Men's Hearts Fail Them - Moses 7:63-69

7:63- - At the time right before the Millennium, the city of Zion, or Enoch’s righteous city that was translated before the flood will return to the New Jerusalem, and all the righteous saints will rejoice together, “and we will receive them in our bosom, and they shall see us; and we will fall upon their necks, and they shall fall upon our necks, and we will kiss each other.” It seems like that might be an extreme reaction, but imagine how it feels to meet someone who loves Jesus and tries to keep the commandments just like we do, it’s exhilarating, it make you feel validated in your choices, it helps you feel like you can endure in a wicked world in a righteous way. I imagine that this is how it will feel when the two places are brought together and the people meet in the flesh for the first time. Jesus will live in the righteous city with “and for the space of a thousand years the earth shall rest.” Even though Enoch saw the great day of the coming of the millennium where peace rested on the earth, he also saw that before that peaceful day comes, there will be “great tribulation among the wicked; and he also saw the sea, that it was troubled, and men’s hearts failing them, looking forth with fear for the judgments of the Almighty God, which should come upon the wicked.” We know that the last days are going to be crazy, and I would say at this point that the seas are troubled. There is over fishing to the point where so much of the natural sea life is gone and can never come back. I just read an article this morning about how there is so much plastic waste in the ocean that every single fish that is pulled out of the ocean to be made into food has toxic levels of micro-plastics in their tissues to the point that it’s hazardous for human consumption. All the oil that has spilled, all the nuclear waste put in the ocean both intentionally and unintentionally, it’s absolutely a destroyed ecosystem. I’ve often thought that in Revelation when the seas is filled with blood, that maybe the “blood” represented death, because our oceans are almost completely dead. What could “men’s hearts failing them” mean? I’ve thought about this a lot and some of the conclusions that I’ve come to might reference heart disease being the number one cause of death in a lot of places. It could mean the increased suicide rate, where people just can’t live in a world this bad anymore, which I understand. It could mean people just giving up on being good and stop serving or caring about others. I imagine in a world where Satan isn’t present, the thought of people not caring about each other would be horrific, but here in this world, we really don’t. Even for those of us who want to be righteous, who want to be like the Savior, caring about every single person and all the injustices that they’ve endured and giving them all the help they need is absolutely soul crushing. We don’t physically or spiritually have the capacity to give to others in the way that they need anything more than just the superficial levels. It’s too much, the need is too great. That’s what happens to me, I start to get involved with someone and help them, then it escalates to the point that I just have to walk away because I can’t give them everything that they need and still be able to take care of myself and my responsibilities. The people “looking forth with fear for the judgments of the Almighty God, which should come upon the wicked,” I don’t think is so much about them looking to God, but instead not knowing God as a loving being, and instead just waiting for whatever power controls the universe to be angry and punish them. God showed Enoch “all things, even unto the end of the world,” which would be pretty overwhelming for me, but it’s interesting because there are a lot of people who have had this vision in the scriptures so I wonder what about that specific experience strengthens them. The city of Enoch, or the city of Zion, was on the earth for 365 years “and Enoch and all his people walked with God, and he dwelt in the midst of Zion,” until the point that God decided it was too much to keep Zion on earth and then “God received it up into his own bosom; and from thence went forth the saying, Zion is Fled.”