Another book excerpt for your enjoyment and edification…
Genesis 18:22-32
…wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? In a city of some thirty or forty thousands God found only one man who had not given himself to licentiousness. If God had found only ten men—less than one-tenth of one percent—he would have called the city redeemable. This shows the forbearance of God. Sodom was not destroyed capriciously, but was given every chance to redeem herself. Some call her destruction unjust and call God cruel and unloving; they ask how can God be love when he shows such hatred? They say such things because they do not understand love. They have in mind the indefinable slush of popular romance stories, which have as much to do with love as sugar has to do with nutrition. God’s actions against Sodom, Gomorrah, and later, all of Canaan, demonstrate the love of a physician who removes a tumor or a gangrenous limb to save his patient’s life. What love can a man have for a diseased limb? If he loves the rest of his body, he cuts it off as God removed Sodom, showing love for her neighbors. Even then, God is much more capable than any human surgeon. If even a relatively small percentage of your leg is infected, your doctor will order the whole thing removed. But all God needs to redeem the whole limb is one tiny piece of healthy tissue. All that was healthy in Sodom was one man. His daughters and wife were too far gone, but God still saved some of them for Lot’s sake. He would have saved them all if they had been willing. God gave them a choice to escape and they refused, so a few of the redeemable were destroyed by their own choice along with the reprobate. If Lot, a man whom Peter called righteous and just, had refused to leave, thinking he might convert a few of the Sodomites before the end, then he too would have been destroyed. When it finally rains, it rains on everyone.
Technorati Tags: vayeira, va yera, torah, lot, sodom, gomorrah, god, abraham
Here’s a question for you, Jay. (And for Mark Call, too, if he’s reading.)
Those that believe in a pre-tribulation rapture point to passages like this to support their assertion that Christians will be spared the Great Tribulation.
What’s your opinion on the subject?
I haven’t spent a lot of time with eschatology, but I have spent a lot of time in the Scriptures over the last ten years. I was brought up to believe in a pre-trib rapture, and the whole Left Behind scenario. (Although, back then I would have called it the Thief in the Night scenario.) I don’t buy it anymore.
In each of the divine genocides (the Flood, S&G, the Ten Plagues, and the Promised Land) the survivors all had to construct their own escape. Noah built the ark; Lot and his family walked to safety; the Hebrews painted their lintels and crossed the Red Sea; Rahab hung the red cord. Certainly, they were all guided and aided by God, but they had to have faith in God’s promises and, most importantly, they had to act on them. God didn’t zap anyone to safety, and he never saved them from all of the consequences of what happened. Instead, he sheltered and guided them.
I’m with Jay on the pre-trib rapture, Triton. I simply do not see, either directly in Scripture or by precedent, where God spares His people potential hardship. But He clearly sounds a shofar.
The phrasing of Matthew 24:37-42 is illustrative, and seems to directly deny a pre-trib scenario.
“…as the days of Noe…” –
“then shall two be in the filed, one shall be taken, and the other left [behind!]”
As with Noe, the ones ‘taken’ were taken by the flood.