THE STONES OF SODOM
Friday, March 1, 2019
In Genesis 18 and 19, the Scripture recounts the destruction of the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The cities were judged for their perverse and inhumane evil. The Lord rained brimstone, or sulfur and fire, on the cities of the plain until they were destroyed.
There has never been any external evidence of this account. On one hand, evidence could very well be unlikely as the account involves not only the destruction of ancient cities but destruction by heavenly or divine judgment. We would not expect there to be many traces left. We do know that the cities mentioned in the account would have been located somewhere in the region of the Dead Sea. This is what makes the following story so remarkable.
Recently, scientists studying the ruins of an ancient city in the region of the Dead Sea announced an astounding find. They determined that the city being studied was almost entirely destroyed around 3,700 years ago. The account in Genesis detailing the destruction of the cities in the Dead Sea would also point to the same time frame, somewhere in the early part of the second millennium B.C. in the days of Abraham and Lot.
But that’s not all the scientists found. They determined that the city was destroyed not by war or famine or some other earthly event. Rather, it was destroyed by a cataclysmic event that did not have its origins on earth. They determined that the city was destroyed by a superheated blast that came from the skies! They unearthed minerals that had literally crystallized at high temperature and in an instant. Further, the mud brick walls of nearly every structure in the ancient city had been wiped out in an instant.
Other archaeological research pointed to the possibility that the ruins of the ancient city they studied may have been the biblical city of Sodom.
It’s an amazing thing, in the same day and age when many so-called ‘experts’ seek to disprove the Bible, science - and particularly archeology— is increasingly proving it. It is also striking that evidence of Sodom may have been discovered in the same day when the morality of Sodom is overtaking western and global civilization. If anything, it seems the stones are crying out that the end of such things is judgment, 3,700 years ago and now.
If the stones of the scorched city could give us a message, they would tell us to live all the more strongly in the Word of God, confident, bold, and assured. For in the end its truth will be upheld. And on the other hand, they would tell us to be strong against the passing morality of the day. For that which is against the Word of God will, in the end, be overturned on the Day of Judgment.
Live this month all the more confident in the Word of God and all the more having nothing to do with the ways of ungodliness. And may God greatly bless you as you do!
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn
See Message: Days of the Golden Calf
Scripture: Genesis 18-19