Remember Lot’s wife
By: Elder Enoch Ofori Jnr
(Saturday, June 18, 2011)
Over the past two weeks, the Ghanaian media has been inundated with reports of an alarming increase in the number of practicing homosexuals in the country. In the Western Region alone, one NGO registered over 8000 homosexuals and in the Central Region another 2000.The unknown could be several hundred thousand.
Public opinion seems firmly against the trend, but there are a few dissenting voices out there that insist no one has the right to pass judgment on another’s moral choice. Then thieves and murderers may have the right to their moral choice to steal and to kill freely!
Christ prophesied of Sodom-like social conditions in the last days leading up to His return. He warned in Luke 17:
“Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded;
“But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.
“Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.
“In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back.
“Remember Lot’s wife.
“Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it” (vv. 28-33).
So, what was Sodom like? In our first encounter with Sodom in the Bible, Sodom is described in sordid terms: “But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the LORD exceedingly” (Gen. 13:13). However, Sodom was a prosperous place, and Lot, upon his separation from Abraham, was attracted there by the fertility of the land and the brisk commercial activity there, in that “they bought, they sold, they planted and they builded” (Gen. 13:10-11). We read in verse 12 that “Lot dwelt in the cities of the Plain, and moved his tent as far as Sodom”. Sodom was not some dreary desert place, but a city bustling with life. The downside was their social life–it stank! The people of Sodom were ‘wicked sinners’, that is brazen, shameless sinners who specialized in the abominable sin of homosexuality.
Lot concentrated on his business and separated himself from the sin and the sinners, but the debauchery he constantly saw “vexed his righteous soul” (2 Pet. 2:7-8). But if Lot was vexed, what about God, who cannot look on evil (Hab. 1:13)? He was vexed even more!
Revolted by the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, God sent down destruction by inferno (Gen. 19:13, 28). The people of Sodom were so sinful that they wanted to sodomize even the angels of God sent to destroy them but disguised as the guests of Lot (Gen. 19:4-11). Jude terms this incident as “going after strange flesh” and that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha justly suffered “the vengeance of eternal fire” to set forth an example (Jude 1:7). That example was meant to serve as a warning to succeeding generations that would live a similarly ungodly life. As the apostle Peter put it, God turned “the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes [and] condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after [wards] should live ungodly” (2 Pet. 2:6).
But are today’s sodomites paying heed? Like their counterparts of yesteryear, today’s sodomites are shameless and uninhibited in their abominable wickedness. They are no longer content to keep secret their ‘sexual orientation’ (not preference); they come out openly and proudly, as indeed Bible prophecy said they would: “The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves” (Isa. 3:9).
Homosexuality is an exercise in self-destruction; sodomites reward evil unto themselves spiritually, emotionally and physically. If the truth be told, the dreaded disease HIV/ AIDS was introduced into the world by homosexuals. And the Bible foretold it: “For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error” (Rom. 1:26-27 NASU).
Yet despite the scourge of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) brought on by homosexuality, the world’s homosexuals (the so-called ‘gay community’) “have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than a rock; they have refused to return” (Jer. 5:3). Destruction is afoot. In the scriptures homosexuality is held to be one of the most disgusted sins abhorring to the LORD, and He decrees death for those who engage in it (Lev. 18:22, 20:13). Besides, it defiles the land and invites God’s wrath upon it (Lev. 18:24-28).
But alas! “Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah” (Isa. 1:9). Strange and bewildering it is, but practicing priests have joined the ranks of homosexuals, and churches ordain homosexual priests and bless ‘same-sex marriage! In the process, the true commandment-keeping church of God (Rev. 12:17) has been “left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city” (Isa. 1:8).
The daughter of Zion, the true church, is besieged by evil, besieged by false churches and besieged by false teachings in this Sodom-like world teetering on the brink of destruction! This is the time to heed the Lord’s warning, “Remember Lot’s wife”! Child of Zion, don’t fall in with the decadent Babylonian culture around; rather, ” deliver thyself” (Zech. 2:7). As Christ warns in Luke 17, the moment we ease ourselves into the worldly life of wanton pleasure and comfort is when we lose our lives: “Remember Lot’s wife. Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it” (Like 17:32-33).
Mrs. Lot considered Sodom too comfortable a place to leave behind, together with all her friends, relatives and possessions. While the angels urged them on, “Escape for thy life; look not behind thee ….; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed” (Gen. 19:17), she longed to go back. Eventually, she “looked back from behind” her husband, “and she became a pillar of salt” (Gen. 19:26)–a grim monument of warning to us not to look back to the world now that we have escaped to the Lord (see 2 Pet. 1:4).
In such the Lord has no pleasure (Heb. 10:38). And their fate is to be turned into ‘spiritual pillars of salt’, petrified into that terrifying spiritual state called “perdition” (v. 39a). So with faith let’s continue to work righteousness (Heb. 11:33). Let’s not make Mrs. Lot’s costly mistake of placing greater value on the world, nor take risks with our salvation as Lot did when he knowingly settled in Sodom, a hotbed of evil. The warning in 1 John 2:15-17 should keep ringing in our ears:
“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
“For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,
is not of the Father, but is of the world.
“And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever”.
The world may do as it pleases, entangling itself deeper and deeper in vile abominations, but the Lord’s promise of deliverance remains faithful to the believer: “The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished” (2 Pet. 2:9). Eventually, the world will fall because “the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it” (Isa. 24:20), but when it does fall like Sodom, those who will survive are those who ‘remembered Lot’s wife’ and dared not look back. Choose to be one of them!
