Luke 17:31,32

EXPEDITION

Luke 17:31-32. “In that day, let him who shall be upon the housetop, and his goods in the house, not come down to take them; and he who is in the field, likewise not return back. Remember Lot's wife.” From these and many other clear affirmations of our Savior, we learn that He will come very suddenly, giving no time for any preparations after the great light shall flash athwart the sky, belting the globe with the splendors of His glory, and attracting the attention of all the people in the world. “Every eye shall behold Him.” (Revelation 1:7) Lot's wife, in the precipitate flight from burning Sodom, only looked back, and, as E. V. says, was turned to a pillar of salt. The R. V. is evidently the more correct, rendering it “a monument of warning,” as the presumption is she dropped dead in her tracks. That whole country gives every manifestation of volcanic influence. Where E. V. says, “God rained on them fire and brimstone from heaven,” the verb is impersonal, and properly rendered, “It mined on them fire and brimstone,” corroborating the hypothesis that these cities in the Vale of Siddim were destroyed by volcanic eruptions. In that case the brimstone gases are awfully suffocating. I tried them when I visited the crater of Mount Vesuvius. Hence there is quite a plausibility in the conclusion that the woman, halting and facing the scene, fell dead by suffocation of the sulfurous exhalations. As God rules the material world, with its oceans, seas, mineral resources, and volcanic fires, the hypothesis which imputes the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah to volcanic eruptions and earthquakes is in perfect harmony with the Biblical history, imputing it directly to Divine intervention. The Dead Sea, which is about a thousand feet deep. doubtless occupied a much smaller area before the destruction of those cities, as now all authorities certify that the site of Sodom and Gomorrah is covered by the sea. Antecedently to that notable epoch, the Vale of Siddim, encompassing the Salt Sea, was exceedingly prosperous. Now, while the soil is immensely rich, it is all desert for the want of water, rains never falling there, and without an inhabitant except the roaming Bedouin. I have visited it twice, both times being under the necessity of hiring an armed escort. All this is a most striking and incontestable manifestation of the Divine retribution, which rained fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah, not only burning the cities, but bursting up and consuming the great strata of bitumen and asphaltum by the heaving of earthquakes and the eruptions of volcanoes, changing the face of the entire country, consuming the foundation and reducing the surface, and thus letting in the thundering sea, whose rolling billows for these thirty-eight hundred years have passed over the streets where once thronged the precipitate multitudes of these mighty cities. Such was the impregnation of the waters by the excessive quantities of sulfur, bitumen, asphaltum, and other poisons, as to render them so buoyant that the human body will not sink, and so caustic that no animal can live in them. Since the destruction of those cities, that country, once the garden of the East, has been deserted by the rain-clouds till utter desolation has monopolized it these long, rolling centuries. Ezekiel 47:1-12, tells us about the glorious redemption which awaits this wrath-smitten country in the coming millennium, when that great river, coming out of Jerusalem, shall course down the mountains into the Vale of Siddim, redeeming all of that desolate land, and transforming it into the garden of the Lord, and pouting into the Salt Sea, which has been denominated the Dead Sea ever since the calamitous visitation, healing its waters, so that they will be again occupied by vast quantities of valuable fishes, and the shore again dotted with thriving villages and populous cities, while the whole surrounding country shall again groan beneath the abundant harvests, the luscious semi-tropical fruits everywhere saluting the eye and gladdening the heart. The prophet says that the, grand restoration shall extend from Engedi which means the “goat-spring” a short distance below the, southern terminus of the Dead Sea, to Enrogel, which is a celebrated well in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, thus including the Vale of Siddim, encompassing the Dead Se and the wilderness of Judea, an arid desert, extending from the plain toward Jerusalem, within about a dozen miles of the city.