IN the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, we read how the Lord “rained brimstone and fire.... out of heaven” upon those cities, and perhaps in our childhood we tried to imagine what this meant. Added to the storm of fire, we read how the sun had risen upon the earth at the time when Lot entered the city of Zoar, and also how the smoke of the country," which "went up as the smoke of a furnace," was visible for many miles round. If we take a map of Palestine, and note the position of Hebron, we have before us the locality of the plains of Mamre, whence Abraham witnessed the desolation. He would not have been more than a few miles from the plain where the cities stood—a long and narrow plain, once like Paradise, well watered, and cultivated like Egypt. Into this plain numbers of little rivers ran, and its luxuriance filled Lot's eyes with satisfaction; and thither he went with his flocks and herds, to escape at last with life only, and even then that escape being due to the intercession of Abraham.
Some of the mysterious occurrences told in the Bible are explainable by simple natural causes. God used the waters above the earth and the fountains of the deep to effect the flood, and He may have used the fire within the earth and under the plain where the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah stood, to effect their overthrow. There is a certain resemblance in the country around Vesuvius to that of the plain where Sodom and the cities stood. And its extinct volcanoes, now lakes—well filled with water—and its fruitful soil, the result of volcanic action, assist in picturing to the mind that district, once so fruitful and populous, which is now silent, buried under the Dead Sea—the Sea of the Plain.
The destruction of the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii, which flourished at the foot of Mount Vesuvius eighteen hundred years ago, affords striking suggestions as to the terror of the doom of Sodom. A great mass of sulfurous ashes from the mountain was suddenly cast up into the heavens, and, borne by a strong wind, it spread over Pompeii, and fell upon it, overwhelming and suffocating the inhabitants. Yet, still the rain of hot ashes fell, and then a storm of larger stones, until the whole of the city was completely buried. The bread was in baking, the food for dinner was being cooked in the bronze pots upon the oven, as the ashes from heaven fell. The prisoners were chained in the cell, awaiting the sentence of the Roman magistrate, when they were summoned to appear before the Judge of All. The sleeper Jay without a dream troubling his countenance, and died in his sleep, to awake in eternity; while some rushed into the cellars to escape the doom, but only to perish in despair. The spectator who walks through Pompeii today can see all these things before his eyes. They ate, they drank, they bought and sold, married and gave in marriage, until the terrible November day, eighteen hundred years ago.
The adjoining city of Herculaneum perished likewise, but by different means, for the mountain cast out a stream of hot liquid mud, which, pouring down its side, covered up that city; and the mud, subsequently hardening like stone, entombed Herculaneum in solid rock. The city was only re-discovered some hundred years ago.
At a distance from these cities, probably hardly further than that which separated Abraham from Sodom, when he pleaded for it, ashes fell like deep snow upon Puteoli. At Puteoli some seventeen years previously the Christians had cheered the heart of the apostle Paul on his way to Rome. We may infer that there were many Christians in that busy port when Pompeii was overthrown, and that they saw in the awful destruction the judgment of their holy God against the licentious inhabitants of the overthrown cities, and a terrible warning to the wealthy district around Puteoli. When the Cities of the Plain were consumed, Abraham worshipped Jehovah in Mamre, and Melchizedek was priest of the Most High in Jerusalem, and neither Mamre nor Jerusalem would be very much further off "the plain" than Puteoli was from Pompeii.
The opening chapter of the epistle to the Romans, read in connection with the objects dug out of Pompeii and Herculaneum, evidences a terrible moral similarity between the two groups of overthrown cities, "the men" of both of which "were wicked, and sinners before the LORD exceedingly." "Behold," says the prophet, "this was the iniquity of... Sodom.... fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness... neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination before Me" (Jehovah). If we may wonder how all these sins expressed themselves in the Cities of the Plain, we can see how they expressed themselves in Pompeii and Herculaneum! The paintings of the goddess (or idea) of abundance are constant, and the baths and the Forum were the ideals of idleness and indulgence. Close by them the slaves were practiced in combat in order to amuse the citizens by slaying one another, or by encountering wild beasts in the arena, and also it was slave labor which made the traders rich. The evidences of the iniquity of selfishness and disregard of the poor and tried in those days of Rome's luxury and ease are numerous. In the times of the pride of Sodom, idolatry and its accompanying licentiousness—the worship of vice, personified by images of gods of drink or crime—was established on the earth. Pompeii abounded with these sins. Its houses were models of taste and art, and no less a very emporium of iniquity. We seem to learn what Sodom and Gomorrah and the corrupt district around them really were by studying the remains which have been discovered in Herculaneum and Pompeii.
On the slopes of burning Vesuvius a vivid illustration of the world itself is presented, and of the apostle's words: "Where is the promise of His coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were"; for men build and plant as if the mountain had never overwhelmed man and never would again destroy. The cities turned into ashes, "condemned with an overthrow," made "an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly," seem to have no voice. The burning mountain is merely a question of nature! Yet nature is remarkably unstable when she pours forth fire and sulfur and trembles and burns under one's feet. Nature is but the servant of her Lord and Maker. The desolations nature has wrought are but the voices of nature's Lord, and they are a warning to sinful men of the judgment which shall yet befall an unbelieving world.
In this connection of thought, the position a man takes up to view the prophetic Word of God is most significant. If one looks up to the height of the burning mountain, towering into the heavens, its fiery summit, seems too far off to occasion any concern, and its lava-streaked sides seem but only memories of what can never occur again. But if one stands upon the summit of the mountain, feels its heat and trembling under one's feet, hears its thunders, sees its fire and smells its sulfurous smoke, and then looks down at the villages and towns in the plain, they seem so small, so insignificant, so utterly at the mercy of the mountain, that the wonder is the impetuous fire within is restrained and all are not swept away. Such as dwell on the heights regard the prophetic word as the Word of God, and such as dwell afar off from God regard it with small concern. Yet the Word of God, and not our view of it, is that which will be fulfilled.
The fire and the smoke are Scripture symbols of the judgment of God; and not only so, they are the natural servants of their Maker, who will use them to accomplish His Word, as in a former age He used water to fulfill His judgment. "The heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness?"