Genesis 19:25, commentary and pictures

The overthrow was total, destroying the cities and all the plain with every inhabitant and everything that grew upon the ground. It was accomplished by brimstone and fire rained out of heaven, consuming palaces, dwellings, gardens, possessions and all earthly treasure until the fair valley became a bleak desolation never to be inhabited again. It came suddenly in the morning just after Lot entered Zoar, while men went about business and pleasure and mocked warning, because not even ten righteous could be found and iniquity was full. The ruin was brought by open defiance of God's law, unnatural indulgence, idleness with pride and fullness of bread, and selfish oppression of the poor, until mercy ceased to plead and judgment began. As God then purified by fire, so the earth is to be purified by fire at the end, and the sudden destruction while occupied with ordinary plans warns that Christ will come in an hour not expected.

Nature and Extent of Overthrow

The overthrow was total: those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground were destroyed and swept away. Sodom and the surrounding plain were consumed by fiery judgment, the cities, their inhabitants, and the growth on the ground perishing together because debasing crimes and revolting iniquity had made them a blot on creation. Their polluting practices spread as inhabitants taught them to others, and when sins reached heaven the beautiful, fertile plain, like a second Eden, was destroyed with the cities and all that grew.

It was wrought by brimstone and fire rained out of heaven upon the cities and the fruitful plain and the vale of Siddim. The fire consumed palaces and temples, costly dwellings, gardens and vineyards and all that grew, with possessions and earthly treasure and the pleasure-seeking inhabitants who had insulted heaven's messengers. Mercy had ceased to plead for the guilty inhabitants, and judgment sent from heaven consumed the cities, their inhabitants, and what grew on the ground as punishment for polluting practices and hostility to God's law.

It came suddenly and unexpectedly in the morning just after Lot entered Zoar. Bright sunshine seemed to promise peace while men were going about business and pleasure with ordinary plans, and Lot's sons-in-law and others mocked his fears and warnings, expecting riot and pleasure that night. They derided and ignored the warning and perished in the flames, for that night the door of mercy closed forever to the wicked, careless people.

The smoke went up like the smoke of a great furnace. The fair valley that had been like a second Eden, the most beautiful country in the world, became a bleak, bare desolation, its former beauty erased. It was never to be built up or inhabited again, later forming part of the wilderness of Judea, a witness to all generations of the certainty of judgment upon transgression. The storm of judgment was delayed only briefly, and Zoar was spared in response to Lot's plea as Lot and his family were hurried to flee.

Not even ten righteous persons could be found in the city, so judgment fell on all. Even the little children were destroyed, for evil had been transmitted to them by their parents. All but Lot with his wife and his two daughters were consumed by the fire sent down from heaven, mercy having ceased to plead and the warning having been rejected. Lot's wife looked back in disregard of God's command not to look back and became a pillar of salt, while Lot escaped with loss of everything.

The overthrow brought death to the cities by fire but did not stop Satan from pursuing his plan to corrupt humanity.

Sins That Brought Ruin

The overthrow fell because debasing crimes and revolting iniquity had made the cities a blot on creation. It was open defiance of God's law, deep corruption, unrestrained indulgence, moral license without self-restraint and purity, licentiousness breaking God's law, impurity, violence, cruelty, and disregard for God's requirements that brought the judgment. Their polluting practices spread as the inhabitants taught them to others, until their sins reached heaven and God would bear with them no longer, and He destroyed the cities and the beautiful fertile plain that had been like a second Eden. The sins of impurity that destroyed them still exist among professed followers of Christ, including some who look for His return, and those sins are abhorrent to God and bring judgment. Their destruction warns that a society ruled by moral license and lacking self-restraint and purity can face ruin, for the sins increasing in the present are the same kind that brought the Flood and Sodom's destruction, and punishment remains certain.

Gratification of unnatural appetite enslaved the people and led to the sins that made those cities corrupt. That indulgence dulled their minds and judgment so they could not distinguish God's sacred claims from appetite. Enslaved to appetite and lust, they were led into gluttony, drunkenness, corrupt passions, abominable sins, cruelty, and increasingly violent and detestable practices until they filled their measure of guilt and became intolerable on the earth. Their fate is an example of judgment on people ruled by excessive appetite and lust, punished with fire and brimstone, and a warning that indulgence in worldly habits can lead to moral ruin.

The ruin of the cities of the plain was caused by idleness, joined with pride, fullness of bread, and failure to strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. Idleness enfeebles the mind, debases the soul, and perverts the understanding, and opens the way for vice and crime. It gives Satan opportunity in unguarded leisure hours to tempt and destroy under attractive disguise.

Selfishness, deceit, robbery, bloodshed, and greed for possession in transgression of God's law prevailed, and the present world is becoming a veritable Sodom through the same evils. The same dishonest business practices seen today prevailed in Sodom before its people were consumed by fire from heaven, including robbery through selling at figures far above real value, speculation for great gain, and untrue representations to beguile investors. Although Sodom had a beautiful country and exceeding great riches, its riches did not make it of value with God and did not save it, and the abuse of the wealth God had given it brought its utter destruction. The overthrow proves that riches cannot save one soul from death, that giving oneself up to work the works of Satan creates a force of evil that cannot be repressed, and that God's restraining power being withdrawn, fires and floods already destroy thousands of people and property selfishly hoarded by oppression of the poor.

Satan had controlled the cities through appetite and passion until their sin provoked the wrath of God to destroy them by fire. By his subtlety and untiring efforts he excited and strengthened corrupt passions to a fearful degree, defacing and almost obliterating the image of God in man. Casting aside the law of God and all restraint to seek freedom is service to Satan, bringing only wretchedness and misery and distress, with its inhabitants strangers to repose and rest. The cities around Sodom were corrupted by the sins of the Sodomites, and the increase of sin in continued transgression of God's law brings God's wrath upon cities and nations to destroy them by fire, water, earthquakes, sword, famine, and pestilence. That same desire for freedom from restraint has now made the world polluted as the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were.

The corruption was total in body, mind, and morals, with disease, imbecility, crime, and private and public corruption of every sort filling the land with paupers, lunatics, thieves, and murderers. The inhabitants were as sinful as those before the Flood, corrupting their way before God and becoming corrupt in body and soul, so steeped in licentiousness through indulgence and wicked inventions that they did not discern the difference between the pure affections given by God as attributes of human nature and destructive lusts. Indulgence of perverted appetite for wine, liquor, and tobacco passed from parents to children as feeble constitution, mental and moral debility, unnatural appetite, and inclination to vice, and is making the world a second Sodom in the same corruption. Their character was want of strict purity, carnality, being sold unto sin, and practicing adultery among men and women professing godliness, and the present world is becoming a second Sodom and Gomorrah by repeating the same evils. Sodom's disregard for licentiousness and murder made it fit for judgment, and its example stands for common cheap talk and ways, lack of modesty and decent behavior, immodest forward flirtatious conduct between young men and women, breaking down all barriers of reserve and true decorum, even exchanging notes in meeting, and perverting privileges and opportunities given by God, leading professed Christians with so great light toward the same overthrow and close judgments leaving souls destitute of the Spirit. Clear distinctions in men's and women's dress help restrain society from becoming like Sodom sunk in depravity, for the same malarious poisonous atmosphere of being dead in trespasses and sins surrounds whole families today who follow the imaginations of corrupt minds and dishonor God.

Limits of Divine Forbearance

Mercy bore long with the transgressor, with tokens of love, knowledge of the law, and offers of mercy, but there is a limit beyond which men may not go on in sin. When iniquity became full and that limit was reached, probation ended, the offers of mercy were withdrawn, mercy ceased to plead, and the ministration of judgment began. Hearts were fully set to do evil, character became fixed and incurable, and the guilty inhabitants were consumed by fire sent down from heaven. Men cannot with impunity reject the warnings God in mercy sends them, for when the warning is rejected God withdraws His Spirit and leaves sinners to perish.

The inhabitants of the most beautiful country in the world were proclaimed incorrigible in sin, with no disposition to submit to divine authority under Satan as leader. Their destiny was fixed by their own choice, their exclusion and destruction was voluntary and just, and they proved beyond reform with minds set to carry out revolt and never forced into submission. The delay of judgment did not mean past wickedness was forgotten, and when the time of visitation came retribution followed without lessening its severity. Those whose hearts are fully set on evil will be destroyed like Sodom when God's long forbearance ends.

God keeps account of nations' guilt and brings judgment when transgression reaches its limit, executing just punishment as Lawgiver and moral governor for the good and safety of His subjects. Lot had no right to punish his sons-in-law, but God could destroy them in strict justice. The utter destruction by the wrath of a sin-avenging God proves God means what He says and will not be trifled with or mocked, and His judgment reaches individuals and nations so that He will surely punish sin and holds the destiny of people and nations in His hands. Those who abuse God's mercy and disregard His warnings will face His wrath, and those who have received great gospel light yet dishonor Christ through unfaithful lives face a more severe judgment.

The destruction was in justice for the good of the universe and in mercy to the world and to the universe, ridding the earth of contaminating influence and protecting others from being led into rebellion. Through Satan's deceptive power workers of iniquity obtain sympathy and admiration and constantly lead others to rebellion, as in Cain's day and Noah's day and the time of Abraham and Lot and as now, so cutting them off stopped that leading. It was of the same merciful kind as God's blotting out of the wicked in Noah's time and His final destruction of the rejecters of His grace, by a God who is compassionate and ready to pardon but punishes those who persistently despise His grace rather than permitting wicked lives to continue.

The fire from heaven that punished the Sodomites for disobedience of God's requirements was not a passage into glory, while Lot was saved. God executes the final penalty for transgressing His law, transgressors cannot get to heaven as well as those who obey, and obedience to all of God's law is absolutely essential to eternal life, His mercy not making obedience optional.

The fire falling from heaven that destroyed the inhabitants proves it is a fearful thing for the unrepenting sinner to fall into the hands of the living God. It was in consequence of sin, the transgression of God's law, and reveals the wrath of God and retributive justice resting upon transgressors, for the wages of sin is death. Its demonstration of divine wrath is surpassed only by the agony of Christ in Gethsemane when He bore the wrath of God for a sinful world, and together they broaden and deepen the conception of the character of sin and the character of the retribution God will bring upon those who continue in sin.

Lot and His Family

Lot chose Sodom as a home because of its rich lands, beautiful surroundings, and fertile country, hoping for greater prosperity and financial advantage with a selfish, avaricious spirit. He entered Sodom rich but left with nothing, led out by an angel while the messengers of wrath waited, and fire consumed all his gains, possessions, and property. That choice cost him his wife, his married children, and his riches, and left him fleeing for his life when the cities were overthrown. The most beautiful surroundings and the most fertile land do not make a place desirable, and worldly treasure will not save one soul.

He had entered intending to keep himself free from iniquity and to command his household after him, but he signally failed. In one respect he stood uncorrupted amid moral pollution, and he was saved because he did not corrupt his way before God. Yet the corrupting influences weakened his own faith, and long association with evil blunted his sensibility and left him slow to recognize his danger. Lingering and stupefied with grief, he had to be laid hold of by the angels and hurried out with his wife and two daughters by great mercy so he would not perish in the overthrow. Where duty calls into trying positions, watching and praying and trusting in the grace of Christ enables standing uncorrupted, but remaining among the wicked blunts sensibility, weakens faith, perverts morals, and costs all but bare life itself.

His children's connection with the inhabitants of Sodom bound up his interest with theirs. His married children and sons-in-law mocked his fears and warnings, became partakers of its sins through long association, and perished in the flames when the door of mercy closed that night. Lot himself escaped only as one saved from a fire, with the loss of wife, married children, riches, possessions, and life-work, and the destruction consumed his possessions and caused part of his children to perish. His wife was told not to look back, but she looked back in disregard of God's command and became a pillar of salt. All but Lot, his wife, and his two daughters were consumed, and then his wife also was lost by turning toward the city.

God did not forget Lot when judgment came upon the cities of the plain with their inhabitants and what grew on the ground. He remembered Lot in the hour of judgment and delivered him while the wicked cities were overthrown. That deliverance guarantees He does not forget His faithful people when destruction falls and will not forget them in the final trying hour. Angels visited Abraham on their way to destroy the corrupt city where the leaven of licentiousness had been at work, and God told Abraham about the destruction because he had trained his children in a proper manner. Abraham pled with God to spare the city for its honest inhabitants, but only ten righteous could not be found, so the great city was destroyed.

Type of Final Judgment

The overthrow came suddenly while the people were occupied with business and pleasure and with ordinary plans, deriding the warning and expecting riot, and it stands as a warning of the sudden judgment that will come when Christ returns. Fire fell suddenly from heaven on the doomed cities, bringing misery, screams and distress, and the inhabitants caught unprepared were suddenly consumed with no further opportunity to escape. Their destruction illustrates how people will be unprepared when divine judgment comes and when the Son of man is revealed.

As God used water in the Flood, He used fire on the wicked cities, and the earth is likewise to be purified by fire near the end. The destructive elements that destroyed Sodom are again present in the cloud of wrath hanging over a violent, greedy and corrupt world, and they supply the image of judicial wrath in the final visitation facing those who have embraced the deceiver's spirit. Sodom's fiery judgment is an example of God's retributive judgment against persistent sin and very wicked cities, warning that proud and costly human works can be reduced to ashes. In that final visitation earth's architecture will lie in ruins, and proud costly works and fireproof mansions will become ashes without a moment's notice.

Sodom stands with the antediluvian world destroyed for transgressing God's law, with Jerusalem destroyed because Israel would not heed God's messages, and with Nineveh whose threatened destruction was averted on repentance and later came when the inhabitants turned again to idolatry and their sins reached to heaven. It stands after Adam and Eve lost the Eden God gave them and opened the floodgates of woe, and after God destroyed the world by a flood saving only Noah and his sons, alongside the corruption that preceded the Flood. Together with the Flood and the destruction of the Jewish nation typifying the destruction of the world, it gives the world a lesson for all time on the sure result of transgression of God's holy law and vindicates God's honor and law. Their fate shows humanity beneath God's just judgment without the light and mercy still offered to the world, and without continued communication between heaven and earth and that light the world would perish like those cities.

The wicked condition of Sodom, with violence, revelling, drunkenness and disregard for law as the divine standard, is fast returning in the present world. Its return proves false the theories saying the Lord delays His coming, proves that the life of no one is safe except by God's protection, and proves that the Son of man comes in a day and hour not expected. The overthrow was a decisive signal judgment, but people soon forgot it and again turned from God to idolatry.

Warning to Modern Cities

The present world is fast becoming a second Sodom by the same follies, folly, intemperance, excitement, self-glory, pleasure-seeking, crime, iniquity, idolatry, depravity, violence, strife, bloodshed, and disregard for God. Modern cities and towns are compared to Sodom in moral condition, their love of excitement, self-glory, and evil leading to depravity, cruelty, violence, and crime, with the poison of sin at work at the heart of society. The destruction by fire from heaven is the warning that a corrupt society becoming like Sodom's inhabitants faces ruin, calling for greater refinement in thought, relationships, words, and conduct.

Large cities that become as Sodom and Gomorrah will suffer the same wrathful visitation under the judgments of God. San Francisco and Oakland are becoming as Sodom and Gomorrah and will not long hence be visited in wrath, soon to face God's judgments with earthquake, fire from heaven, and ruin, buildings thrown down and consumed. Melbourne is named likewise, as cities given over to sin grow worse and worse in strife and bloodshed and prepare for destruction by fire, and this likeness is a sign of the times to be discerned.

Because judgment is coming, well-equipped tent meetings should be held in large cities such as San Francisco, and cities must be warned while mercy remains and people are still open to conversion, before they pass beyond reach. Growing wickedness may bring people to a point at which it is exceedingly difficult to reach them with the saving message, so the gospel message must be given now before judgment comes. Even in towns steeped in sin there are Lots who remain faithful amid corruption and pant for truth as the hart pants after the water brooks for the pure waters of truth. New York is a great and wicked city that has such a people ready to be worked and must not be left untouched, for the power of God will carry the truth there when workers deny self.

Therefore many more ministers, physicians, and reformers and schools are needed, with twenty ministers where there is now one, cultivated intellects to unfold hidden treasure to enrich those souls, physicians educated to battle with disease, and reformers called to stand in defense of the laws established to govern the physical system and to maintain an elevated standard in training the mind and culture of the heart. Centers are no longer to be made in cities, no more investments made in them, and business interests, families, youth, and children are to be taken from sights, sounds, and temptations to retired country places with fields, hills, and trees. Homes must be placed as far from Sodom and Gomorrah as possible, keeping out of the large cities and choosing quiet retirement in the country even if wealth is lost, locating where influence is best so children are shielded from evil amusements and associations and families are improved physically, mentally, and spiritually. Schools, sanitariums, publishing houses, and business interests are to be located outside while still warning and working those in the cities, rather than drawing people into cities or making large plants and commercial interests in them.

When wealthy wine-drinking blasphemers set public opinion and lead the highest circles of society, the favored land of liberty becomes as Sodom, ripe for the same overthrow witnessed and remembered by God. That means open contempt for Christ, boasting infidelity, money as god, indulgence in wine and tobacco opening the way to wild license and every excess, reason beclouded, and youth corrupted by the example.

Choosing Homes and Associations

The overthrow teaches parents a lesson about the location of their families, for Lot chose Sodom as a home because of its rich lands, beautiful surroundings and hope of greater prosperity and financial advantage, yet he left the wicked city with the loss of everything he had when the entire destruction fell on Sodom and Gomorrah with all the plain and all the inhabitants because not even ten righteous persons could be found there. The most beautiful surroundings and the most fertile land do not make a place desirable, and worldly treasure will not save one soul, for human beings taint and corrupt the earth God made lovely, and if dwellers in beautiful places do not reveal purity and virtue and do not love truth and righteousness, after a time of test and trial wrath breaks forth upon them because they corrupt themselves. Choosing a beautiful and fertile country or a flourishing city in hope of greater prosperity, for worldly wealth and honor and greatest financial advantage, surrounds children with temptation, unfavorable associations, lax morality, unbelief, indifference to religious things, examples of rebellion against parental and divine authority, and attachments to infidels and enemies of God that counteract parental influence and hinder piety and right character. God would have moral and religious influences considered first in choosing a home, and those moving to new places are not to make greatest financial advantage their first study but to go where they can do God's work faithfully and be an influence for good like Abraham, who went out into a country he knew not, because the end of all things is at hand. Lot entered Sodom intending to keep himself free from iniquity and to command his household after him, but he signally failed, for the corrupting influences weakened his own faith and his children's connection with the inhabitants bound up his interest with theirs, ending in overthrow, ruined children, loss of wife, married children, riches and possessions, and barely his own soul saved as one saved from fire.

Voluntarily placing oneself and family in an atmosphere of worldliness and unbelief displeases God and drives holy angels from the home, and evil associations are always detrimental to piety and devotion. The enemy works through such associations to hedge up the Lord's work, and those who choose residence without reference to associations invite judgment that consumes inhabitants and blots out entrancing beauty, making bleak and bare a place once made very beautiful. Securing worldly wealth and honor for children at the expense of eternal interests ends in terrible loss, ruined children, lost life-work and sad failure, when true wisdom with less worldly prosperity would have made sure of title to the immortal inheritance.

Bringing young people to Battle Creek and placing them among worldly people is like taking Lot's family into Sodom, a place of grave danger from which they were later rescued when the city was destroyed. God's people are not to settle or permanently locate His institutions in a community of wealthy, irreligious, self-indulgent people, however great its apparent advantages, because its moral atmosphere and associations are dangerous, especially to one weak in moral power. Sodom was marked by wickedness even though its outward surroundings were like the garden of Eden, and Lot's presence there serves as a warning against placing God's institutions amid corrupt surroundings.

Safety requires separating entirely from corrupting company and influences calculated to lead away from God, since remaining among the wicked blunts sensibility, weakens faith, perverts morals, and costs all but bare life itself. Lot was saved only by great mercy, when lingering and stupefied with grief and slow to recognize danger through long association with evil he was laid hold of by angels and hurried out with his wife and two daughters, while his married children perished through becoming partakers of Sodom's sins and his wife became a pillar of salt. Those who stay in a Sodom-like place with unsubdued appetite and passions disobey the voice that calls people to flee from such a place as from destruction, and they cannot be prospered and blessed. Repenting, confessing sins and forsaking them, arousing the will while relying wholly on the strength of Jesus to become an overcomer, is the way to escape Sodom's doom by shunning the course that brought judgment upon it, and God's call to leave must be obeyed promptly.

Where duty calls into trying positions that cannot be avoided, watching and praying and trusting in the grace of Christ enables standing uncorrupted amid moral pollution. Those who know the example of the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah and their inhabitants and still turn from truth are more guilty because they have been warned. The destruction warns that those who abuse mercy and disregard warnings will face wrath, and those who have received great gospel light yet dishonor Christ through unfaithful lives face a more severe judgment than people who lacked that light.

Call to Holy Living

The history in Genesis 18-19 calls hearers to seek the Lord most earnestly and to take a more decided stand for Him, to be not only professed believers in the truth but obedient to all His requirements, with heartfelt confession of sin and earnest prayer under the softening and subduing power of the Spirit. As wholly as the world is given over to evil, God's people are to be wholly consecrated to Christ and His service, with pure and holy lives, discerning truth from error, clothed in the white garments of Christ's righteousness, and ready to meet Him in peace. Because the end of all things is at hand and eternal ruin is near, with violence, revelling, drunkenness, and disregard for God's law as the divine standard of righteousness filling the world as in Sodom and in Noah's day, followers of Christ must proclaim with power the message of a crucified and risen Saviour with earnest, untiring effort to save souls ready to perish. That returning wicked condition proves false the theory that the Lord delays His coming, shows no life is safe except by God's protection, and shows the Son of man comes in a day and hour not expected.

Youth must be taught the principles of Bible temperance and true religion, with every influence brought to bear to help them shun the follies of this degenerate age that is fast becoming a second Sodom through the same folly and intemperance. They are to be guarded from depraved practices that stain purity and kept as far from Sodom and its associations as possible, for corrupt morals and companions undermine faith and corrupt religious convictions. To give youth the apples of Sodom is to expose them to corrupting sin that leads to death rather than life. Cities and towns where youth are trained to love excitement, glorify themselves, and follow evil desires produce depravity, cruelty, violence, and crime, and face judgment as did the cities shaped by depravity and evil.

Immodest, forward, flirtatious conduct between young men and women is fast leading professed Christians toward the same overthrow, for the Sodomites stand for common cheap talk and ways, lack of modesty and decent behavior, breaking down all barriers of reserve and true decorum, even exchanging notes in meeting, and perverting privileges and opportunities given by God. For those with so great light who have not lived up to it, that overthrow comes as the Lord's close judgments and terrible things in righteousness, leaving souls destitute of the Spirit of God and reaping a harvest they will not be pleased to garner. The destruction stands as an act of judgment by a God who is compassionate and ready to pardon, but who punishes those who persistently despise His grace, warning people who have received great light and truth but refuse to live by it and purify their souls. Those who abuse God's mercy and disregard His warnings face His wrath, and those who profess Christ yet dishonor Him through unconsecrated, unfaithful lives incur a fearful and more severe retribution than those who lacked that light. Rejecting the great light and message of mercy brings still greater guilt and judgment, and though only two or three warned survivors escaped, showing safety does not lie in following the majority, certain judgment awaits those who persist after receiving truth.

The comparison to Sodom's time serves as a warning of great dangers and a call for greater refinement in thought, relationships, words, and conduct. Faithful work for the Master is required now to help those around win eternal life, to be cleansed and sanctified and fit as vessels unto honor, worshiping God in the beauty of holiness for His excellent majesty and power, since He cannot cooperate with those controlled by the enemy of truth and righteousness. Believers should work together to resist the tide of evil in a world becoming corrupt. God would not have His people settle where evil associations and moral pollution prevail, and He cannot prosper and bless those who stay in a Sodom-like place with unsubdued appetite and passions, whose moral atmosphere is dangerous especially to one weak in moral power. Lot's choice of the fertile plains for financial advantage cost him his wife, his married children, and his riches and left him fleeing for his life, so those moving out of Battle Creek are warned not to make greatest financial advantage their first study but to go where they can do God's work faithfully and be an influence for good like Abraham, who went out into a country he knew not, because the end of all things is at hand.