Jerusalem, Canaan, Sodom

and Today’s World

Are the events surrounding Jerusalem, Israel and the United Nations the only indications that the time is near for God’s foretold intervention to bring an end to this world?  Far from it!  A close look at God’s past interventions in human affairs sheds light on what is about to happen now.  So, let’s look at some of them:

Around 600 B.C., the ancient city of Jerusalem was destroyed.

Around 1400 B.C. the inhabitants of the land of Canaan were wiped out.

Around 1900 B.C. the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed.

In each case, it was the God of the Bible who intervened and put a stop to the course that humans were taking.  Different means were used each time.  Jerusalem was destroyed by forces of the Babylonian empire.  God used the armies of Israel to exterminate the Canaanites.  Sodom and Gomorrah were annihilated by fire and sulfur raining down from the sky. 

Why did God decree the destruction of Jerusalem, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the Canaanites?  What did all those people do to provoke God’s anger?  Is today’s world doing similar things that will provoke God’s anger and bring about Divine intervention again, and this world’s destruction?

JERUSALEM

Through the prophet Jeremiah, God listed his complaints against the people of Jerusalem and Judah.

They were worshiping false gods and practicing sexual immorality:

 “The LORD said, ‘Tell me why I should forgive you. Your children have left me and have made promises to idols that are not gods at all. I gave your children everything they needed, but they still were like an unfaithful wife to me. They spent much time in houses of prostitutes.  They are like well-fed horses filled with sexual desire; each one wants another man’s wife.  Shouldn’t I punish the people of Judah for doing these things?’ says the LORD. ‘Shouldn’t I give a nation such as this the punishment it deserves?’”

—Jeremiah 5:7-9 NCV

They were committing adultery, misusing power, and acting as if God Almighty did not exist:

“The land of Judah is full of people who are guilty of adultery. . . The people are evil and use their power in the wrong way. ‘Both the prophets and the priests live as if there were no God. I have found them doing evil things even in my own Temple,’ says the LORD.”

—Jeremiah 23:10-11 NCV

The people had strayed so far from God’s law that there were even

“male prostitutes who were in the Temple of the LORD.”

—2 Kings 23:7

They were exploiting the poor and proudly flaunting their sexuality:

“‘Your houses are full of what you took from the poor.  What gives you the right to crush my people and grind the faces of the poor into the dirt?’  The LORD God All-Powerful says this.  The LORD says,  ‘The women of Jerusalem are proud. They walk around with their heads held high, and they flirt with their eyes. They take quick, short steps, making noise with their ankle bracelets.’”

—Isaiah 3:14-16 NCV

For all of these reasons, God Almighty sent the armies of Babylon to destroy Jerusalem and send its people into captivity.  Are the same sorts of things being done in our world today? Does God feel the same way about it?  Won’t he act in similar fashion to destroy this world that offends him?

SODOM AND GOMORRAH

Nearly four thousand years ago, many long centuries before Jerusalem was destroyed, there was another act of Divine intervention.  At that time God rained down fire and sulfur from the sky to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.  His view of their inhabitants was expressed this way:

 “Now the men of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the LORD.”

—Genesis 13:13 NIV

“Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grave,” God considered destroying those cities.  But first he sent two angels in the form of men to investigate, and he discussed the matter with Abraham.  Abraham begged God not to “destroy the righteous with the wicked,” and God agreed that he would spare the whole city of Sodom if he found ten good people there.

Genesis 18:17-32 NKJV 

Part of Abraham’s concern must have been due to the fact that his nephew Lot was then living in Sodom.  In fact, when the investigating angels arrived that evening, it was Lot who invited them to spend the night at his house.  But the other inhabitants of the city soon expressed themselves: 

“But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every quarter.  They called to Lot, and said to him, ‘Where are the men who came in to you this night?  Bring them out to us, that we may have sex with them.’”  

—Genesis 19:4-5

Instead of allowing this to happen, the angels blinded the rape mob, and in the morning they led Lot and his immediate family to safety outside the city limits, so that God could destroy the place.

“Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.”

—Genesis 19:24-25 KJV

Our modern English words ‘sodomy’ and ‘sodomize’ come from the name of that ancient city of Sodom that God destroyed as punishment for its inhabitants’ sins.

CANAAN

Centuries after the destruction of Sodom, God led the people of Israel out of Egypt and into the Promised Land.  But the Promised Land was not empty.  It was the land of Canaan, populated by several national groups that were sentenced to annihilation because of their conduct that God condemned.  The Israelites were commanded to kill the Canaanites, as God’s executioners, and they were told, “you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their customs.”  (Lev. 28:3 NCV)  What customs?  God told the Israelites,

“‘You must never have sexual relations with your close relatives . . .   You must not have sexual relations with your brother’s wife . . .   You must not have sexual relations with your neighbor’s wife . . .  You must not have sexual relations with a man as you would a woman.  That is a hateful sin.  You must not have sexual relations with an animal; it is not natural.’”

—Leviticus 18:6, 16, 20, 22-23 NCV

God explained to the people of Israel,

“‘The people who lived in the land before you did all these hateful things’”

—Leviticus 18:27 NCV

And that was why God was wiping them out and giving their land to the Jews. 

TODAY’S WORLD

But God has reformed since then, hasn’t he?  He wouldn’t destroy people like that again, would he?  The Christian New Testament warns us that God will again execute the same sort of punishment against those who persist in practicing sexual immorality—even referring back to God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as an example.  The Apostle Peter wrote that God

“condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly.”

—2 Peter 2:6 NIV

The Christian disciple Jude wrote similarly, pointing out clearly the sexual nature of the sins practiced by the inhabitants of those cities, and that they serve as a warning, an example of punishment to come:

“In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.”

—Jude 7 NIV

Like the Old Testament, the Christian New Testament plainly spells out the specific types of sexual conduct that God condemns.  The Apostle Paul wrote this to the Christian church in Rome: 

“Therefore God also gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonored among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

“For this reason, God gave them up to vile passions.  For their women changed the natural function into that which is against nature.

“Likewise also the men, leaving the natural function of the woman, burned in their lust toward one another, men doing what is inappropriate with men, and receiving in themselves the due penalty of their error.

“Even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness . . . who, knowing the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but also approve of those who practice them.”

—Romans 1:24-32

So, God’s attitude toward this sort of behavior remained the same throughout the Old Testament and New Testament eras spanning thousands of years.  What reason would there be to think that he may have changed his view now, simply because these forms of sexual conduct have become popular and accepted in today’s world?

And what about our modern world’s view of divorce—for any reason or no reason at all?  The prophet Malachi expressed God’s view when he wrote,

 “. . . the LORD sees how you treated the wife you married when you were young. You broke your promise to her, even though she was your partner and you had an agreement with her. God made husbands and wives to become one body and one spirit for his purpose—so they would have children who are true to God. So be careful, and do not break your promise to the wife you married when you were young. The LORD God of Israel says, ‘I hate divorce. And I hate people who do cruel things as easily as they put on clothes,’ says the LORD All-Powerful. So be careful. And do not break your trust.”

—Malachi 2:14-16  NCV

And Jesus expressed the same view.  He referred back to the first marriage in Genesis as the pattern God intended for mankind to follow:

“‘Haven’t you read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, “For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall join to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh?”  So that they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, don’t let man tear apart.’” 

—Matthew 19:4-6

Jesus added,

‘“Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it has not been so.  I tell you that whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and he who marries her when she is divorced commits adultery.’”

—Matthew 19:8-9

Has God changed his mind about sexual conduct today?  Did the ‘sexual revolution’ of the 1960’s cause God to be more tolerant of sex outside of marriage, divorce without biblical grounds, and adultery?  Has the ‘gay pride’ movement of recent decades caused God to change his mind about homosexual relations?

God does not change. He tells us,

“‘I the LORD do not change.’”

—Malachi 3:6 NIV

“God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind.”

—Numbers 23:19 NIV

So, he must feel the same way about the same sorts of provocations that prompted him to act in the past. Looking at his past interventions should give us clues as to the timing of the coming apocalypse.