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Ep. 2 Did Archaeologists Just Find Biblical Sodom’s Fiery Ruins?

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join Sam and will as they bring the

Bible's stories to life through

historical evidence and try not to feel

out of place in a car garage all while

hood so Sam the real question is why are

the two of us filming this in a car

garage come on will like it's a car

garage it's old things being made new

Jesus says behold I make all things new

he brings the dead back to life so

really what you're saying is someone

lets us film here for free because we're pastors

pastors

yeah pretty much a little bit of both

welcome to under the hood I am will

Bushman and I'm alongside Sam cman and

Sam what are we talking about today

today we're going to be talking about

one of the most famous judgments that

you ever see in the Bible so when you

think judgment you think end of the

world you might think the flood but

probably a close third maybe second is

the destruction of Sodom where God Rains

Down fire and brimstone if you've ever

heard that expression fire and brimstone

this is where it comes from okay so

another fun one yeah another fun one

that's right with it it shows God's

character that he is a god of justice

but woven through every single one of

these stories you find the mercy of God

that he extends to people and so you see

the totality of God and it's good for us

to recognize that he is Holy and just

and we find in the story as well a god

of Mercy who's looking to redeem people

and the crazy part about this is really

the recent archaeological evidence that

comes from the ancient city of Sodom

that's right if you look around on the

news when when these discoveries were

being made and they were being published

by the scientists and archaeologist who

found them many many news outlets began

posting news that Sodom had potentially

been discovered and so the the guy who

discovered this his name is Step Collins

he's an archaeologist and he got

permission from the Jordanian government

to start searching for Sodom and there

was one particular place and that he

wanted to search because when the Bible

talks about Sodom it says that it's

visible from the Jordan from where

Abraham was standing at bethl and Ai and

you look over straight across the Jordan

and there was a a mound that was called

Tel hamam and he was like that fits all

the criteria of ancient Sodom the size

of it because Sodom was a massive City

in the ancient world and so he got

permission to start doing an an

archaeological dig there and when he

began to dig there he was blown away by

what he found so the evidence really

shows us it's going back thousands of

years that now in our modern day that

this is not just some madeup story but

we have real things being brought up

from the ground that actually back what

this story and it's crazy and we're

going to talk about the crazy Parts but

back what actually the biblical

narrative States that's right and so as

he's digging it up it comes from the

right time the middle Bronze Age period

it's got all the right fortifications

the size the region even even down to

what you would expect to def find in an

ancient Palace of this type they're

digging all of this up and everything

matches to where other people even

Skeptics are saying you know maybe this

inspired the story of Sodom because

everything links up now we know with the

Bible being inspired this is Sodom and

so as he's digging around he finds tons

of evidence and one of the things is

this city is massive which sets us apart

from all the other archaeological digs

like ancient Jericho was a massive city

this city is five

times the size of Jericho so we should

expect to find something in the ground

correct yeah so 62 acres inside the

walls if you look at what's there today

before they started digging it just

looks like a big Mound well they built

the cities on top of these Mounds for

defense and so he's going around and you

find walls over here and one of the

first places that he digs is at the top

of this thing which is where you should

expect to find the Royal Palace and

that's what he finds okay so he

discovers this Palace so what's the deal

with the palace well as he's Excavating

the palace one of the thing and it's

called the Red Palace and one of the

reasons why it's called the Red Palace

is it was destroyed with fire that left

red coloration all over the rocks from

the damage of the fire and as they're

Excavating they're having to remove

several feet of Ash because this city

had been burned and the roof and timers

and everything else had fallen in and

been buried under there so we find a

city with all the dimensions location

fortifications of Sodom and we know that

it was burned and D destroyed by fire

but then as he keeps going he's finding

that there was a blast that shoved

everything over like everything is kind

of bent a little bit from some blast

that kind of shoved it and when he

starts looking around in the city he

comes up with a theory that's been

validated by other scientists and

astrophysicists from the region where

he's finding this explosion that

happened overhead so fire and brimstone

from above he's theorizing that this was

a meteor that the explosion when it came

into our atmosphere over the Dead Sea

was so absolutely intense that it like

it turned sand into diamondoids it

shocked quartz it left glass layers over

Pottery where it had come in with such

force and heat that it transformed the

landscape and so many things in the city

instantaneously so this wasn't just a

casual Palace fire no no no no no like

an ordinary house fire today Burns at

around 1100 to 1200 degrees Fahrenheit

when they were finding things in the

ruins the damage that was caused that

turned things to Glass and whatnot it

had to have been at a heat that is

around the neighborhood of 3600 degrees

Fahrenheit now in the ancient world they

had no technology that could replicate

this the only explanation that's hotter

than magma that's hotter than lava

anything like that so the only

explanation that we could find is that

this came from a meteoric blast that

just shocked the ground and melted

things and one of the other cool things

is when they looked around at the

landscape you could see that the

landscape was actually peppered with

like charcoal looking things where it

had literally been raining down these

burning rocks on this city one of the

really interesting things that they

found was a whole bunch of what's called

trinitite rocks and it's called

trinitite rocks if you went back to the

40s when they were testing the atomic

bomb and they used what was called the

Trinity bomb Trinity explosion it came

down and it actually transformed rocks

into trinitite rocks because it B

blistered them and they started calling

it trinitite rocks because the force of

the explosion and the Heat of the

explosion instantly blistered these

rocks and so when you go into Sodom and

you're looking around at different

Pottery shards that were left behind you

can see that they're glazed because of

the degrees of the heat but they're also

blistered so the same kind of force that

you found in the atomic explosion the

test explosion you find in Sodom so this

was no small thing this was cataclysmic

so it makes sense that a whole

would be destroyed if something like

this happened absolutely absolutely so

you mentioned already a modern atomic

bomb because we're talking about

thousands and thousands years before

this so in our modern vocabulary in our

modern mindset what would this explosion

have been like we don't have a lot to

compare it to but probably the closest

where some of the scientists have

compared it to this was in 1908 there

was a meteoric explosion over tunguska

Russia and you can see pictures if you

Google it you'll see this all the trees

and forests are just laid over because

of the force of this blast and they

theorized that this was a thousand more

than a thousand times more powerful than

the Hiroshima atomic bomb and they're

saying that this blast over Tel Al hamam

or Sodom was more powerful than that so

imagine a thousand Hiroshima and Up the

Volume that's what we're talking about

wow so it makes sense that an agent City

would have easily been destroyed by this

yeah would have been decimated and and

everything in its path would have been

decimated for Miles you know obviously

with a blast like this you would expect

many many cities to be destroyed and so

they started looking at the surrounding

landscape that's around T Al hamam and

they found evidence that this explosion

decimated the whole region in fact when

they started doing the Dig they found

that from this moment Sodom goes from

being a city five times larger than

Jericho and after this moment for 700

years the city's entirely uninhabited

It's Made A Wasteland and Sodom was

known as this like beautiful Lush even

garden-like City so the fact that it was

decimated and left uninhabitable for 700

years it's crazy yeah so even if you

today like if you jump to Genesis 13 it

talks about it like you said being

well-watered like the garden of the lord

it's comparing it to Eden you get in you

get in a plane you go over there today

it's like desert it's totally desolate

it's rocks and sand and you wonder like

if it's well watered like the garden of

the Lord what led people B to run away

from this city for 700 years and this is

where the story gets really really

fascinating to me and it even supports

the story more so when the the burst

came over they theorized that you have

this meteor that's coming over and it

hits and explodes right over the

northern side of the Dead Sea now if you

know anything about the Dead Sea it's

34% salt like just imagine that like the

makeup of it is almost 10 times more

salty than the Pacific ocean when you go

there like we you float on the water

because it changes your buoyancy it's

tremendously salty and so when you read

the archaeologist report about all the

surrounding soils and everything else

when you get to this layer back in the

days of Sodom this archaeological layer

what they find is tremendously high

levels of salt and so you can imagine

this meteor comes explodes just on top

of the Dead Sea coming toward the Dead

Sea and it blows a shock wave of salt

that covers the whole region well in the

ancient world when you would go to war

against an enemy and you never wanted

that enemy to come back you would salt

their fields you see that in the Bible

with ailec and in the Book of Judges

where he salts the fields of his enemies

so that they're their crops will no

longer grow there and it goes from being

this Lush place that's like the garden

of the Lord to where you can't get

anything to grow anymore because the

soil content has been thoroughly

contaminated with salt and that kind of

evidence even supports maybe the

craziest part of the story by far is

that Lot's wife at the end looks back at

this city being destroyed and the Bible

just said she turns into a pillar of

salt and you're always just like that

makes no sense at all yeah it makes no

it's one of those moments where when you

hear it it's like okay God inspired this

word he's the authoritative one if he

says she turned into a pillar of salt

I'm good with it but what is that about

well now I mean think about it in

context when this explosion happens and

it sense this shock wave of anhydride

salts that are heated and stick to

everything just encapsulating it sticks

to the sand sticks to the trees sticks

to the buildings everything imagine

Lot's wife who when you hear the story

it says that she looked back it's not

that she looked back it's that she

turned back she wanted to go back to her

wealth and so when she turns back and

goes back into the the blast radius of

some sort this shock wave of salt just

totally encapsulates her and when

perhaps when they find her corpse she is

covered with this salt almost like you

know almost like Napal or something

where it's just stuck to her and it's

frozen her in time and so that makes

sense of this like I can't guarantee but

it's a pretty good theory an explosion

that's a thousand times greater than

atomic bomb we got a whole city that's

left uninhabitable for 700 years I think

what's probably on all of our minds is

isn't this a little extreme of a

judgment God yeah so I mean that's one

of the the more more pronounced

judgments that we find in scripture and

so let's just jump in in Genesis 19 and

tell the story of how how we got there

so God sends two angels into the city

because he's been hearing outcries

coming from the region so this is a

region that doesn't even believe in God

and yet they're crying out because of

the wickedness of this city and if you

understand Canaanite culture of the

region like they're engaged in child

sacrifice they're engaged in ories

they're doing things that are pretty

wicked so for Sodom to be set apart in

the category of wickedness the Canaanite

cities you're like what in the world are

they doing good grief well God doesn't

answer that question up front for us

what happens is he sends two angels into

the city to go on a rescue mission to

get lot and his family and they show up

in the city and right at the gates lot's

like you can't be here like you have to

come to my house we have to get you

hidden before the people of the city see

you which is telling right this is not a

safe place it's very Wicked and so

they're like no we're fine here and he's

like no you have to come back back to my

house so they go to the house and it

says and like true to God's word this is

a wicked City it says all the men of the

city came to lot's door and began

banging on the door and they're

demanding that lot bring out these two

men that are new to the city so that

they can rape them and you're like whoa

that's the kind of city that they're

walking into right now so you're really

saying that the whole city of men was

there wasn't just a few bad apples that

were were looking to do harm that as a

city they were at the doorstep yeah so

this is a very Wicked place and one of

the things that they've discovered in

the archaeology helps us to explain why

that happened so as they're digging

around in t Al hamam they find all of

these things that point that this is not

a Canaanite City it's actually got roots

in the aan which is the Mediterranean

cuz they're finding you know nowhere in

the Canaanite cities of of the middle

Bronze Age do you find columns but in

this city there's columns in the palace

well that's a gean you find that in

Manan civilizations or the Myan

civilizations not here another thing is

you find artwork of downward-facing

bullheads which is it points us to a a

sport that was tremendously famous

through the aian that was called bull

leaping where a bull would charge you

and you would run at the bull and then

you would leap over the top of the bull

and you would do a somersault there's

artwork that captures this and you would

like avoid the bull it's like way more

than just bull fighting you're leaping

over the horns and doing a somersault

off the bat crazy stuff and so you find

phallic images all of these things point

to the idea that this city was not

founded by reg the re the Canaanites of

the region they it was founded by people

from the aan and now that starts to make

sense of things because if you go back

to the middle Bronze Age one of the

things that you find in Manan culture

which is hard to stomach it's one of the

more wicked things you find in history

is that in order to become a citizen in

the monan

city your father arranged kind of a

write of passage for you that so that

when you were entering into the age of

adulthood 12 years old your father would

arrange with the Elders of the city a

ceremony where the men of the city would

come to your door they would kidnap you

and a man would take you off into the

Wilderness where you would have kind of

a honeymoon with this man I mean it's gross

gross

but he would train you how to become a

man and when he came back if he gave a

good report on your character and your

willingness to do what he said then

you'd be rewarded with armor a chalice

and an ox and then you were considered a

citizen of the city and so now I want

you to imagine you see two men who have

not undergone this initiation right that

are wanting to take up residence in the

city of Sodom and now all of the men are

seeing them and going no they have not

undergone that so it would make sense

that all the men of the city which is

the tradition come to the door banging

on the door saying we demand that these

men come out and that they be they

undergo that right so in a city that is

that Wicked how did a guy like lot end

up there it's an interesting question

because lot ends up there because God

blessed his socks off and so the story

goes if you if you jump back to Genesis

13 Abraham is growing in wealth and

possessions and his livestock and herds

he's just they're getting massive and

the same is happening for lot and

they've got so much stuff but they don't

have enough room to dwell together and

so what they say is well I would rather

Chase my wealth and in a sense that's

what lot says I would rather have my

wealth than my relationship with you

Abraham and Abraham comes and says the

tension that's developing is too much

like we need we need to separate so you

pick the land and I'll if you want to be

here I'll go over there if you want to

go there I'll stay here and lot that's

when it says lot looks over and he sees

the the the plains of Sodom and it's

like the garden of the lord it's it's

rich like Egypt and he's got dollar

signs in his eyes and he thinks man God

is dwelling here this is where the

promise is and yet over there it's like

the garden and he's happy to have the

garden even though God is not in it and

he tells them it's a wicked City L lot

is like but there's money there I'll

take the money I don't care about the

wickedness or the fact that God is is

not over there and so he goes over there

and he pitches his tents with these

people and he's chasing after wealth and

then something tragic happens to him and

this is where you get to see God

intervene and do something that's

tremendously merciful and instructive

for us in the middle of a messy story

about Sodom you see how God wants us to

inter to interact with Messy stories

like Sodom so how does God do that we're

gonna see four major Empires this

Genesis 14 very famous ancient war these

four major Empires team up and they just

go through the whole region and they're

plundering the major cities of the

region so Sodom and Gomorrah and and

other territories and what they do is

they plunder all of the stuff all of the

riches all of the wealth and then they

enslave all of the people and so these

four major Empires come destroy these

cities and they take the plunder and

their people and they start heading back

home and Abraham hears of this and

here's what's fascinating lot has just

betrayed Abraham for money does that

sound familiar can you think of anyone

else who's betrayed for money like

that's our savior right and the rest of

them are all the people of Sodom who God

has said as just utterly Wicked people

right we know how Wicked they are from

the later story and they start heading

up North and here's where you find

Abraham doing something outrageously

courageous and faithful he rounds up the

318 people in his little village that he

can muster up and they chase down this

major Empire attack them at

night rescues lot rescues the people of

Sodom all of their wealth brings them

back and gives them back to the king of

Sodom and the king of Sodom is like you

can keep all the wealth and Abraham's

like no no no my God is not going to be

indebted to you I can't take a dime of

this which is shows that he's not like

them he's not greedy he's not living for

the treasures of this world but then

another character comes and he's an odd

character he's an odd character he

appears one time in the entire Bible and

it happens in Genesis 14

and it's a guy named melkisedek and

there's so many clues about who this is

and it's really really beautiful and

instructive for us so the name

melchisedek comes from two different

Hebrew words for King MC and zedek

righteousness so he's the king of

righteousness and then it says he's the

king of Salem OR Shalom which means he's

the king of righteousness he's the king

of Peace then it tells us that he's the

priest of God most high and he comes

with Bread and Wine which which are the

emblems of

communion and it's hinting at you that

this being that appears once is Christ

later on it will say that Jesus is a

priest this you find this in Hebrews you

find this in the Psalms that Jesus is a

priest according to the order of

melchisedek this guy he is the king of

righteousness he is the king of Peace he

comes with The Bread and Wine he is the

high priest of God most high and

melkisedek shows up and he's just there

ready to celebrate Abraham for what he's

just done and you think why in the world

would you want to celebrate Abraham for

this of all the things that Abraham has

done like you obeyed the call he left

haran he went on this journey after

being called by God he'll do so many

faithful things in his life but the one

moment that melkisedek the pre-incarnate

Jesus shows up to praise Abraham for is

you just went on a rescue mission to

rescue somebody who sold you out out for

silver and you chase down the people of

Sodom the most wicked vile repulsive

people of the region and you were

willing to lay down your life to rescue

people like that and the pre-incarnate

Jesus in melchisedec shows up and goes

oh Blessed Be Abraham by God most high

like that is pointing our hearts to

Mercy so here's where you see the the

troubling dynamic because you have God

who's going to Scorch them with Justice

and yet what does God celebrate for us

mercy so even though God knows that

these people are going to be destroyed

for their wickedness he shows up and

levels praise upon praise upon Abraham

for showing Mercy even to the wicked um

so what does that teach us about God

then what it teaches me is that Justice

is ultimately left in the hands of God I

mean he's going to rightly judge the

city of Sodom for their wickedness and

yet he celebrates Abraham for being

tremendously merciful to those same

people for being willing to lay down his

life for those people he presents the

nature of God to those people and that's

all Abraham is asked to do and God

celebrates him for being merciful and

kind and just to the wicked and it's

like God is saying

Justice Vengeance that belongs to me

your role as my people is Mercy and

that's beautiful it's amazing so God is

really truly praising Abraham for his

Mercy I mean he sends the pre-incarnate

Jesus to bless him and Abraham gives him

a tenth another sign that Abraham

believes that he's God he's tithing to

this figure melkisedek and and that

doesn't stop in this moment the chapter

before Sodom is destroyed in Genesis 18

God comes to Abraham and he's like this

city is about to be destroyed I want to

give you a heads up and Abraham even

though he knows that city is wicked

begins pleading like well what would it

take for you to save the city and then

then he starts negotiating he's like

what if there are 50 righteous guys in

that City would would you destroy the

city if there's 50 righteous guys in

there and God says of course not if I

could find 50 righteous people in that

City I would spare it and then Abraham

knowing that City no that's a pretty

high number completely so he's like well

what about 45 and what about 40 and 30

and 20 and he works all the way down to

10 and Abraham is pleading with God like

interceding for these Wicked people that

take a we can take a hint from that

right we should be praying for our

enemies and those who persecute us and

God says man if you if you could find 10

righteous people in that City I would

spare it for the sake of 10 and what

that teaches us and what it points our

eyes to as

Christians is God will spare a city if

he can find one righteous person in that

City and so what was the point of what

Jesus did Jesus is the only person who

ever walked in this world who was

completely righteous without sin and he

stood here and he welcomed people into

the city of Heaven Come find your

citizenship in the city of Heaven

because there's a righteous person there

and because we have one righteous person

God shows Mercy on all the people who

call his name and that's a beautiful

thing Our God has a heart of mercy and

we find our Salvation in him so not only

do we come to the story of Sodom because

the archaeology that we talked about we

see that it really did take place but it

also points us to a God who is

ultimately just but extremely merciful

even in the midst of his Justice amen

well I hope you enjoyed your time this

week on under the hood join us next week

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