p. 5 | ARE WE OUT OF SODOM? by David Paulson

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 29, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 39.

ARE WE OUT OF SODOM?

By David Paulson

“As it was in the days of Lot; . . . even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.”

The above indicates clearly that Sodom and its experiences are to be repeated again in this world’s history. It is therefore important to understand clearly Sodom’s fundamental difficulties. The chariot which bore this famous city to its destruction had only four wheels,—pride, fulness of bread, abundance of idleness, and failure to assist the poor and needy. Eze. 16:49. At the first glance none of these sins are very alarming; placed in a category of the crimes of this day, they are very trivial. A man might be infected more or less with any one of them and yet maintain a very good standing in the community and pass as a good, moral man. Yet it is just as important to-day for those who wish to be saved to escape from these as it was for Lot to get out of Sodom. The message to Lot was, “Escape to the mountains,” but he preferred to stay in the suburbs in a little city. The same to-day, when people are urged to get away from these four fundamental sins, they are willing to leave the grosser forms of them, but cling to them in smaller degree, and thus remain in the suburbs, just as Lot did.

Some who may have been rescued from the pride of their appearance or standing in society, may still be proud of their goodness, or even their humility. There are those who have given up fulness of bread to the extent of leaving off some of the more horrible eatables, and yet cling to overeating, the use of flesh foods (although they know the animal creation to be diseased), persist in using tea and coffee because it smothers a tired feeling, and thus as truly stay in the suburbs of fulness of bread as Lot did. They urge the same plea that he did, that if they accept the high and holy principles in reference to this question, they will die. Nevertheless, the only safety is the mountains.

Again, abundance of idleness was the thing Sodom sought for and secured. When the Lord compelled Adam to toil for his daily bread, it was not a curse; it came from the same throne as the promise of eternal life, and was a blessing of the same order.

While there are many who are willing to leave Sodom to the extent of not wishing to be idle all the time, yet there are thousands of people who do the most of their work simply because it is absolutely necessary, not because their hearts are in it, not because they love it; and thus they lose the greatest part of the blessing that would be in it. Many a Christian mother to-day says to her daughter, “Mary, you shall not have to work as I did; you shall have a chance in life.” And so she does the useful work of the house, while her daughter spends her days drumming on the piano, doing crochet work, and reading cheap literature. If the grace of God does not cut short the logical outcome of that sort of teaching, that girl will some day find the cheapest way of making her living, no matter if it is at the price of her own character, in the depths of vice.

The father says, “Johnny, I have worked hard in my early years to gather the little I have; you shall never have to go through such an experience.” And one of the things that gave the father the bone and sinew and standing in the community that he has, his son is deprived of. The boy drills away at books, eats of the tree of knowledge of both good and evil, and his father earns the money. The logical conclusion of that lesson which the father taught that boy, if carried to the fullest extent, would be that some day he will forge another man’s name to a note. The grace of God may cut short such a career, but if it does not, that is certainly a legitimate harvest of such teaching.

Children at the age of five or six will rake leaves on the lawn and do a hundred useful things, and the merry laugh and glowing cheek testify to the pleasure derived therefrom. Watch those children twenty years later, and if asked to do the same work, many of them will look down upon it with scorn; they have now gotten away from ordinary toil, and at the same time have gotten away from its blessings; in other words, have embraced one more part of Sodom.

Last, but not least, of Sodom’s troubles was the failure to “strengthen the hands of the poor and needy.” A person who has pride, even if it is spiritual pride, who is wrong on the diet question, who loves abundance of idleness to such an extent that he actually pictures a heaven before him where he will have nothing to do, will not be in a condition to do much for suffering humanity. There are many who are willing to do something for the poor and needy when they happen to come in their way, or because it would look bad if they did not, or, possibly, for the sake of getting them to believe just as they do; but those who work from no higher standpoint are only in the suburbs of Sodom after all, even on this question. It is only when we come to realize that Christ suffers with every case of need, when we are willing to do good for good’s sake alone, working for neither gain nor reward, that we are really prepared to help the poor and needy. The message to God’s people to-day is, “Get thee up into the high mountain.” Isa. 40:9. That means, Get entirely out of Sodom, not staying in the suburbs, as Lot did; it means accepting a standard so much higher in reference to these things that we will be above the clouds and mist of the corrupt world, up in the mountain-tops, standing in this life just where God’s people are going to stand in the next life,—in the top of Mount Zion. Those who “follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth” in the next life, will have to follow Him whithersoever He went in this life. Those who are then spoken of as being without fault will first have been without fault here.

DAVID PAULSON, M.D.