Good morning! What follows below is a teaching from a friend of ours here in KC. His name is Alan Lee, and his knowledge, wisdom and insight on the Word of God are enough to make anyone stop and think. Ponder the following today:
A couple of days ago I was watching a video on you tube on how the TV is programming our society. I have always known this, but it never struck me like this until now.
Thank you Abba for peeling enough layers off in my life, over time (gently & mercifully) to make me open and sensitive to some of the stuff that's really going on out there!
Yeshua said, as it was in the days of Lot, so will it when He returns. I've always been taught, since I was in HS (back when the dinosaurs used to roam the earth) that the world is like Sodom and Gomorrah and that's a pretty good indicator that Yeshua is coming back soon.
In Genesis 18:21, Yahweh Elohim says, "I will go down and see if they have at all done according to the cry coming to me.
Why would a cry go out? I thought they were eating, drinking and marrying and having a good ole time. As in the days of Noah, the days of Ezekiel and the days of Jonah, a cry went up to the Lord. He heard it and decided to bring judgment upon the earth. But unlike our mistaken ideas about Sodom’s sin, the cry God heard was not about sexual immorality. Our Sunday school stories do not teach the real sin of Sodom. It was not homosexuality, lasciviousness, lust or any of the other sexual perversions. It was far greater. And it’s all wrapped up in the Hebrew word tse’aqah and its companionze’aqah. The first word is found in this verse (cry) and the second in the previous verse,18:20 (cry), but as you can see, there are two different words in Hebrew. Nevertheless, the impact of these two words melds into a single offense so great that God brings wrath upon those who embrace them.
What does tse’aqah and ze’aqah mean? They describe the anguished cry of the oppressed, the agonizing plea of the victim for help in some great injustice. This ismoral outrage at the total disregard for human compassion and civility. This is the very opposite of what any human being would consider justice. This is not simply dishonoring Yahweh. This is dishonoring our own kind, a wanton display of human insensitivity toward other human beings. If you want to see what this looks like, you do not have to descend into the brothels or the porn shops. You can watch the news about “racial cleansing” across the globe. You can recall the history of the Holocaust or the actions of Pol Pot. You can realize that we live in the most brutal, most inhuman, most despicable century that the world has ever known. And there is no evidence that things will improve. The potential genocide in the name of Allah that lurks on the horizon has the possibility of making all other acts of cruelty pale by comparison. The destruction of human beings in the name of religion, politics and economics makes us all look as though we not only live in Sodom, but that we have also expanded its city limits to the edge of the globe.
Do we really think that Yahweh will not repeat His expunging wrath on a world gone mad with the lust for power, possession and personal gain? Do we really believe that He can find ten righteous man among us? It is a very frightening thing to contemplate. How long God’s mercy will outweigh His judgment is a gambling bet no man should ever want to take.
So, push aside the idea that Sodom was about sex. Sexual perversion was only one of the symptoms of a culture that cared nothing for those who could be used and abused. Ezekiel lays the blame right where we need to hear it:
“Behold, this is the guilt of your sister, Sodom. She and her daughters had pride, were more than full of food, and prosperous case, but did not aid the poor and the needy. They were haughty, and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them, when I saw it.” (Eze. 16:49-50)
What does God see today? What are you going to do about it before He comes down to see if the cry is great from all humanity?
It's time to act!
Shalom,
Alan
