Heavenly Fires: Sodom
Heavenly Fires: Sodom.
“Then the Lord rained on Sodom and on Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. He overthrew, destroyed and ended those cities, and all the valley and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.” (Genesis 19:24-25, AMP).
The fire of judgment was demonstrated quite often in the Hebrew Bible. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah were declared guilty in the heavenly courts, and somehow irredeemable in the eyes of God, and they were destroyed. The sins of Sodom were not only sexual in nature, though their sexual practices were an abomination to the Lord. The people were “full of pride, enjoyed an over-abundance of food, prosperous ease and idleness; neither did they strengthen the hand of the poor and needy; and they were haughty.” (Ezekiel 16:49-50). The residents of Sodom weren’t the only people to feel the fires of judgment. The sons of Aaron both died by the fire of the Lord after entering the Holy of Holies and offering a strange, unholy fire (Lev. 10:1-3). And too when the Hebrew people began to grumble and complain and bemoan their hardships in the wilderness, “And when the Lord heard it, His anger was kindled; and the fire of the Lord burned among them and devoured those in the outlying parts of the camp.” (Numbers. 11:1-3). This is a way that God deals with sin, including in the last days of judgment, “For behold, the Lord will come in fire, and His chariots shall be like the stormy wind, to render His anger with fierceness, and His rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire will the Lord execute judgment.” (Isaiah 66:15-16).