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Sodom and Gomorrah (Where, How and Why) – 1
When I was a kid, I heard that the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were burnt to a crisp because they were wicked. For as long as I can remember I thought that those cities were located at the southern end of the Dead Sea before their destruction. I figured that was what made the Dead Sea dead – a scorched earth fire storm that destroyed the entire area.
When recently visiting Israel, we went to the Dead Sea and were amazed at its “moonscape” environment as we visited Qumran and Masada. One day I remembered a verse that contradicted my idea of Sodom’s location. When Lot was considering where to move away from his uncle Abraham, he saw a promising place and it wasn’t the Dead Sea.
Gen. 13:1-2, 4-11 REV
Abram went up out of Egypt, he, his wife, all that he had, and Lot with him, into the Negev.
Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold.
Lot also, who went with Abram, had flocks and herds and tents.
The land was not able to bear them when they lived together; for their possessions were so great that they could not live together.
Abram said to Lot, “Please, do not let there be any quarrels between me and you, and between my herdsmen and your herdsmen, for we are relatives.
Isn’t the whole land before you? Please separate yourself from me. If you go to the left hand, then I will go to the right, or if you go to the right hand, then I will go to the left.”
Lot lifted up his eyes and saw all the plain of the Jordan, that it was well-watered everywhere like the garden of Yahweh, like the land of Egypt as you go to Zoar. (This was before Yahweh destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah).
So Lot chose the Plain of the Jordan for himself and Lot traveled east. So they separated themselves from each other.
The Dead Sea area is the opposite of what’s described in Genesis 13 “the plain of the Jordan, well-watered everywhere like the garden of Yahweh, like the land of Egypt as you go to Zoar.” Zoar was an Egyptian city where the Nile River overflowed its banks annually, depositing rich silt, making agriculture abundant. It almost “glowed” green in stark contrast to the dry grey of the surrounding desert. The Jordan river valley was like that then and still is today at places.
If you look at the map above, you will see the Jordan river valley north of the Dead Sea near Jericho. It runs all the way north to the Sea of Galilee. It is very fertile and mimics all fertile valleys, like the Nile, which overflows its banks in the spring and deposits rich soil from upstream. This is what Lot saw from the arid and sparse Judean hills where he and Abram camped near Bethel. The Jordan valley looked like a paradise compared to the semi-baren hill country of central Israel seen below.
Being in charge of a large animal husbandry operation, Lot understandably chose the Jordan River valley over the sparse grazing above. Then I wondered if the Dead Sea valley had been fertile until the firestorm hit the cities and destroyed the area. But as I re-read the whole record in Genesis, I saw that the Dead Sea, or the Salt Sea, existed before the cities’ destruction and was not caused by it. When Abraham was about to rescue Lot after he had been captured with the rest of Sodom it says…
Gen 14:1 – 3
It came to pass in the days of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of Goiim,
that they made war with Bera king of Sodom and with Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, and Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar).
All these joined together in the Valley of Siddim (that is, the Salt Sea).
The Dead Sea was already so dead and salty that it was known by that name over 10 years before Sodom’s destruction. So, I began to wonder where Sodom really was originally? I did an internet search on recent archaeological evidence and found this amazing report.
A Massive Meteor May Have Destroyed The Biblical City Of Sodom – Elizabeth Fernandez
Forbes 9/23/2021
The story of the destruction of Sodom is detailed in both the Bible and the Koran. The destruction was rapid and intense. “And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.” – Genesis 19:28
Is it possible that this story has roots in historical reality? Recent archeological findings published in Nature by researchers of the Comet Research Group indicate that a large meteor may have destroyed the ancient city of Tall el-Hammam, and that this destruction may have gone on to form the basis of the Biblical story of the destruction of Sodom.
Walking through the excavation of Tall el-Hammam is a fascinating, yet haunting, voyage. Puzzling findings indicate that the city was destroyed rapidly in a scorching fireball which is hard to explain. Pottery and mudbricks were melted. People were ripped limb from limb, and their bones are found smashed and scattered, buried in layers of ash, charcoal, and pulverized mudbricks. As archeologists dig through the ancient rock, they uncover a tell-tale blackened layer, where the rocks themselves tell the story of intense and widespread fires.
Perhaps most puzzling are the melted objects found in the ruins of Tall el-Hammam. Melted pottery shards, which melt at temperatures above 1500C. Mudbricks, that melt above 1400C. A host of melted elements and minerals, such as platinum, iridium, and quartz. There are also clues at the microscopic level. Archeologists also found carbon, likely originating from wood or plants, shocked to form structures like microscopic diamonds.
There is more. Archeologists found that the massively thick walls of the city were sheared off. Millions of the mudbricks that made the city simply disappeared, potentially pulverized to microscopic pieces. What could have caused this level of destruction? 3,600 years ago, the city of Tall el-Hammam was a bustling metropolis. With a population of about 8,000 people, it was the largest city in the region. But around 1650 B.C.E, that came to an end. The researchers of the study looked at several things that could account for the destruction. The authors looked at all sorts of natural disasters, from widespread city fires to volcanism to lightning. Of the 17 types of observations they made, there was only one event that fit all the data – a meteor.
This meteor could have hit the city itself or nearby, or could have exploded in the air, like the Tunguska meteor in 1908 over Siberia. Either one could cause the level of destruction seen.
The authors used the online Impact Calculator to simulate a meteor approaching Tall el-Hammam. This meteor likely would have been between 60 and 75 m across, putting it at potentially larger than the bolide that exploded in the Tunguska event. It is unlikely to be much larger than this though, Dr. Allen West of the Comet Research Group, one of the authors of the study, explains. “Otherwise, the object would have hit the ground and created a large crater like Meteor Crater in Arizona.”
What about the timing? For now, the timing of the story of Sodom and the destruction of Tall el-Hammam seem to agree. “We can say with a high degree of confidence that the simultaneous destruction of Tall el-Hammam and every other city, town, and village in the Kikkar (the Jordan River Valley disk shaped area) occurred ca 1650 BCE +/- 30 years,” says Dr. Phil Silvia, an author on the study from Trinity Southwest University,“ which is the time of Abraham and Lot.”
Tunguska
A thing that aggravates me at times is the arrogant attitude of unbelievers who proclaim the Bible is ancient myths. I’ve heard this about Sodom and other ancient records. The unbeliever’s scoffing to undermine the Bible’s integrity so that they can live as they please without responsibility to our Creator doesn’t make it so. Biblical records have scientific and historical precedent. For example, let’s discuss the cause of Sodom’s destruction. How could a meteor cause the destruction described in the Bible? Here’s a possible (perhaps probable) way.
(From Wikipedia) “The Tunguska event was an approximately 12-megaton explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Russia, on the morning of June 30, 1908. The explosion over the sparsely populated Eastern Siberian Taiga flattened an estimated 80 million trees over an area of 2,150 km2 (830 sq mi) of forest, and eyewitness reports suggest that at least three people may have died in the event. The explosion is generally attributed to a meteor air burst: the atmospheric explosion of a stony asteroid about 50–60 metres (160–200 feet) in size. The asteroid approached from the east-southeast, and likely with a relatively high speed of about 27 km/s (60,000 mph) It is classified as an impact event, even though no impact crater has been found; the object is thought to have exploded at an altitude of 5 to 10 kilometres (3 to 6 miles) rather than having hit the surface of the Earth. The Tunguska event is the largest impact event on Earth in recorded history, though much larger impacts occurred in prehistoric times. An explosion of this magnitude would be capable of destroying a large metropolitan area. It has been mentioned numerous times in popular culture and has also inspired real-world discussion of asteroid impact avoidance.”
Even NASA has their theories. They state that the object that was seen flying through the air was not a comet or a meteorite, but an asteroid. The proposed asteroid would have weighed roughly 220 million pounds and the air surrounding the rock would have been heated up to around 44,000 degrees Fahrenheit. At a distance of 28,000 feet above the Earth’s surface, the asteroid was no longer able to withstand the pressure or the heat causing an explosion and a giant fireball. The energy released at the time of the explosion would have been equal to 185 Hiroshima bombs. Since no impact crater is at the scene of the crime, they report that the majority of the asteroid consumed itself during the explosion. A scientist at NASA stated that an asteroid of the same size and magnitude is estimated to hit the Earth every 300 years.
The scoffer may ask, “If large meteors supposedly impact the earth’s atmosphere about every three hundred years, why don’t we see evidence of it?” The scoffer needs to go a few miles west of Winslow Arizona, 5 miles south of I-40 off exit 233 and see the Barrington crater. It’s ¾ of a mile wide, some 560 ft deep, and is surrounded by a rim that rises 148 ft above the surrounding plains.
This crater was not caused by a rainstorm, but by an obvious meteor impact. It was not an “airburst” phenomenon like Tonguska or Sodom but caused by an asteroid that actually hit the ground, causing a massive “hole”. Astronomers tell us that meteors regularly and consistently impact Earth’s atmosphere. They almost always burn up. We can witness their destruction as “shooting stars” at night. Rarely (about once every three hundred years according to some experts) a large asteroid from space gets through the earth’s protective layer that we call the atmosphere, and either explodes above or hits the earth’s surface. Most times it’s smaller meteors that invade the earth like these recent examples.
Above is a still image and there’s a video on YouTube. This was the Chelyabinsk meteor that entered Earth’s atmosphere over the southern Ural region in Russia on February 15th 2013. What does the crater look like? I’d describe it as “fire and brimstone”. Here’s another ancient crater.
This is the Wolfe Creek Crater, a well-preserved meteorite impact crater in Western Australia. The crater averages a little over ½ mile in diameter and 200 feet (20 stories) from top rim to crater floor.
So, meteors invading the earth are not so far-fetched, is it? In fact, it’s historically common. The reason that we don’t have a crater hole down the street is that the vast majority of the earth is uninhabited. As you know, ¾ of the earth is oceans and the rest of the surface portion of the earth is relatively uninhabited. People tend towards living in cities, leaving over 70% of the land sparsely populated. Therefore, the odds are when meteors hit, it will be in the ocean or an uninhabited area like central Russia, the Arizona desert, or western Australia. If fact, what makes ancient Sodom’s asteroid event unique, wasn’t the meteor, but its location in an inhabited area. It did what any 747 sized meteor airburst would do – vaporize anything nearby and rain down fire and brimstone for miles around.
It’s God’s Garden
Some scoffers may say that when the Bible says “God destroyed Sodom” it is ancient myth and not to be taken seriously. Really? I recently paid my property taxes with a check for 5 figures. Then I also got a bill for home insurance for 4 figures. Holy financial vacuum cleaner! After paying thousands of dollars a month for years to pay-off my house and I still pay thousands of dollars annually anyways? Yes, I guess this is the way it is!
Around the house we planted rhododendrons and hydrangeas. We don’t like dandelions and blackberries. The blackberries grow quickly in summer and have massive thorns. They must be rooted out before they take over, sucking nutrition from the other plants and destroying the beauty of the garden. So, what do I do? I annually weed out the bad plants, spray weed killer, put down weed preventer, lay down fabric, and put bark on top. Lots of bark. Six yards of bark. I rent a truck, haul the bark home, unload it by wheelbarrow, and spread it on the garden to cover the ground, preventing weeds. Why do I do this? Because I want to have a beautiful landscape at my home and … because I can! It’s my house, paid for by my toil for decades. I choose the plants that grow and those that don’t.
So, do you think God is different than me? He built the heavens and earth. He maintains it. He gets to choose what He wants and doesn’t want, right? You will see in the scriptures that He “weeds his garden” every so often when He sees creations getting out of control and ruining his desires. For instance, in Genesis 3 He removed Adam and Eve from the original garden and its rules so that mankind could avoid becoming unredeemable. He did a similar thing in Genesis 6 when he “weeded out” the spiritually mutant DNA that Satan had caused by flooding the world and saving the last untainted humans. In Genesis 11 God confuses the language of the unified anti-God population before their momentum is unstoppable and they go completely nuts, probably extinguishing humanity, and again preventing redemption. Then in Genesis 19 we see God “weeding out” some virulent evil that could spread and threaten mankind again. So far God has moved, flooded, confused, and then selectively torched man. Why does He do this? Because the world is His garden, and he sets the rules.
I reckon the scoffers are mostly humanists and think that man and his rights are the most important thing in the universe, but they are wrong on at least a couple of different levels. Firstly, the idea of asteroids randomly coming down from the heavens terrifies the average natural man. They think they are so important and reign in life. The truth is the opposite. The average person is 6 feet tall and two hundred pounds. The trees next to my house are 100 feet tall. The waterfall near our home is 268 feet high. The mountain near where I live is 4,200 feet high. Man is insignificant. His size is less than a grain of sand on a beach compared to the size of the earth. And the earth is insignificant compared to the solar system. And the solar system is insignificant compared to the galaxy. And… you get the idea. Man is barely anything in the grand scheme of things. He is a miniscule bit of protoplasm drifting through space and time, frail and subject to random meteors, diseases, and disasters. Unless … he makes Jesus his lord. Then he becomes significant in God’s eyes, blessed with His spirit, and confirmed with eternal life and love. He becomes much more than random biology. He becomes a called son of God.
Eph. 1:3,4
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in union with Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world to be holy and without blemish in his presence in love,
From arbitrary bag of bones to chosen heavenly dweller. From insignificant to significant. From tiny to big in God’s eyes. From meaningless to consequential. From alone to united in Christ with God and His family. From desolate to blessed. From emptiness to having every spiritual blessing. From lost to loved.
The scoffer wants to think of themselves as being on top of the world, but without God’s perspective and involvement they are susceptible to any indiscriminate assailing of the world. Deep down, humans know we’re insignificant – without God.
The second way the scoffers are wrong is that they think that human rights are the apex of our existence. “Nothing tops human rights!” is a sentiment heard often. But is that true? Does man’s right to choose cancel God’s rights? “Wait!” you may be saying, “God has rights?” Sure.
God made the universe for the earth, the earth for man, and man to fellowship with Him.
When I think about the price I paid and still pay for my house, don’t I have the right to arrange my garden how I want? Sure. Now, how about God? Does He have a right to worship, honor, and fellowship after making the universe, the elements, time, space, DNA, and everything else there is? Sure! God has rights. And those rights trump man’s rights. So, when man’s rights contradict God’s rights, they are wrong then, now, and always. So, when a man decides to be attracted to another man in contradiction to God’s express creation and direction, it is wrong.
Lev. 18:22
You are not to lie with a man as with a woman. That is detestable.
No ancient texts are needed to grasp this, just a clear mind, humility, and courage. When man decides to have an orgasm with another man it’s more wrong. When he encourages others to join in it’s even more wrong. When he gets a group of those like-minded to go out at night searching for others to engage in their deviant behavior, it’s really wrong. When a group of these folks surround a house to have strange sex with strangers, it’s incredibly wrong. And when these folks refuse to gang rape virgins and try to break into a home to gang rape angels it is guano crazy! (Guano is bat excrement.)
Before the future judgements when all sins will be accounted for, it seems God tolerates evil in the world to some extent. But when it threatens to thwart His redemptive purposes and family plans, He “puts His foot down”. Sodom and Gomorrah were one such instance. He “weeded His garden”. He chose to not allow the evil described to spread outside that area.
Guano Crazy
Scoffers sometime have told me to be “open minded”. Really? Some are so “open minded” that it seems their brains fell out and perhaps something else flew in! Do you want to live in a town where you go to the street to put out your garbage and are accosted by a swarming mob of homo’s that gang rape you and leave you by the trash can? If so, you are too “open minded” and also guano crazy!
It seems that we are living in a world that is growing increasingly guano crazy. Many levels of government are promoting LGBTQ “rights”. They want to protect those confused about their gender from others trying to help them make sane decisions. These poor misguided trans people ignore their biology, physiology and anatomy and try to be something they’re not – the opposite sex. Let me ask you, what would you say to me if I genuinely thought I was a zebra? Would you take me to a mirror and point out the dissimilarities between a human and a zebra? If that didn’t work, wouldn’t you suggest that I needed counseling? Deliverance? Of course, you would. Despite my sincere thoughts and feeling, I am not a zebra and thinking and acting like one would be … (get ready for it!) insane. If I got even more convinced of it and moved to Africa and galloped around, you might seek a conservatorship over me and help my wife get a saddle! Just kidding!
This is what current western society is doing to these confused, hurting trans souls. Encouraging them to think that they are something they’re not, instead of helping them adjust their thinking to their biology. They are helping people go and stay insane.
Now those pro-trans folks will say “The transvestites are convinced that they are trapped in the opposite sex’s body. Their strong feelings make it legitimate and ‘their truth’. They self-identify as the opposite sex.” Really? If I self-Identify as a zebra does that make it true? Of course not! I just wish the pro-trans folks would try to self-identify as logical and sane!
Brace yourself for some logic and facts. In 2016, the National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that 41 percent of 6,450 respondents said they had previously attempted suicide. By comparison, the CDC found that in 2020, 0.36 percent of the general population had attempted suicide. Wrap your head around that. That means 1 out of 300 people attempt suicide in the general population while 123 out of 300 transexuals do. Over 4 out of 10 trans folks are so unhappy with their life and decision that they want to escape the pain and attempt to end it all. (How many more are desperately miserable but don’t attempt suicide or don’t report it, is unknown.) How heart breaking! Those encouraging a trans lifestyle are helping others enter a life of misery and possible death.
Think about this. If I encourage people to play Russian roulette, a “game” where one out of six chambers of a revolver had a live bullet, I would be arrested as an accomplice to murder, manslaughter, or at least reckless endangerment, right? Sure – and rightfully so. I would be promoting someone to take a risk that has a 1 out of six (16%) chance of killing them. A transexual life has 2 1/2 times more risk of death than roulette. Shouldn’t the enablers, although well intentioned, be held liable for the results of their “encouragement”? I think so. Are they? No, they are celebrated because our culture is being tempted to become guano crazy. This is from the same kind of spiritual pressure that is described in Genesis 19 and God found intolerable and snuffed out.
You know, the humans that participate in this kind of insanity can die, but the evil spirits don’t. They last until the lake of fire when they will be destroyed with all those in opposition to the True God. Then, they get weeded out – forever. Can’t wait. But until then, they regularly promote the same fleshly insanity until either the humans they afflict die out, the humans decide to stop allowing it, or God short circuits their plans like He did in Sodom.
Phil 2:15,16
so that you are blameless and pure, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation. Shine among them as lights in the world
as you hold fast the word of life, so that I have a reason for boasting on the Day of Christ, that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.
Until then, we need to stand up for the truth against the strong spiritual current of insanity. All of us feel the pressure when we “dare” to speak out for sexual truth and experience persecution. Let me ask you a confronting question, “If you can’t speak up against something that causes a 40% attempted suicide rate, when will you speak up?”
Next Time
Ernest Hemingway once wrote “How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly.” In the next installment we will begin to study how Lot went spiritually bankrupt – “gradually and then suddenly”. Then we will discuss how Abraham became the friend of God and father of faith – “gradually and then suddenly”.