Lately, I feel like the Holy Spirit has been leading me to read the Bible from beginning to end. I did not grow up in church and I am familiar with some of the stories but not all of them. It is definitely good to read through the Bible at least once and not just read and stick to the New Testament. I have tried to read the Bible before I knew the Holy Spirit and this book was just a book. Now, the pages are coming alive like never before. I strongly recommend getting a relationship with God by believing in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior so that you can start understanding the spiritual things of the Bible too. The feelings God give you are incredible! The Bible was actually the first place God started communicating with me, through scripture. Whenever I was facing a problem or had a dilemma or question, I would randomly flip through the Bible and land on a page that had something to do with what I was going through and it still happens on occasion too. What I read recently was Genesis 18 and 19 really shook me to my core belief of how I viewed God.

Most people know about God destroying Sodom and Gomorrah but do they know about the conversation God had with Abraham before He destroyed those 2 cities? Probably not. I certainly didn’t.

“Abraham approached and said, ‘Will you actually sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Maybe there are fifty righteous people in the city; will you actually sweep the place away, and not forgive it for the sake of the fifty righteous who are there? Far be it from you to do such a thing – to kill the righteous along with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike! Far be it from you! Shouldn’t the judge of all the earth do what is just?’ Adonai said, ‘If I find in Sodom fifty who are righteous, then I will forgive the whole place for their sake.’ … He said, ‘I hope Adonai won’t be angry if I speak just once more. What if ten are found there?’ He said, ‘For the sake of ten I won’t destroy it.’” Genesis 18:23-26, 32

             Most people think about when Sodom and Gomorrah got destroyed that there might have been a few righteous people who were casualties of His judgement on those cities. If you didn’t, you know the character of God better than I do. This hit me like a ton of bricks and got me to thinking that when He flooded the earth, Noah’s family was literally the only family that was righteous and every other person on the planet was wicked too. “Then the Lord saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually.” Genesis 6:5 There was no innocent blood shed during any of these cataclysmic events because God is unchanging and His judgements are always righteous and never punishes the righteous with the wicked.

When the angels came to destroy the city, Lot caught the men outside the gate of the city and had them stay with him in his house because he knew how wicked the people there were and didn’t want them to be sodomized and raped by the townspeople. Little did he know, the men/angels weren’t the ones who needed saving; he was. The men, young and old, came to Lot’s house and wanted to have carnal relations with the two men and when Lot tried to defend them, they said they were going to deal with him even worse than the other two men because he was judging them. (Genesis 19:1-11) That to me sounds like they all had totally corrupt, debased minds.

             This leads me to wonder that when Yeshua said, “For as were the days of Noah, so also will be the coming of the Son of Man.” Matthew 24:37. Just how bad and corrupt will this world be when He comes back? This leads me to believe that there will be no “casualties” at His second coming either. God spared Noah and his family because he was righteous and also spared Lot and his family too. God is not a God who punishes the righteous, but instead, corrects His children and is extremely patient before He pours out His wrath on the wicked. God is very loving, kind, patient, gentle, understanding and extremely slow to anger. These events must have been very hard for Him to carry out because we are all His children whether we believe it, acknowledge it or know it or not. It’s time to realize that the love of God is more prevalent than the wrath of God throughout all time. Don’t you think it’s about time to set the record straight and show people the love of God while telling them the gospel?