Immerse: Beginnings Full Volume - Flipbook - Page 38
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IMMERSE
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BEGINNINGS
19:10-29
and now he’s acting like our judge! We’ll treat you far worse than those
other men!” And they lunged toward Lot to break down the door.
But the two angels reached out, pulled Lot into the house, and bolted
the door. Then they blinded all the men, young and old, who were at the
door of the house, so they gave up trying to get inside.
Meanwhile, the angels questioned Lot. “Do you have any other relatives
here in the city?” they asked. “Get them out of this p lace—your sons-in-
law, sons, daughters, or anyone else. For we are about to destroy this city
completely. The outcry against this place is so great it has reached the
Lord, and he has sent us to destroy it.”
So Lot rushed out to tell his daughters’ fiancés, “Quick, get out of the
city! The Lord is about to destroy it.” But the young men thought he was
only joking.
At dawn the next morning the angels became insistent. “Hurry,” they
said to Lot. “Take your wife and your two daughters who are here. Get
out right now, or you will be swept away in the destruction of the city!”
When Lot still hesitated, the angels seized his hand and the hands of
his wife and two daughters and rushed them to safety outside the city, for
the Lord was merciful. When they were safely out of the city, one of the
angels ordered, “Run for your lives! And don’t look back or stop anywhere
in the valley! Escape to the mountains, or you will be swept away!”
“Oh no, my lord!” Lot begged. “You have been so gracious to me and
saved my life, and you have shown such great kindness. But I cannot go to
the mountains. Disaster would catch up to me there, and I would soon die.
See, there is a small village nearby. Please let me go there instead; don’t you
see how small it is? Then my life will be saved.”
“All right,” the angel said, “I will grant your request. I will not destroy the
little village. But hurry! Escape to it, for I can do nothing until you arrive
there.” (This explains why that village was known as Zoar, which means
“little place.”)
Lot reached the village just as the sun was rising over the horizon. Then
the Lord rained down fire and burning sulfur from the sky on Sodom and
Gomorrah. He utterly destroyed them, along with the other cities and villages of the plain, wiping out all the people and every bit of vegetation. But
Lot’s wife looked back as she was following behind him, and she turned
into a pillar of salt.
Abraham got up early that morning and hurried out to the place where
he had stood in the Lord’s presence. He looked out across the plain toward Sodom and Gomorrah and watched as columns of smoke rose from
the cities like smoke from a furnace.
But God had listened to Abraham’s request and kept Lot safe, removing
him from the disaster that engulfed the cities on the plain.
