dead and martyred for Christ and His name's sake. The list of the years of their passing is easily found all over the internet. The point is simple—beyond 100 AD, the next in line apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers were fully aboard and carrying the Gospel baton.
Attack of the Church
The point of laying this groundwork is that these men of God, filled with the Spirit of Christ, went into the nations and preached a message of raw spiritual power of the Good News of Jesus Christ. They framed the context of their message around not only what we call the Old Testament, but around books, stories, and messages like those found in 1 Enoch, Book of Giants, Jubilees, and others.
The core link to those books in the Old Testament is Genesis 6:1-4.In less than 75 years, these powerhouses of God literally were turning the world upside down! (Acts 17:6) Literally, the gates of hell were falling to the Church of Jesus Christ, His message, His Spirit, His people and His love, care, redemption, salvation, and empowerment! Diseases were being healed. Dead were being raised. Pagans were renouncing gods and goddesses. Human and child sacrificing were being stopped. Idolatry was ending. Charity, care, love, and service were taking over. Even persecution and suffering fueled the fire of the spread of the Gospel of Yeshua HaMoshiach (Jesus, the Christ)! The church was unstoppable!
The story of the reversing of the power and damage of the sins of the Watchers—a story wholly found in 1 Enoch—coupled with the Old Testament and the witness of Jesus as Messiah and Conquering King was obliterating the Bulls of Bashan. The enemies of Christ knew this. Something had to be done!
Counterattack
Satan and his cohorts were getting their heads ground into the dirt. The church was pouring over the walls and through the gates. What could the enemy do. They had to think of something and think of it fast.
Never in their three thousand years or more since Genesis 6 had they faced the Spirit of God indwelling men, sanctified by the Most High in Christ at the Cross. They had been fooled by the Cross. Now—they were suffering and something needed to be done to stop it! They were literally bleeding out in history!
It is books like 1 Enoch that fully expose The Watchers and their sin against God, against heaven, against earth, and against men. And here were men indwelt with God who were using the record of their sin to pound them into dust! Therefore—the solution was straight forward: Something had to be done about Enoch!
Christians needed to have the weapon removed from their hands. It would be like taking nukes away from a country in modern times, stripping the target nation of mutually assured destruction. With the nukes gone, the nation would be vulnerable. And so the plan began!
Operation: Remove Enoch!
It began at 100 AD. In particular, Paul had made it a habit to start in Jewish synagogues as the tip-of-the-spear to spreading the Gospel. Therefore, what was needed was a blunting of the spear. How? If Enoch was that tip, then Enoch had to be discredited and turned from the bulwark it had been for centuries into a pariah and anathema to Jews (and later to gentiles). So, the plan was set. Finding the right men for the job was the next step.
Remember, up to this point, the Christians had no reason to doubt the stories of Enoch. On the contrary, they used them and used them effectively (e.g., tip-of-the-spear in the presenting of the Gospel). Nor would the pagans be a suitable foil. The gods had spent thousands of years preening their dominions on the backs of these people that Christians were now confronting with the sin of the gods. So—it was not the Christians or the pagans who would be the entry point of unclean lying spirits of hell—rather—it would be the Jews! But who to choose?
The right Jew presented himself in the person of Rabbi Akiba (circa 50-135 AD) who was a leading Rabbi who lived at that time—the point of crisis for the demonic authorities, principalities, powers, and rulers of darkness. Like any good Rabbi, he had disciples.
Beginning with Akiba and moving on to Simeon ben Yohai, the work of dismantling Genesis 6 specifically and also other Messianic Old Testament scripture-tools of the Christians began. At this point—the spiritually vulnerable Akiba and Simeon are both operating as enemies of the Cross of Christ—literally. Their claim to Yahweh or Adonai as God is patently false.
It is here in our discussion where it is needful to reassert the story of 1 Kings, chapter 22, where Micaiah tells Ahab about the lying spirit from God that inhabits the minds and mouths of his prophets. The enemy is implementing the planned destruction of Enoch through these Jewish men.
The Gates of Hell Reborn
The plan is insidiously shrewd. The way to blunt Enoch on Jews and then Gentiles is to twist scripture, rework it, and even rewrite it from whole cloth; cloaking the devious matter in the technicalities of Hebrew, history, and oral theology. And this thing they do!
While the implementation and effect are not immediate, the result is creeping in like a cancer over the multiple Judaism's of the time. As Enoch and its Genesis 6 entry point to the Old Testament is dismantled in the minds of vulnerable Jews, the Christians find themselves having their primary weapon neutralized.
As the foul work of Akiba and his junior, Simeon moves out among the Jews, the Messianic movement dies. Yet, the people of the pagan nations remain by the millions. Within the texts and stories of the gods and goddesses are the seeds of Enoch, twisted as they might be. So, the church spends the rest of the second century (to 200 AD) and part of the third century focused on reaching and rescuing the people of the Gentile nations.
The effectiveness is still penetratingly powerful, and the forces of hell know it. Pagan cults within the nations continue to lose people by the thousands; even persecution, suffering, and death only serve to increase their losses. They have only managed to blunt part of the power of the message of Enoch (and others). More needs to be done and more is coming!
The Final Blow
What's the old saying, "If you cannot beat them, join them"? And so the hellish second stage of OPERATION ENOCH is set into motion: Enoch will need to be blunted and stopped from the inside. The way in is for the pagan emperor of Rome to have a "sudden conversion" to Christ and Christianity! This will allow the demon infested paganites to cloak themselves in Christianity and lure actual Christians into their midst where they can be infiltrated and folded in to the masquerade and façade. Constantine is their man of the hour!
Just as the Rabbinical movement destroyed Enoch and other sin of the Watchers revealing books through deceit and exclusion from The Canon (authorized Books of the Book)—so this too becomes the task of the newly minted Christian Bishops authorized of Rome. Here is a recount of that basic story from James Heinz (book forthcoming).
"Simeon's interpretation later influenced 4th century Christians to reject the Book during the council of Laodicea. Filastrius or Philastrius Bishop of Brescia rejected the Book of Enoch for the same reason as Simeon. Filastrius also influenced Augustine to reject the Book during the council of Hippo. Hippo then influenced the council of Carthage to reject it for the same reason as well. "The theme of the Book of Enoch dealing with the nature and deeds of the fallen angels so infuriated the later Church fathers that one, Filastrius, actually condemned it openly as heresy (Filastrius, Liber de Haeresibus, no. 108). Nor did the rabbis deign to give credence to the book's teaching about angels. Rabbi Simeon ben Jochai in the second century A.D. pronounced a curse upon those who believed it" (Delitzsch, p. 223)."
Stepping Back
Let's step back for a moment and understand the final attack. Until Constantine, the church of Christ was still relatively small compared to the number of pagan idol worshippers. From the demonic point of view, if those people were (so-called) "converted" to Christ, their raw and sheer numbers would utterly overwhelm the real and true believers and disciples of Christ.
Add to this—if the false converts now feigning and pretending to be Christians and (self-proclaimed) leaders and teachers in the Church of Jesus Christ, and if they handled the real Christians with "kid-gloves" (feigned love)—the trap could be set.
What trap?
The trap of (so-called) Church Councils using a system of voting to forcefully determine the inclusion of books and subsequent teachings of the Bible canon. This thing happened. It is a matter of history and record.
The actual Christian church fathers gave up and gave in. As Dr. Heiser likes to continually point out in books and interviews, those who held Enoch and other books in high esteem or as scripture capitulated to the overwhelming mass of people with new-found "authority" as church leaders and "theologians".
Augustine in the fourth century would seal the deal for the next 1,600-years of history (until now) by writing his twenty books in twenty years called The City of God. In these tomes, he would lay out what would form the foundation of church doctrine, beliefs, traditions, and dogmas for the next sixteen centuries. The plan was complete. Enoch was defeated. The story of the sin of the Watchers would remain encased in a tomb of theological defeat forever—or so the Watchers and their demonic hordes hoped and believed.
Qumran Rising
The Dead Sea Scrolls have literally changed everything. From the reintroduction of Enoch by the British in the 19th century and then the discovery and study of the DSS in the 20th century until now—the powerhouse has re-awoken. It is ready to rejoin the story and expose the Watchers and their sin before the Lord returns.
While the pagan gods are returning in the form of "wokeness" among the world—the church is slowly being woke to the story she lost and the power of that story to expose the enemy for who and what they are. As the gods return, so to does God and His revealing of the truth to match their lies. The fight is now on. The battle is rejoined. The very gates of hell will not withstand the church empowered by the Spirit of Christ in truth. Jesus made that promise at the foot of Mount Hermon—at the very gates of hell itself.
What side of history will you be on?