The Lord appeared in the form of a man to Abraham. accompanied by two
angels, also in the form of men. When Abraham saw them, he bowed down
in respect. Normally strangers passing through a land would have bowed
down to Abraham.
It was the custom to greet strangers
with great respect and to offer them food and lodging, which Abraham
did. Preparing the food for the three men was no quick and easy task.
The bread had to be kneaded and baked. The animal for the meat had to
be killed and cooked.
Sarah overheard the
conversation about her having a child at her advanced age and she
laughed to herself at the prospect . God responded with
"Is anything too hard for the Lord?"Isn't this a verse we should claim on a daily basis? Indeed, IS anything too hard for the Lord?
When Abraham interacted with the three men, he spoke of the… “Judge of all the earth…”
Who is the Judge of all the earth? And how did Abraham know that? We
know from John 5:22 that Jesus is the judge of all the earth, so that
must mean that one of the three men was indeed the Son of God.
Why
did Abraham bargain with the Lord for ten people? He started
bargaining for 50 righteous people. Did he think that Lot had some
influence on the sinful people there? He must have thought that surely
Lot could have influenced that many people. How is it with us as
Believers ? Do we have influence over at least 50 people?
Lot
was very hospitable to the two angels who appeared as men at the city
gate. Remember the customary hospitality toward total strangers is to
offer them food and lodging. The men (angels) seemed reluctant to go
with Lot and offered instead to sleep in the city square. Other
historical writings relate that the people of Sodom did not abide by the
customary hospitality rules. They instead delighted in watching men
suffer from hunger...so much so in fact that anyone living in the city
showing hospitality to strangers was subject to the death sentence...and
the Sodomite way of the death penalty was very inhumane. The men
(angels) knew that Lot would suffer consequences if they took him up on
his hospitable offer. Any yet, Lot was persuasive and they went with
him.
Evidence of the decadent lifestyle of the men of
Sodom is evident in their demand for having sex with the two strangers
(angels). Equally repugnant is Lot's offer of his two virgin daughters
instead. However, to his credit, 2 Peter 2:7-8 tells us that Lot was a righteous man.
and
if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy
lives of lawless men (for that righteous man, living among them day
after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he
saw and heard)
The people of Sodom and the other four cities engaged in any evil
perversion imaginable, homosexuality, pedophilia, adultery, fornication,
rape, torture, and murder, to name a few.
Notice that
the angels had to practically drag Lot and his family from Sodom. They
didn't seem to want to leave. The angels told Lot to take his wife and
his "two daughters who are here...", implying that there may have been
other daughters who were not there in the house with him at the time.
The mention of sons-in-law implies that Lot had other daughters as well
who were pledged to be married. The daughters living with him were not
pledged to be married, otherwise Lot could not have offered them to the
men of Sodom. They would no longer have been considered Lot's
property.
About the burning sulfur that rained down
from heaven, could this have been a coronal mass ejection? That would
explain things. Volcanic eruptions have been used by some as an
explanation for what happened with Sodom and Gomorrah but Scripture says
that the sulfur came from heaven. In a coronal mass ejection, plasma
(sun's material that
changes hydrogen to helium) is blown out into space and can strike the
earth. The sun's process of changing hydrogen to helium is essentially
the same process employed in a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb. Evidence on
the ground around the Sodom area, such as silica sand turned to glass,
support this explanation according to some archaeologists. Certainly
God could have used a coronal mass ejection, to accomplish His purposes.
2 Peter 2:6 tells us that Sodom is there as an example of what will
happen to the ungodly.
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/CMEs.shtml
John Wesley's comment on Gen 19:24:
"Then
the Lord rained - from the Lord - God the Son, from God the Father, for
the Father has committed all judgment to the Son. He that is the
Saviour will be the destroyer of those that reject the salvation."
Why
did Lot’s wife look back? What exactly is a “pillar of salt”? If
this was a coronal mass ejection that destroyed Sodom and the other
cities, then the concept of Lot's wife being changed to a pillar of salt
could be a similar event as was observed at Hiroshima on a bridge near
ground zero. People were walking on the bridge when the bomb exploded.
The millions of degrees of heat from the blast of the bomb incinerated
the people on the bridge in a microsecond. But in that short period of
time their bodies made a shadow on the concrete of the bridge. Their
shadows protected the concrete from the flash and the peoples' images
were burned into the concrete. Could it be that Lot's wife's shadow was
burned into the column of salt by the flash from the coronal mass
ejection? Was the city of Sodom Lot's wife's hometown? Did she look
longingly back at the life she had there? This city was definitely
"sin city".
Before we become Believers in Jesus
we are dead in our sins. We are citizens of "Sin City". Once we become
believers in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior we are then citizens of
"The Kingdom of Heaven". Shouldn't we live then as if we are citizens
of the Kingdom? We should never look back at the life we had in "Sin
City".
(Email us for the writing - "Kingdom Living in a Foreign Land".)
Concerning
Lot's two daughters getting their father drunk - were they so
desensitized to the sexual perversion in Sodom that they saw nothing
wrong with having sexual relations with their father?
Now concerning Lot, "And
they made their father drink wine that night: and the first-born went
in, and lay with her father; and he knew not when she lay down, nor
when she arose". The same thing happened with the second daughter.
This
scripture does not say that Lot was unaware of the actual act of
intercourse, only that he was unaware when his daughters lay down nor
when they got up. It says nothing about the act itself. So was Lot
aware of that? If he was aware, then we must conclude that he become desensitized to the sexual
perversion of Sodom as well, but 2 Peter 2:7-8 tells us that he was tormented by what he saw in Sodom.
How
is it with us as Believers in Jesus? Have we become desensitized to
any and all sexual perversion? Or are we tormented as well by what we
see in our world today?
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