Many of us have grown from Seth to Enosh in our experience. When we first began to love the Lord, our initial experience was one of being powerful and buoyant. We had a lot of strength and confidence. This was because we were experiencing Seth, the “appointed” one. For us to feel this way is proper at the beginning of our Christian life. Furthermore, when we first loved the Lord He was so sweet. We were filled with life and with enjoyment. We felt so close to Him. This is all the experiencing of Seth. This is the beginning of our experience in the divine and mystical realm.

But then, perhaps, eventually we started considering ourselves to be spiritual. We may have even prayed for the Lord to make us a great spiritual brother or sister. Once we prayed this way, or once we felt that we were “somebody,” the Lord said, “Now I will let you know who you really are.” Then He withdrew His upholding and protecting power. Formerly we were so safe in the Lord's hands. But when He moved His hand a little, we realized, “Oh Lord Jesus, I need You.”

The Lord wants us to realize that we are Enosh. For example, sometimes He allows our temper to grow worse. We lose our temper again and again. Then we pray many times to overcome. Our feeling is, “Lord, how can I possibly love You so much and lose my temper so often?” But the Lord doesn't do a thing for us until we learn that we are Enosh. The Lord would say to us, “You want me to free you from your temper, but I can't afford to. If I free you from your temper you will think that you are `somebody' again. Now you must find out that you are Enosh.” Our realization of our weakness will cause us to call on the Lord. Eventually we will become Kenan. We may struggle against our temper until we finally tell the Lord, “I can't make it. I'm just too weak.” In that process, eventually we will gain something. The Lord may give us a revelation. He may show us that we died with Christ. We don't need to be freed from our temper, because a dead person has no temper. Our temper was healed already, because we died with Christ. When He shows us this, then we have gained something. We have entered into the experience of Kenan. But we can only experience Kenan after realizing we are Enosh.

How do we become Kenan and have the genuine spiritual “gain”? Only when we realize that we are weak and limited. In our process of growth in the line of life, God will let us experience our weakness. We all have weakness. It may be our temper. It may be our looseness. It may be loving something other than the Lord. Everyone has a certain kind of weakness. But we should not be too discouraged by our weaknesses. We should not feel defeated or overly bothered. Rather, our reaction should be to cry out to the Lord in the midst of our weakness. We must call upon the name of the Lord. That is to be Enosh. We can simply cry out to the Lord, “Lord, I need You!” We should realize that our weaknesses are actually for our spiritual gain. When we realize how limited and fragile we are, this causes our prayer to be different. Then we will spend more time praying for the Lord's mercy and less time feeling good about our success. We will have more time in the Lord's presence and less time in spiritual activities that we can boast in. Then Enosh will beget Kenan in our experience, and we will have the genuine spiritual gain.

Our spiritual learning on the line of life must become experiential. The process of our growth is not one of knowing or learning but of gaining. We must gain something subjectively. We must gain something in our very person. We may think that as long as we know something then we have it. This is the wrong concept. If we only have the knowledge of something without the spiritual experience it is not sufficient. Yes, we do need to know many things for our Christian life. In fact, the more we know the better, because without proper knowledge our experience will be limited. But we should never think that what we know is what we have truly gained.

“Enosh” does not only refer to our weakness. “Enosh” also refers to our mortality. The realization of our mortality should cause us to live differently. We should realize that whatever we have in this life is only temporary. How much we acquire and how much we gain is based on how we handle our mortal life. We have heard many high, profound things, but they may not be ours yet. We need these riches to become our subjective experience. We must desire to have the reality of what we know. We must pursue the spiritual riches until they are ours experientially. God has given many rich truths to us, but we must also realize our own mortality. In other words, what we gain in our life is based on how we treasure the time we have in our mortality. Our human life is mortal. We should use our time to gain the spiritual riches. We should never be relaxed with our life. We must fully utilize the time God has given us in our mortality. This is to use Enosh to gain Kenan.

To talk about the line of life is very simple: “Seth begot Enosh. This means that we are fragile and mortal. Enosh begot Kenan. This means that we acquire something.” It is easy to have such an understanding, but it is not so easy for this understanding to regulate our life. Whether or not we will become Kenan and have the genuine spiritual gain is based on whether today we realize that we are Enosh. We all must realize, “I am mortal. My time is limited. I must use whatever time I have to gain the riches of Christ.” We should pray to the Lord, “Lord, I want to be Enosh. I want to treasure everything You have given me. I want to treasure all the time You have given me, and even whatever talent and capacity You have given me in my mortal life. Everything You have given me I want to invest in You, so that I can become Kenan.”

The next person on the line of life is Kenan's son Mahalaleel (Gen. 5:12). “Mahalaleel” means “praise of God,” “God is splendor.” This is a very significant progression. First we experience Enosh. We realize that we are weak and mortal. Then we experience Kenan. We gain the spiritual riches of Christ. After we gain the riches of Christ, we begin to praise God. This is to experience Mahalaleel. Every time we acquire something of God the result is to praise Him..

The growth on the line of life is much more difficult than what people experience on the line of knowledge. Cain quickly begot Enoch and then built a city. Enoch begot Irad, “fast.” A few generations later there were three lines of human culture produced from Cain's descendants. Everything on the line of Cain goes quickly. But with the line of life, the growth is much harder. Abel had to die to produce Seth. Seth had to learn how fragile human life was, and then he begot Enosh. Out of his mortality Enosh experienced and gained something of God, so he begot a son named Kenan. Eventually Kenan became a man of praise. He begot Mahalaleel, meaning “praise of God,” or “God is splendor.” This shows us that the process we go through on the line of life is difficult and takes time.

After gaining the spiritual riches of Christ we are brought to the praise and splendor of God. The genuine experience of Mahalaleel can best be portrayed with an illustration. Suppose a brother likes a certain sister. He is afraid that if he calls her she will reject him. He may even pray to the Lord out of his anxiety. Finally, this brother calls the sister up. To his surprise, she is happy to go out with him. Then the brother in his excitement may offer praise to God. “Thank You, God! You're wonderful!” But this is not Mahalaleel. This is not the real praise of God. Mahalaleel only comes out of Enosh and Kenan.

However, suppose a young man has a girlfriend before he is saved. They genuinely love one another. Eventually the young man believes in the Lord, and his girlfriend makes an effort to go along with him because she loves him. But eventually she just can't make it. She is not willing to become a Christian, and to continue with the relationship is too difficult for her. She withdraws from the brother and rejects him. Now this brother experiences human mortality. There is a deep wound in his heart. Such a suffering is almost unbearable. He feels so tremendously sorrowful that he thinks it is better to die than to live without his loved one.

Then suppose this brother begins to touch the Lord in the midst of his deep sorrow. He is brought to the Lord's presence, and his spiritual life revives. The Lord enters into his situation and is more real to him now than He ever was before. The brother comes into the enjoyment of Christ and gradually comes out of his suffering. After having gained Christ in this way he offers a prayer to the Lord: “Lord, thank You. This situation was much too hard for me, but I still thank You. Through this I now know You so much more. I've experienced You so much more. I've enjoyed You so much more. Formerly You were not so real to me, but now I know You are real. Praise You!” Out of the experience of his mortality, and out of the experience of gaining Christ, this brother becomes a praiser of God. Eventually this brother can say, “Praise God! He is marvelous! God is splendor! God is worthy to be praised!” After experiencing Enosh and Kenan, this brother is brought to Mahalaleel. None of this is merely doctrinal. This progression should be our experience as we follow the Lord in the line of life.

After experiencing Mahalaleel and being brought to the praise and splendor of God, there is another lesson we must learn. There is a danger that we may experience Mahalaleel to an extreme, until we become spiritually peculiar. It is possible for us to become too spiritual and ascend too high. The Lord wants us to be human, but instead we can become “spiritual beings.” Some Christians are so “spiritual” that no one can even fellowship with them. Brothers or sisters who are like this often become very judgmental. They judge everyone unconsciously without even intending to. Their very presence becomes a pressure to those around them. The Lord wants us to experience Mahalaleel, but not to the point of becoming too spiritual.

After Mahalaleel we need the next person on the line of life. Mahalaleel gave birth to Jared (Gen. 5:15). “Jared” means “descending.” After we become a praiser of God we must learn to come down and descend. On the line of knowledge it is very easy to come down. On that line everything quickly degrades. The line of knowledge goes down automatically and spontaneously. But the line of life goes up. To go up, to ascend, is much harder than to go down. Even in our human life it is much harder to ascend than to descend. To become a drug user takes only a few days, but to become a scholar takes many years. The “going up” in the line of life is by realizing our mortality. After we realize that we are Enosh, that we are mortal and need the Lord's mercy, then we begin to ascend. We experience Kenan and gain the riches of Christ. Then we experience Mahalaleel and become a praiser of God. The experiences on the line of life bring us upward.

But after becoming Mahalaleel, God would tell us, “Please come down.” If we don't come down from being a praiser of God we will become a “spiritual being” rather than a human being. We will be so spiritual that even the angels can't talk with us. It is possible for us to experience Kenan and Mahalaleel to the degree that we don't even know how to descend and become Jared. We can become so high that we don't know how to come down. It is essential for us to experience Jared and learn how to descend.

Many times when we have even just a little spiritual gain, we become different. We may think to ourselves, “I love the Lord the most!” We may consider ourselves so highly. This is when we need to be careful and learn how to descend. For example, we should know how to treat people normally. We should know how to be with a person who does not love the Lord. Is such a person able to feel comfortable around us and even entrust themselves to us? Suppose there is a sister who has almost no love for the Lord. Then we tell her, “Praise God for the divine economy! Isn't it nice to enjoy the divine and mystical realm? Oh, what an organic salvation!” That sister will become afraid of us. She doesn't even know what we are talking about. How can this sister be brought to love the Lord if she doesn't see any descending on our part? All she sees is someone who has gained Christ and is so far above her. As far as she is concerned we have become unapproachable. We are Mahalaleel, but there is no Jared in our experience.

Jared is born of Mahalaleel. After we become Kenan by gaining Christ, and after we become Mahalaleel, a praiser of God, then we should also learn how to descend. This is how the apostle Paul lived: “To the weak I became weak that I might gain the weak. To all men I have become all things that I might by all means save some” (1 Cor. 9:22). For us to be Jared means that to the weak, we become weak. To the non-spiritual we don't behave spiritually, even though we are still spiritual inwardly. When a new one comes to a meeting we don't say “Praise the Lord!” because they don't even know who the Lord is. We should know how to behave and speak normally around a new person. If we don't know how to descend we will be fruitless in our Christian life. We won't know how to help anyone. We must learn how to be with all kinds of different people. We must know how to be Jared. We must know how to descend.

To descend doesn't mean that we lose our proper stand. To experience Jared doesn't mean that we go to a movie with someone. We shouldn't descend all the way to a movie theater. That is not experiencing Jared, that is going to the world. We must still maintain a healthy spiritual condition. But when we are with the unsaved ones, the weaker ones, or the younger brothers and sisters, we must learn to be so human and not so high. We need to be very approachable for their sake. After we become Mahalaleel, a praiser of God, we must learn to be Jared and descend.