The Night Before

If you're someone who keeps up with news from the world of archaeology (unlike me, generally speaking), you might be aware that in the last decade or so the ancient biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah have finally been located with a high degree of confidence and have been excavated and studied by a team of archaeologists led by Dr. Steven Collins, Dean of the College of Archaeology at Trinity Southwest University in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

And to the horror of secular scientists who go into apoplectic convulsions whenever someone claims to have made a discovery that supports anything in what they claim is an error-riddled collection of ancient myths and legends, their discoveries clearly confirm many aspects of the biblical account.

While other archaeological teams have searched for these ancient cities in the past, they tended to zig when they should have zagged and came up empty—much to the smug delight of the secular scientific community, no doubt. But Collins' team did a terrific job of consistently mining clues directly from a careful, literal, and commonsense interpretation of God's Word, and they were ultimately rewarded for their efforts.

As a result, God has effectively brought the story of Sodom and Gomorrah back into man's consciousness once again after all this time—and when God does things like that, the smart money always asks the same question:

Is God trying to tell us something?

In this article, I want to discuss the story of Lot and his tumultuous time in Sodom, which culminated in the complete annihilation of Sodom, Gomorrah, and other nearby cities as soon as Lot and his family were evacuated. I want to go over some of the primary implications of Lot's story, but I also want to highlight two subtle but telling points about the story of Lot that had never occurred to me before that the Lord brought to my attention. And I believe He did so at this point in time so I could share them with you.

The big picture

Although most people—even many unbelievers—are familiar with the basic events regarding Lot and the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, I thought it would be good to present to you a brief summary of what Scripture tells us about Lot and his experiences in Sodom to make sure everyone is up to speed before we delve more deeply into things.

As the son of Abraham's youngest brother Haran, Lot was Abraham's nephew, and he was presumably born in Ur of the Chaldees. Lot was taken in by the rest of the family after his father Haran died, and later Abraham's father Terah decided to move the entire family to the land of Canaan, where they ended up settling in Haran (Gen. 11:31–32).

After Terah died, God spoke to Abraham and told him to pack up and head for a land that He would show him, and made His initial promise to Abraham to make him a great nation. When Abraham set out on his divinely inspired journey, however, his nephew Lot saddled up and went with him (Gen. 12:1–4).

Abraham and Lot ended up in Bethel, but the problem was that they were both so wealthy in terms of herds and flocks and herdsmen to tend them that the region simply couldn't bear them both. As a result, they decided to amicably part ways and Abraham generously offered Lot the first choice of which direction to head in. Lot, being a tad on the greedy side, chose to head toward what appeared to be the most desirable land—the lush, fertile region that lay near the Jordan river, and he ended up settling in Sodom (Gen. 13:1–12).

It wasn't long, however, before Lot's choice backfired on him. There were five area kings (kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboyim, and Bela) that were subjects of King Kedorlaomer, and these five kings joined together and rose up against him. But Kedorlaomer had allies in the region, and he called upon them for assistance and they defeated those five rebellious kings. The victors seized all the property in Sodom and Gomorrah as plunder, which unfortunately included Lot and his family (Gen. 14:1–12).

When Abraham got word of what had befallen Lot, he put together a commando unit of 318 of his trained men and they snuck up on the camp of Kedorlaomer and his allies in the middle of the night and slew them. As a result, he was able to rescue Lot and his family, who later returned to Sodom (Gen. 14:13–16).

But the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was so great that God decided to destroy these cities, and He sent two angels (also referred to in Scripture as men) to Sodom to remove Lot and his family before His judgment fell...

Two's company: Timeout. In Genesis 18, three men visit Uncle Abraham to inform him his aged wife Sarah would have a child (which would be Isaac). All three are clearly supernatural beings, and two of them are the same two angels who continue on to Sodom to visit Lot. The third angel, however, is believed by many Bible commentators to be a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ, and I am inclined to agree. I'm going to bypass Abraham's experience with his three visitors in this article, however, because I want to focus directly on Lot.

When the two angels arrived in Sodom, they met Lot at the gate of the city and he strongly implored them to spend the night at his home, because he knew all too well what might happen to them if they didn't. The angels finally agreed, and went to Lot's home to eat and be refreshed. But they had barely finished dinner when the men of Sodom gathered outside Lot's home and started beating on the door, demanding he turn over his two guests for the stated purpose of engaging in homosexual relations with them (Gen. 19:1–5).

Although Lot is described as a righteous man, we see stark evidence of the degenerating influence living in Sodom had on him when he went out to speak to the men of Sodom, and pleaded with them to leave his two visitors alone and offered in their place his two virgin daughters to do with as they pleased. Things got so out of control that the two angels struck the men of Sodom with blindness so they could no longer find the door, and they told Lot straight out that God was about to unleash judgment and to gather his family and prepare to get outta Dodge (Gen. 19:6–13).

Lot tried to get his two sons-in-law to leave with them, but they thought the old man was joking and blew it off. (Note that Scripture refers to them as Lot's sons-in-law, but also says his daughters were virgins. This is because these two men were betrothed to marry Lot's daughters, which made them married in the eyes of the law. However, they had not yet consummated their marriage.) The next morning, the two angels forcefully got Lot, his wife, and his two daughters out of Sodom before God's judgment was released (Gen. 19:14–17).

Rather than head into the mountains according to the instructions of the two angels, Lot persuaded them to allow him to escape to a small nearby city called Zoar. As soon as he got there, the LORD unleashed fire from heaven to utterly destroy Sodom, Gomorrah, and other cities of the plain. Unfortunately, Lot's wife, no doubt missing her comfortable urban lifestyle, turned to take one last, wistful look at Sodom contrary to the instructions of the angels, and was turned into a pillar of salt (Gen. 19:18–26).

Of course, Lot lost everything he owned in the destruction of Sodom, and he and his daughters were forced to live in a cave in the mountains. Since they had little hope of ever marrying, each of Lot's two daughters got him drunk and had sex with him in order to continue their family line—and their perverted plan enabled them both to give birth to sons. Those two sons gave rise to the Ammonites and the Moabites (Gen. 19:30–38).

The first thing I want to look at is the big picture—what the story of Lot and the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah tell us about God's general pattern in dealing with man and his sin.

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah became a classic tale that is referred to a number of times throughout both the Old and New Testaments, and it establishes a clear, fundamental pattern of (a) how a holy God must judge all sin, (b) how God is longsuffering and extends mercy before judgment, and (c) how God never fails to save the righteous from His judgment.

Not necessarily in that order.

(a) A holy God must judge all sin.

God wants us to understand and never forget that He is a holy God, and that He must and will judge all sin. Period. God's holiness and the certainty of His judgment are spoken of in numerous places throughout Scripture:

There are a number of passages in the Bible that treat Sodom and Gomorrah as a benchmark for man's sinfulness and depravity, as well as for the severity and thoroughness of God's judgment. For example, Jesus invokes the image of Sodom and Gomorrah when speaking of the fate of cities that refuse to receive the message of the gospel when He gives His disciples their marching orders:

Note that God tends to allow man's collective sinfulness in given situations to reach its fullness before unleashing His judgment. This makes good sense, however, because God's judgment, while perfectly just, is invariably full and unflinchingly severe, and the Righteous Judge wants His judgment to be seen as being consummately justified. In other words:

There's nothing halfway about God.

In fact, we see this in Scripture concerning Sodom and Gomorrah when the two angels are telling Lot to gather his family and prepare to evacuate:

In other words, God allowed the depravity of Sodom and Gomorrah to finally reach its fullness, and when it did God was fully prepared to incinerate these cities from the face of the earth and make an example of them.

Satan's moment in the sun: We also see this principle at work during the general time frame of the Tribulation, when the Holy Spirit stands down from His ministry of restraining evil at the Rapture. With the body of Christ out of harm's way, God effectively takes a step back and lets Satan have his moment in the sun as his man the Antichrist rises to take control of a world that will be primed to buy into his lies. Around the midpoint of the Tribulation, those who have refused to love the truth will be subject to the influence of a strong delusion sent upon them by God Himself that Satan's man is the true Messiah and must be worshiped as God, and he establishes his puny 42-month kingdom (2 Thess. 2:1–12). And when Christ physically returns, one of His first orders of business will be to stuff Satan and his two pawns the Antichrist and the False Prophet in the hurt locker and to slay and send those who rejected His grace and mercy off to eternal punishment (Rev. 19:20–21; 20:1–3).

Note that there are two major rounds of God's judgment remaining: One comes at the Second Coming when Christ returns to establish His kingdom, and one comes at the end of that kingdom to judge the unrighteous of all time (the Great White Throne Judgment).

It could also be argued that His judgment at the time of the Second Coming is divided into two parts:

(a) First, when Christ physically returns at the Second Coming, He will deal with Satan, the Antichrist, the False Prophet, and all those who dwell upon the earth who have staunchly and persistently rejected His grace and mercy and persecuted His people Israel.

(b) Then, as part of the activities that will launch the kingdom, He will judge Tribulation survivors to determine who will be granted and denied entrance into that kingdom at the Sheep and Goat Judgment, based on their faithful witness during the Tribulation or the lack thereof.

A disturbingly significant portion of the Church today seems to have acquired the notion that God's judgment is a quaintly old-fashioned concept that has been relegated to the dustbin of ancient history. All that fire-and-brimstone stuff is an Old Testament relic that those angry, judgmental tinfoil-hatters blather on about (that is, when they're not going gaga over that goofy Rapture business)—we are s-o-o past all that in today's day and age:

"God is love, didn't ya know, and He just love love love love love loves us, and so we should just love love love love love love the whole world around us. And He told us not to judge others, so that must mean He doesn't judge, right? That's because judging is bad. All He wants is for us to be happy and live in comfort and peace, and judgment is so not compatible with that, ya know? Dude, get with the times!"

Yeah, but then there's this:

"Get with the times"? Sorry, dude, but I suggest you get with the Word.

(b) God is longsuffering and extends mercy before judgment.

Delaying His judgment until the sin of a particular group of people has reached its peak not only makes God's ultimate unleashing of judgment as fully justified as it can possibly be, it also gives Him ample opportunity to extend mercy to any righteous people affected, or any who will respond in repentance in order to become righteous in God's eyes before the judgment falls.

We certainly see this in the case of Noah, who preached for over a hundred years before the Flood, warning people of the LORD's coming judgment while they watched him and his sons building this wooden monstrosity. Sadly, in Noah's case, no one responded to his warning and the entire population of the earth perished in the Flood, all except for the eight people in Noah's family.

Startin' over: Note that in the Bible the number eight is the number of new beginnings, since it follows seven, the number of divine completion. For example, there are seven days in a week, so the eighth day marks the beginning of a new week. The gematria (the sum of the numeric values of the letters) of the name "Jesus" in Greek (Ιησονς) is 888, and it is Jesus who gives us our new beginning in the Spirit.

In regard to Lot, God could have just as easily let Sodom and Gomorrah be destroyed when King Kedorlaomer and his allies defeated the five rebellious kings, which included the kings of those two cities. But God was merciful in enabling Abraham to slay Kedorlaomer and his allies, thus freeing Lot and his family and allowing Sodom and Gomorrah and other cities on the plain to continue to exist. Why? Well, I believe I know one possible reason:

Perhaps Sodom and Gomorrah hadn't quite pegged their sin-o-meter yet.

We see this at work today, as God allows the unspeakable evil and iniquity prevalent throughout today's fallen, Christ-rejecting world to continue to reach staggering new heights with each passing day...and I'll be elaborating on one of those staggering new heights shortly.

But let God's promises speak, and speak with clarity and with authority: His judgment is going to fall just as surely as it did on Sodom and Gomorrah, and people today laugh it off just as casually as Lot's two sons-in-law did, who were incinerated in the twinkling of an eye.

Which reminds me of what me and all those who have placed their trust in Christ's finished work of atonement will experience shortly before God releases His promised judgment in the Tribulation.

(c) God never fails to save the righteous from His judgment.

Finally, before His judgment is released, we see God deliver the righteous out of the path of that judgment. And this certainly applies to Lot, as God sent two angels to Sodom for the express purpose of ensuring Lot and his family were whisked off to safety before the devastation occurred.

But don't get the idea that Lot was some kind of exception—Peter makes it crystal clear that God's salvation of the righteous from His judgment is every bit as sure as the judgment itself:

Now, not to turn this into a word study or anything, but be aware that according to Strong's Concordance, the Greek word peirasmos translated as "temptation" in verse 9 above can take on the following meanings:

1. trial, probation, testing, being tried
2. temptation
3. calamity, affliction

Many English translations render the word as "trials" in this verse, which is arguably more in line with the intended meaning in the view of many Bible commentators. One inconvenient fact is that in modern English, we use the word "temptation" almost exclusively to mean "the act of luring or the condition of being lured into committing a morally questionable act." But that's not what this verse is talking about—in this case, we're clearly talking about calamities and afflictions, not being drawn into sin.

For example, when Jesus taught His disciples to pray "Lead us not into temptation" (Matt. 6:13; Luke 11:4...and the same Greek word peirasmos is used in both), He certainly didn't mean for them to pray...

"Please, God, don't lure us into committing immoral acts!"

(See also James 1:13–15.) Jesus meant for them to pray that His Father wouldn't allow trials, tribulations, calamities, or afflictions to come their way in order to test or discipline them. Actually, you might say the real point of the prayer was that they would live in a manner that was sufficiently pleasing to God that He wouldn't have to test or discipline them too much. Of course, we all get served a slice of that pie—some of us on a scandalously regular basis.

God may allow us to go through trails for our own ultimate good, but He doesn't lure us into committing sin—that would be Satan's forte.

But without a doubt, the most spectacular picture of God saving the righteous from judgment has to be the Rapture, where upwards of a couple hundred million believers, who are all considered righteous by God, will be snatched up to meet the Lord in the air shortly before the launching of the seven-year period of judgment known as the Tribulation.

Now, I don't generally spend a whole lot of time on intratrib views of the timing of the Rapture, and I'd like very much to think it's because I am more interested in hammering out scriptural truth than in dawdling over deeply flawed end-time arguments that do little more than weaken believers by robbing them of their blessed hope.

And I certainly don't mean this to be a definitive smackdown (there is, after all, a cornucopia of more compelling ones to choose from), but I think it's worth taking a moment to nibble on this since we're on the subject:

Consider: If the Church goes through all (or even part) of the Tribulation, then please explain to me what happened to this idea of God saving the righteous from His judgment, which is precisely what the Tribulation is from start to finish. Did the fact that God evacuated Lot and His family prior to God's judgment (and He saved them from His judgment, not through His judgment) foreshadow the Rapture occurring before the Tribulation, or was what God did for Lot just a special case that no longer applies, or that was canceled at some point after Genesis 19?

Because if God no longer saves the righteous from judgment as He did with Lot, then it appears that some of the other men who contributed to Scripture under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit never got the memo. Just saying.

What and when

Now that we've taken a closer look at the story of Lot and how God removed this righteous man and his family from Sodom just prior to the unleashing of His judgment, as well as what it teaches us about the way God deals with man and his sin, I want to focus on two key points that the Lord brought to my attention recently—two items that are what motivated me to write this article to begin with. Although the reality of these two points is completely obvious in the text of Lot's story, they have subtle but powerful implications in regard to what we see happening in the world today as the Church waits in active anticipation for the Rapture, and we sense it drawing excitingly close.

These two points can be introduced with a pair of simple questions:

(a) What did the men of Sodom do?
(b) When did they do it?

That's it: what and when. And the answers to these two simple questions have thundering implications for the body of Christ today.

OK, first question:

(a) What did the men of Sodom do?

Until the two angels show up in Sodom to get Lot and his family out of the way of God's imminent judgment, basically all we are told about the men of Sodom is that they were wicked and sinners before the LORD (Gen. 13:13), and that the cry of that city had come up before the LORD because the sin of the men of Sodom was very grievous (Gen. 18:20–21).

However, there is no clear indication as to what kind of sin the men of Sodom were engaging in.

We don't get our first hint of what kind of "grievous sin" we're dealing with until Genesis 19:4–5, when the men of Sodom came banging on Lot's door, angrily demanding he turn over his two angelic visitors who appeared as men so they could engage in a little after-dinner homosexual gang rape.

(Oh, that kind of grievous sin.)

But there is one aspect of this that many people often overlook or gloss over, and that is who their intended victims were. The individuals they were intent on gang-raping weren't ordinary men. In fact, they weren't men at all:

They were angels.

They appeared as men. They are referred to in Scripture as men. And obviously the men of Sodom noticed that they had the physiques of men. But they were in fact angels sent by God (and I can't prove it from Scripture, but I have a sneaking suspicion that there are no ugly angels). But here's my point:

These two angels that the men of Sodom were anxious to gang-rape may have appeared as men and had the physical bodies of men, but they had one additional quality that earthly men do not possess:

They were as innocent as children.

That means that the sin of the men of Sodom could accurately be characterized as something far beyond mere homosexual activity or sexual perversion, as if those things weren't already offensive enough to a holy God. Oh no. The men of Sodom were intent on committing one of the vilest, most despicable sins that human beings are capable of (and they would have if they hadn't been supernaturally restrained), and that answers our first question:

What? Forcing sexual perversion on innocents.

OK, second question:

(b) When did they do it?

As I said, Scripture doesn't tell us exactly what type of sin the men of Sodom were involved in until they show up to gang-rape the angels that had come to get Lot and his family out of Sodom. All we are told is that the were great sinners, and that the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah had come up before the LORD due to their grievous sin.

Of course, it's a safe bet that the men of Sodom had been carrying on in this manner for some time. In spite of that, however, the Author of Scripture saw fit to not mention what kind of wickedness the men of Sodom were into until that night—the night before God's judgment fell. So as the scriptural narrative unfolds, we see the men of Sodom attempting to carry out homosexual gang rape on these two innocent angels mere hours before God unleashes His judgment. And that answers our second question:

When? The night before God's judgment.

Now, put it together, read it again slowly, and let it sink:

Forcing sexual perversion on innocents the night before God's judgment.

Please tell me you see where this is going.

Where this is going

As everyone knows, in just the last few years the forces of evil under the influence of Satan himself have been gaining power and control in virtually every aspect of society all over the world, and doing it at breakneck speed. We see it every day, everywhere we go, everywhere we look.

And as we look at today's world, what kind of things do we see?

• We see a world being fed a steady diet of lies and disinformation by a mainstream media that feeds on and profits from pushing carefully crafted left-wing narratives in lieu of reporting actual news.

• We see a presidential election stolen through fraud, with tons of damning evidence denied, dismissed, and disappeared—and harsh consequences doled out for those who refuse to pretend that evidence never existed.

• We see what started out as a peaceful gathering near the Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021 infiltrated by dozens of paid left-wing activists and FBI informants who were put in place to provoke and steer the crowd toward the Capitol Building, where they were politely ushered in by Capitol Security, shown where to go, and then arrested, hammered with charges of "insurrection," and imprisoned without bail for an interminable length of time without a trace of justice in sight for a single one of them.

• We see a manmade virus that is little more than a variation of the common flu unleashed on a world that has been lied to from the beginning that it warrants ludicrous mask mandates, crushing lockdowns, and a never-ending stream of so-called "vaccines" that are not only unsafe and ineffective, but are literally more dangerous than the virus they don't protect people from. And if you so much as ask intelligent, probing questions about any of this, you're a conspiracy theorist who is responsible for contributing to the grossly inflated number of deaths and must be attacked, censored, and silenced.

• We see (typically mediocre) biological male athletes who "identify" as female being allowed to compete in women's sports against real women athletes and steal trophy after trophy, shatter record after record, and effectively make an utter travesty of the entire concept of women's sports. And God help the poor homophobic, transphobic bigots who so much as blink an eye at any of it.

The list just goes on and on—and I'm not telling you anything new. Unless you have been living on another planet for the last few years, you are painfully aware of these things and numerous other related aspects of today's world.

But I saved the worst for last, because the story of two angels showing up in Sodom to get Lot and his family out of the way of God's judgment and nearly being gang-raped by a rambunctious crowd of homosexual men from Sodom speaks to this, and it amounts to a blaring prophetic siren for those who are looking for the blessed hope of the Rapture:

• We see an avalanche of sexual perversion being pushed on innocent children, both in the form of sex trafficking that is aided and abetted by government officials who facilitate it and then look the other way, and in the form of sanctioned, organized efforts throughout both primary and secondary schools across the country to actively encourage young children to question their biological gender, indoctrinate and entice them with a smorgasbord of perverted gender fantasies, and strongly encourage them to begin to transition to the opposite gender with the aid of potentially harmful puberty-blockers, "gender-affirming" hormone therapy, and a sickening array of various types of bodily mutilation, all without parental knowledge or consent. And now, with Nancy Pelosi's so-called Equality Act, parents who don't go along with and support their child's gender transition may lose legal custody of their children.

Now, you're more than welcome to call me a homophobic, transphobic bigot (a glistening badge of honor these days if you ask this old country boy), but it's clear that God is trying to tell us that things have come full circle:

What? Forcing sexual perversion on innocents.
When? RIGHT NOW.

Effectively the night before God's judgment.

Friends, this is one of the clearest signs the Lord has ever allowed me to see that the prophetic juncture we are at right now is in a sense "the night before" the unleashing of God's end-time judgment, just as it was in a literal sense when those two angels showed up to evacuate Lot and his family the night before His judgment fell. But that's not quite all:

Yes, clearly God's removal of Lot and his family from Sodom prior to the release of His cataclysmic judgment prefigures the catching away of the body of Christ in the Rapture prior to the release of His judgment on the world in the form of the Tribulation.

But just as we see the men of Sodom trying to force sexual perversion on innocents the literal night before God's removal of the only righteous people from a city slated for His judgment, today we see sexual perversion being forced on innocents, and it gives us a blazingly clear sign that it is similarly "the night before" God's removal of the only righteous people from a world slated for His judgment.

And "God's removal of the only righteous people from a world slated for His judgment" is a soberingly appropriate description of the Rapture.

So it appears that the smart money is right on the money, because I believe that it's clear God is trying to tell us something. So I will say something I never tire of saying, and knowing me I'll keep thinking up oddball ways to say it until I don't need to say it anymore:

We are so close to the Rapture that on a
quiet night, you can hear the faint, distant
sound of someone warming up on a trumpet.

Incidentally, I sure hope that "pillar of salt" thing no longer applies and doesn't come into play at the Rapture. I absolutely love heights—and I have a feeling I'm gonna give in to the temptation to look down to enjoy the view as we go flying off into the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.

And it occurs to me that showing up at the bema as a pillar salt isn't exactly the look you're after, if you know what I'm saying.

Greg Lauer — SEP '23

Top of the page

If you like this article, share it with someone!

 SEP '23 

Site Search

Powered by:
JavaScript Kit