Originally posted by smurfy2day
*YAWN*
People openly condoning sin and living out of the closet is just a sign of the times people! We ARE living in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah!!!!
In Sodom and Gomorrah the crime was pride.
Ezekiel 16:49 - 50, "Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good." Isaiah tells of lack of justice. Jeremiah emphasizes moral and ethical laxity. The Deuterocanonical books identify the sin as pride and inhospitality; in Wisdom 19:13-14, we read "...whereas the men of Sodom received not the strangers when they came among them." In Ecclesiasticus 16:8 the sin is recognized as pride: "He did not spare the people among whom Lot was living, whom he detested for their pride." In the New Testament, too, there is reference to Sodom and inhospitality: In Luke 10:10-13, Christ talks about cities that are inhospitable to his disciples. He warns: "...it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that city." It's not until the very late books of 2 Peter (2:4) and Jude (6), that sex is considered a sin of Sodom. These books were written several generations after the deaths of the apostles and were talking about the transgression of the natural order of life when angelic and human beings have heterosexual relations - a major concern to the popular Stoic philosophy of the time.
Not only are there no references to homosexual acts when Scripture refers to Sodom, there are no references to Sodom when the Scriptures refer to homosexuality. There are several biblical passages that some have misunderstood as condemning homosexual acts. Not one of these gives Sodom as an example of the result of homosexual behavior. Considering how often Sodom was used as an example of the result of wicked behavior, it's apparent that biblical times did not see homosexual acts as the important lesson of the destruction of Sodom.
Lot attempts to protect the visitors sent by God by offering his two virgin daughters to be raped. The people of Sodom refuse them and the angels render the crowd blind. Lot and his family are then rescued by the angels as the cities are destroyed.
God spared Lot and his daughters from the destruction of Sodom. Genesis 19:33-36 goes on to say how the daughters got Lot drunk and committed incest with him. Would God destroy two cities for homosexuality and save these people so they would go right out and commit incest?
Perhaps one of the most misleading term in English is the use of the word sodomy to describe anal penetration and/or male homosexuality. The mere fact of this linguistic development sealed in the minds of many English speaking people that Sodom was destroyed because of homosexuality.
For 2,000 years, until the last century before Christ, Israel understood the lesson of Sodom to be one of pride and hospitality.
Thanks anyway.....
