Slow of Speech, Called Anyway

Genesis 5; Moses 6: Enoch's Calling and the Shape of a Prophet's Excuse

---

"Why is it that I have found favor in thy sight, and am but a lad, and all the people hate me; for I am slow of speech?" (Moses 6:31).

That's Enoch talking to God. After being called to preach. Pointing out, one by one, the reasons this is the wrong choice.

We don't know exactly what "slow of speech" meant for Enoch—a stutter, poor vocabulary, a hesitation in front of crowds, or something else entirely. What we know is that he felt inadequate for the calling in a concrete, physical way. He wasn't performing humility. He was naming something real.

And God answered him the same way God tends to answer every prophet who catalogs their own deficiencies: by refusing to debate the point, and by promising something else entirely.

---

Genesis 5 First: The Long Scroll of Names

Genesis 5 is easy to skip. It's a genealogy—Adam to Noah—with each ancestor's lifespan recorded in centuries.

But slow down. This chapter holds something important: Adam lived 930 years. Which means Adam was alive when Enoch was born (you can do the math—Adam died when Enoch was approximately 308 years old). The same Adam from the garden. The same Adam who walked with God.

Moses 6 describes Adam gathering his righteous posterity at a place called Adam-ondi-Ahman. He blessed them. God appeared. God called Adam "Michael, the prince, the archangel" (D&C 107:54). The man who fell in the garden is still standing. Still being honored. Still within reach of the God who walked with him.

This matters for Enoch's story because Enoch didn't come from nothing. He came from a covenant family that had been passing down spiritual memory across centuries. His greatness was built on an inheritance he didn't choose. That's worth sitting with—particularly for anyone who feels like they come from broken or incomplete spiritual lineage. The inheritance isn't always obvious. But it's rarely nothing.

---

God's Answer to "I'm Not Enough"

Moses 6:32–34 is worth reading in full. God hears Enoch's objections—lad, hated, slow of speech—and responds:

"Go forth and do as I have commanded thee, and no man shall pierce thee... Open thy mouth, and it shall be filled, and I will give thee utterance... And in a day when the children of men shall esteem my words as naught and take many of them to be vain things, and raise themselves up against me, unto them will I show that this, my face, shineth not in vain."

God doesn't say "You're actually quite articulate." God doesn't say "Those people don't really hate you." He says: go anyway. I'll fill the mouth you think isn't enough.

Enoch goes.

Then Moses 6:34: "And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them."

Eventually. Not immediately. Zion doesn't appear in Moses 6. It appears in Moses 7. Which means Enoch spent years preaching, building, failing some days and succeeding others, before the city of God was achieved. The calling preceded the result by a long distance.

This is the shape of every prophetic calling in scripture. Moses was called before he could speak to Pharaoh. Joseph was sold before he became a ruler. Alma the younger was struck down before he became one of the great missionaries of the Book of Mormon. The call comes first. The capacity—at least some of it—comes in the doing.

---

The Plan of Salvation Revealed

Moses 6:50–68 contains something extraordinary: a full doctrinal discourse delivered to Enoch, covering the Fall, the nature of man, the Atonement of Christ, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and the covenant path.

This is the gospel. Taught to Enoch. Centuries before Moses, before Abraham, before the Mosaic law.

Moses 6:57: "Wherefore teach it unto your children, that all men, everywhere, must repent, or they can in nowise inherit the kingdom of God, for no unclean thing can dwell there."

Moses 6:59: "And this is the plan of salvation unto all men, through the blood of mine Only Begotten."

The Atonement wasn't announced after Gethsemane. It was taught in the wilderness to a lad who said he was slow of speech. The gospel is ancient. The covenant path is as old as the Fall it was designed to answer.

---

The Tears of God

At the end of Moses 7—which technically bleeds into next week's lesson but connects here—Enoch sees God weeping.

"How is it that the heavens weep, and shed forth their tears as the rain upon the mountains?" (Moses 7:28). Enoch is shocked. He had assumed God was beyond grief.

He was wrong. God weeps for His children.

The God who told Enoch to go forth and preach—the God who said I'll fill the mouth you think isn't enough—is the same God who weeps when people choose otherwise. He is neither remote nor indifferent. He is someone who feels.

Enoch, who once said he was a lad and all the people hated him, eventually beholds God weeping and asks Him to explain it. That's the arc. Afraid of crowds in Moses 6. Standing before a weeping God in Moses 7, confident enough to ask a direct question.

The calling made him.

---

---

Open Your Come Follow Me Manual

This week's manual focuses on how Enoch built a Zion people. Don't skip the section on what Zion actually means. One of President Nelson's recurring themes is that building Zion begins at home. How does your home measure against "one heart and one mind"?

Come Follow Me Manual – Week 5