The story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18:16-33 and 19:1-29 illustrates the seriousness of sin and God’s willingness to forgive repentant sinners.
The Revs. Albert Flores and Donnie Rollie say the three men who visited Abraham near the trees of Mamre were actually God and two angels en route to rain burning sulfur on the cities because of their wickedness.
“It shows the grace of God in the opportunity he has given people to repent,” said the Rev. Flores, pastor of Victory Life Church. “Abraham asked God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if he could find 50, then 40, 30, 20 or even 10 righteous people there, but he couldn’t find any except for Abraham’s nephew Lot and his family.
“So we see that God is serious about sin. If we don’t repent, he will bring judgment. We have the same problem in America today with violence, drugs, drug trafficking, human trafficking and other things.”
Flores said the angels saw that Sodom and Gomorrah should be destroyed when a crowd of men demanded that Lot send them outside to be raped, whereupon the angels struck the crowd blind.
“In God’s grace and mercy, he gives us time to repent and turn back to him,” he said. “He says in Second Chronicles 7:14, ‘If my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from Heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.’
“We all sin in one way or another and come short of the glory of God,” Flores said. “We can’t say, ‘My sin is better than your sin.’ Sin is sin.”
The Rev. Rollie, pastor of Manna of the Word Ministries, said God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah “because there was so much sin in the world that people were turning their backs on the Lord and he had to put an end to it.
“The lesson is that people should hear the ones whom God has sent before them and heed their warnings. Lot gave them a way of escape, but they had started making their own god, which brought them to calamity.”
Rollie said the situation was like a father who tells his son not to do something and is immediately disobeyed.
“The sin is on the son, not the father, because the son failed to pay attention,” he said. “He can’t excuse himself when trouble comes because he didn’t heed the warning.
“When we don’t heed warnings, there are consequences. It’s still the same today. People are doing what they want to do and not what God has called them to do. He has given us a prescription that we all need to take in order not to be dying but to live.”
