Weird Stuff in the Bible

The REAL Reason God Destroyed Sodom & Gomorrah
Jude 7

Introduction
Fire and brimstone.
Everlasting destruction.
Outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
God is not always very subtle when He communicates how He feels about something.
And maybe that’s the point. When it comes to some issues, God is trying to be as clear as possible.
And it couldn’t be more clear that God had a problem with these cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Genesis 19:24-25 say:
the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens. 25 Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land.
So it’s pretty clear that God had a problem with Sodom and Gomorrah. But is it so obvious what that problem was? Well, the Bible gives some conflicting- or less clear- answers to that question.
And when God does something as drastic as dropping a nuclear bomb out of heaven on a city, well, I find that to be a little weird, and I’d like to know exactly why it’s in the Bible.
So grab one, turn to Genesis 19, and let’s get weird.
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(Continued)
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and today we’re going to be talking about- well, before I tell you what I’m talking about, let me just warn you to hide your kids from today’s episode. I mean, I’m not going to be talking about anything that wouldn’t happen in a Senate Hearing Chamber in Washington DC, but if you’re not sure what that list includes, you may want to keep the little ones away from today’s episode.
And in this show, we don’t mince words, we just get right into it, so now that you’ve been warned, let’s look at what was going on in the story where God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

Genesis 19, the historical narrative
In Genesis 19, God has sent a couple of angels to check out the city of Sodom. These are just typical angels, who usually have the appearance of normal everyday men when they show up, and that’s how they appear in this story. Abraham has made a sort of wager with God; Abraham asks God to spare the city if the angels can find at least 5 righteous people within it. Spoilers: they can’t. They go to the house of a man named Lot and they’re in his house when this happens in:
Genesis 19:4-5
4 Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. 5 They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”
I told you to hide the kids. So, these men are homosexual, predatory homosexuals, and the mere presence of a couple of new guys makes them all show up outside the house demanding to bring them out for sexual purpose (remember, these angels just have the appearance of men, so the Sodomites don’t even know that the angels are angels).
So, at a first glance, it seems that the homosexual population in Sodom was pretty high and had a lot of cultural power. After all, if you can knock on someone’s door and demand that they present themselves to you for sexual purposes, you can draw a lot of conclusions about that; this was obviously a gay-affirming society to an insane degree.
But is that the main reason that God is destroying the city- wiping out every last man, woman, boy and girl? Well, if this is all we had to go off of, then we might conclude yes. But then the book of Ezekiel comes along and throws a wrench into things.

Ezekiel 16, the Prophetic account
Ezekiel 16:49-50
49 Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. 50 They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it.
So here’s a list of Sodom’s sins, and homosexual activity is not mentioned. Which is kinda weird, right? Because for many of us, this is the first thing you think of when you hear the word Sodom. You think of sodomy.
Many of those on the liberal Christian movement say that this means that God was not upset with Sodom and Gomorrah over the rampant homosexuality. So-called progressive Christians have a way to take every single passage in the Bible that talks about homosexuality being sinful and find some way to nullify it.
But what about Ezekiel 16? Does it nullify the claim that Sodom was wicked because of its homosexual activity? can we use Ezekiel 16 to contradict our traditional understanding of what Sodom’s sin is? Well, I would say this. If Ezekiel 16 was the only passage in the entire Bible that described the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, then we could pretty easily filter everything we know about Sodom and Gomorrah through this lens, and if that were the case, then we could probably conclude that Sodom’s homosexual citizens didn’t have anything to do with why God destroyed them. Or we could severely weaken that case, anyway
But it turns out that Ezekiel 16 is not the only chapter of the Bible that references Sodom. Sodom is mentioned quite a bit in scripture. So-called Progressive Christians want to just focus on Ezekiel 16 as if it’s all that matters. But if we’re going to be intellectually consistent, we need to look at ALL of the chapters. Not just pick one that doesn’t mention homosexuality specifically and decide that this is the only one that tells us how to think about Sodom.

Jude 7, the New Testament summary
And now we continue our journey in the book of Jude, which we’ve been slowly making our way through on this podcast. I say slowly because it’s the only way that I know how to study the Bible. You go slow and you dig in. So what does the book of Jude say about the sin of Sodom?
Jude 7
just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
Jude 7 says they pursued unnatural desire and called their sin sexual immorality.
Now, their sin being called sexual immorality should be the final nail in the coffin. Yes, Sodom’s sins might have included all these other things, but homosexuality was what was depicted in the historical account, and sexual immorality was the reason Jude cited as why they are currently burning in hell.
Now, still in search of a loophole, some will point out the clause right here about unnatural desire. They say that the sexual immorality wasn’t the fact that they were seeking sexual relations with people of the same gender, but that they were seeking sexual relations with angelic beings, because seeking a sexual relationship with angels would be the “unnatural desire.”
But as I said before, they had no idea that the angels were angels, because the angels had the appearance of men, as I tried to make clear earlier. They just thought that the men were regular people. So Jude is saying that by pursuing male + male sexual relationships, they were pursuing something that was not natural.
So, what is the REAL reason that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah? I know this is not politically correct to say nowadays, and I know this is not what a lot of false teachers and heretics will tell you on Twitter, but God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because of the rampant homosexuality.
It was surely not because of a one-time event in Genesis 19. This was the culture of those cities. They accepted, celebrated and endorsed homosexual activity. It got to such an insane degree that they were literally demanding to pull people out of their houses so that they could molest them.

Housekeeping/Mailbag
Next time on this podcast, it’ll be 2024! And on both this podcast and on my other podcast, Cross References, I’m going to be doing an expose on Satan, the devil. IDK what your New Year’s Resolution is, but mine is to expose Satan, so between the two podcasts, we’ll be covering Ezekiel 28 and Jude verses 8-10. All about the devil. Make sure you’re subscribed so you can get it!
What weird stuff in the Bible do you want to know more about? weirdstuffinthebible@gmail.com
MAILBAG: [read it]
Some theorize that Nephilim survived the flood, and that this was how there were Nephilim after the flood. My main issue with that theory is:
Genesis 7:21
21 And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind.
So based on that, I don’t believe any Nephilim survived the flood. That’s why in the past couple episodes, I’ve been distinguishing between the Phase 1 Nephilim and the Phase 2 Nephilim. My belief is that the Sons of God came down and tried this again at least one more time after the flood, which were the second wave of Nephilim, known as the Anakim and the Rephaim.

Closing Thoughts
Now, as we close, why didn’t Ezekiel mention the homosexuality? Because I’ll admit, it’s a little weird. Or is it?
I do believe the homosexual act is alluded to in Ezekiel 16, where God said: “They were haughty and did an abomination before me.” I think that word “abomination” is a reference to their homosexual sin. Why do I say that? Because homosexual behavior is said to be an abomination before God in
Leviticus 18:22
You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.
Now, lots of things can be an abomination so this is not an open-and-shut case, but like I said, I think homosexuality fits into this statement that we find in Ezekiel 16.
Now, why didn’t God mention homosexuality specifically here? Maybe because it wasn’t relevant in God’s comparison with Jerusalem. Perhaps ancient jerusalem at this time, with all it’s problems, didn’t have an issue with homosexual activity. But God says, that doesn’t make you better than Sodom. You’re still as prideful as Sodom was. You’re still neglecting the poor as badly as Sodom did. So don’t pat yourself on the back about not having gay rapists in your town. You have a lot of other problems, too. You’re just as bad as Sodom.
If that’s what’s going on, then it makes perfect sense whey God left homosexuality out right here.
Now, you’re probably wondering why I didn’t leave homosexuality out of this podcast. Why drop this in right around Christmastime? This isn’t what people want to hear about and talk about right now.
And I agree. I don’t want to discuss it either. But there’s a couple reasons I did this episode. For one thing, we’re studying Jude, and this is what came up next in Jude. This book is about apostasy: things that draw people away from Christianity; that cause people to reject God and the Bible. And one of those things is sexual immorality.
Lemme read it again:
Jude 7
just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
Verses 5, 6 and 7 are one of Jude’s triplets, describing three things that cause people to fall away from God. I talked about two of them two episodes ago, and here’s the third. The first two were fear, or faithlessness; the second one was rebellion. And the third one was sexual immorality.
II Thessalonians tells us that before Christ comes back, there will be a great falling away from the church. A great apostasy. And if you look at the statistics, people are leaving the church today in droves. And what’s causing it? Well, in America, it’s taking greater courage day by day to stand for Christ. There’s greater pressure than ever to capitulate on Christian values. So fear is a factor, for sure. And there’s been a rebellion against Christian values. And there’s been an embracing of sexual immorality; many churches out there now calling themselves gay affirming.
So I don’t want to talk about this today, but I am, two days after Christmas (or whenever you listen to this), and I’m doing that because Jude brings it up; but beyond that fact, let’s talk about what’s been going on in our society here lately:
as I alluded to earlier, in the Senate hearing room, a Democratic Senate staffer was caught filming a pornographic movie. I don’t know how he didn’t expect to get caught, because he was uploading the video online to one of these pornographic websites. But he did. Our own Senate was used to film gay porn.
A children’s show called Cocomelon featured a new episode with a little boy wearing a dress and dancing for his two gay dads.
The pope gave his OK for Catholic priests to bless people in gay unions.
A school board member just elected in Virginia was sworn in by placing his hand on a stack of gay porn. They were cartoon drawings featuring children and teenagers. Most of the time, people swear into office with their hand on a Bible. They do this, for one thing, because of the gravity of their oath, but also because they say this is the standard that I’m basing my life on. I will live in accordance with this book. And for this school board member, he says “the Bible is not good enough for me, my life standard is gay pornography.”
And all those stories happened in the span of a week. Actually, within just a few days. Our American culture is very depraved, sick and wicked. Some question whether America is as bad as Sodom and Gomorrah. I’m not sure. I mean, Sodom was apparently yanking people out of their houses to rape them. I don’t think that’s even going on in San Francisco.
People don’t want to hear about a book that says homosexuality is evil. They question why we would, quote, “get our morality from a book that was written thousands of years ago in the desert.” As if truth has an expiration point. They’ll mock our trust in the Bible, while they get sworn into office on a stack of pornography.
They think it’s weird that God cares who people have sex with. They think it’s weird if you believe the morals of a book written in the Middle East 2000 years ago. And they think you’re weird if you take God’s Word as truth.
But if that makes Christians weird, then I hope you’re a little more weird today, too. Thanks for listening, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next time.