Sodom And The Dead Sea

A walk across Dead Sea possible by Abraham Rabinovich Jerusalem Post Reporter

The Dead Sea has split into two but no one has yet been known to try to cross from one side to the other.

Shlomo Drori, an official of the Dead Sea Development Company, confirmed last week that the sea has dried up at hits centre between the Israeli side and the 'tongue' on the Jordanian side, three kilometres distant. "It's been this way since 1977," he said.

However, a crossing on foot would be risky, even without the question of security forces on both sides. "There are parts where you have a thin crust of salt over a pool of water. If you fell through no one could get you out," Drori noted.

The shallow centre of the sea dried up because the Jordan River, which was the principal source for the Dead Sea's replenishment, is now almost totally drawn off by Israel and Jordan before its waters reach the area.

A dry plain stretches for 12 kilometres north-south between the northern part of the Dead Sea which is up to 400 metres deep and the artificial pools at the southern end which are up to 20 kilometres long. These pools have their water pumped to them from the northern part of the sea and are a major source of chemicals.

"While the water level might rise somewhat if there are heavy winter runoffs from surrounding hills," said Drori, "the exposed part of the Dead Sea would not be covered over again because of the drawing off of the Jordan River waters. Only implementation of long-mooted plans for feeding Mediterranean waters into the Dead Sea, 400 metres below sea level, would cover the Dead Sea plain."

COURTESY: THE JERUSALEM POST

When this article caught my attention, it dredged deep into memory's trench and recovered another news item that had been buried there for some years. "A pilot, flying low over the Dead Sea said that the light was just right late one afternoon and he felt certain that he could see the outline of a buried city deep under the water that covered the southern portion of the Dead Sea, and that some day it would be dried up and ancient Sodom and Gomorrah would be laid bare."

This event has been awaited with interest. More than once, I have stood on top of Massada, that rare monument which nature had set up as a memorial to the nine hundred and fifty Jews who had sacrificed themselves to maintain freedom of conscience and worship, and avoid Roman chains. From its 420 metre high plateau above the Dead Sea water level we have noticed that level slowly sink year by year, and wondered if the pilot's sighting was material or mirage, fact or fancy. Now we know. Or do we?

It must be conceded that four thousand years have elapsed since Abraham prayed so earnestly that the righteous be spared the judgement that was shortly to overtake Sodom. During that long time there have been many earthquakes in the region and the topography of that section of the Great Rift Valley could well have been altered as a woman tosses a salad in a basin with her tongs and buries a radish or two for a moment, then turns them up again, but loses some onion rings.

They could be there, even under the salty sand and silt that form a bottom for the basin which is the Dead Sea. But though the cities and the citizens whose sins signed the warrant for their destruction are out of sight, those hundreds of hectares of bleak and barren waste are still there -- mute memorials of divine grief and holy horror; a vast graveyard of evil deeds that were more corrupting than the corpses that once were so suddenly covered with corrosive sulphur and hot ash, marbled here and there with ghastly ribbons of boiling bitumen.

A new book is on sale and a pithy and pertinent book it is. Rene Noorbergen wrote it after many years of research and called it: SECRETS OF THE LOST RACES. Permit a quotation.

"Pyramid Power and the Psychotronic generators have a two fold implication. First, their ancient origin and highly sophisticated technology point to their source as having been BEFORE THE FLOOD. They show that in the final days prior to the Flood, the antediluvians had advanced in knowledge to a point where they crossed the line separating pure science from pure occultism. In some way they had managed to fuse the supernatural with the natural and in the process had destroyed their civilization.

"The second implication is far more ominous. The intensity of the research into the mystery of 'Pyramid power' and 'Psychotronics' is now rapidly approximating the same level that the antediluvians reached before the Flood.

"Today, both science and occult knowledge are beginning to approach their theoretical limits -- aiming for the ultimate in technical and spiritual manipulation. Is it possible that we are again edging closer to the danger point?"

The Warning of Sodom and Gomorroh

It is provocative of thought to notice that Y'shua ha Mashiach used both the Flood and the destruction of Sodom as an illustration, because the city of Sodom and its sister cities had a critical moment too. Just as the Holy One had spoken to Noah, warning him to prepare for the Flood, so did He also appear to Abraham, to prepare him for what was to happen to those wicked cities.

If Noah had witnessed the cross-over from the natural to the supernatural, so Abraham, more than five hundred years later, saw the descent from the natural to the unnatural, and was unable to arrest the Divine anger that flamed eventually into fire and brimstone that fell to annihilate the beastliness of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The stark desert which resulted is still there, four thousand years later, to warn a world that forgets, because it refuses to believe, that though Israel's God did promise never to destroy the world by flood again, He never did pledge Himself not to use fire twice.

At least seven times in the Old Testament it is said that God "overthrew Sodom", besides the several other references to the tragedy. And in the New Testament it is used again as a warning to modern generations.

Four of those references are startling for they assert that it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgement than for people who had had opportunity to identify themselves with the Messiah, and did not.

In the Book of Daniel we are told that people will stand in "their lot" at the end of the days. The people of Sodom are in theirs and Abraham is in his. They are not together.

The cities have been judged and are no more. Its citizens still await judgement somewhere the other side of death. The Scriptures assure us: "It is appointed unto man once to die, and after that, the judgement."

Wise people will not be standing in the dock with the people of Sodom and Gomorrah but will be able to stand with Abraham who is where he is, because he is justified by his faith, as the Scriptures say: "Abraham believed in the Eternal and He counted it to him for righteousness."

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