Subjects for Debate: Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah

how were those cities destroyed ? just like the Bible says. It rained fire and brimstone on them.

 

I never really thought about this. I always just envisioned got bringing fire from the sky. Brimstone I just imagined as either a lava like substance or sulfur or something to that effect.

 

How did it rain fire ? Gee, I guess the way you rain artillery on the enemy..from above. :smilewinkgrin:

now, brimstone is an obsolete (says the dictionary) word for sulphur, but another definition for it would be a scolding, nagging woman, says the dictionary. But I'd go for the first one: scalding, hissing, sulphur.

 

Volcanic eruptions?

 

I'm not sure why you are having trouble. When water falls from the sky, we say it is raining. So, when fire and brimstone fell from the sky in a similar manner as water, scripture says it "rained" fire and brimstone.

I don't think we have to understand the physics of it to understand the imagery of it.

peace to youraying:

 

Yes, why are you having trouble with that? Is God unable to work "supernaturally"?

 

He is around here on this board lol.

 

I guess that's possible. Whatever it was it caused Lot's wife to turn to a pillar of salt. I don't know if that means literal salt or something that made her look like salt.

I recall seeing a documentary about the destruction of Pompeii and the bodies looked frozen in time, much like "salt". I think they said this is because of the pyroclastic blast from the volcano. The heat is so intense, everything in it's path is literally incinerated so quickly that it stays in it's original "form".

 

God often used natural events to accomplish supernatural means. The waters of the Noahic flood did not just appear, they came from above & from the deep. I envision a type of meteor shower. It is not a rejection of God's omnipotence to discuss the means which He has used to accomplish the destruction of these cities.

 

God causing meteorites to rain down on Sodom and Gomorrah would certainly qualify as a destructive miracle. Sulphuric rocks formed in the atmosphere would also qualify as God bringing destruction to these wicked cities. It really doesn't matter how God did it; it is obvious that whatever it was did the job.

 

I believe it to be a mistake to attempt to find scientific explanations for what scripture clearly attributes as a supernatural intervention of God into human history.

All it does, imho, is give non-believers an opportunity to proclaim people of that time let their superstitions get the better of them and attibute to a "supernatural being" something that can now be explained with science.

peace to youraying:

 

Yes.

HankD

 

The best explanations are the ones of meteorites and the volcanoes erupting. In the area of where this is thought to have taken place I am not sure that there is evidence of volcano activity or not, but if not then the meteorite theory is a very plausible one and takes nothing away from the event or the Lord. Who else could direct a meteorite storm onto a bunch of sodomites and no one else? :thumbsup: