CHAPTER 10
It is also curious and significant to see how Lot got into Sodom. It was not at a bound; but he first “looked toward Sodom,” then “journeyed toward Sodom;” later still, “he pitched his tent over against Sodom,” and finally found himself in Sodom. Each successive step was doubtless attended with additional gazing; but the first look witnessed the start to the unholy place.
Some one says there are two ways of getting down from a tower; one is to jump off, and the other to come down by the steps. So there is a way of going rapidly with a single leap into sin and ruin; but very few take that route. The great majority come down by the steps, by the successive stages of moral lapse typified in the expressions, “looking toward,”
“journeying in the direction,” and “pitching the tent over against Sodom.”
The thing to do is to avoid the first look, and if that has been cast, to say,
“I will look no more.”
Once, when riding along a country road, I saw a bird charmed by a snake.
The reptile lay full length on the limb of a tree, and had its eyes fixed on its spellbound victim, not a foot away. The bird, with extended, tremulous wings, and low, distressed cry, had its head bent forward, and was gazing into the red, open mouth and glistening eyes of its ensnarer and would-be destroyer. I got down from my horse, and with a large stick killed the serpent and rescued the almost exhausted songster of the woods; but the scene actually produced a kind of heart nausea, and I never forgot the impression.
The lesson is not to let the eye get on the world, lest the eyes of the world get fixed on you, with its basilisk, destructive gaze, and there would be no deliverance.
The second look directed upon Sodom was by the Lord.
I know of no scene in the Bible that is more impressive than this, in which we see the Almighty standing on the brow of the mountains which skirt the valley of Siddim, and looking silently and fixedly upon Sodom as it lay in its wealth, beauty, wickedness, and utter corruption in the center of the plain.
As the people sinned on that day, how little they dreamed it was their last, and that God in human form was standing on a mountain ten miles away, looking down upon them! It was a look of sorrow, condemnation, and judgment. What thoughts must have rolled through the Divine mind at this hour! He had given the people a beautiful land, and every material blessing, and time in which to save themselves and honor God, and yet they had misused everything, perverted his gifts, despised his grace, broken his laws, rejected his warnings, ill-treated his servants and messengers, and put themselves finally beyond the pale of mercy.
It is a fearful thought that a person may live such a life as to bring upon him or her the silent and fixed look of God. The dreadfulness of the thought is, that such a gaze means that judgment is close by.
The third look thrown upon Sodom was by Lot’s wife.
She had been mercifully drawn by angel hands out of the doomed city, and was in a place of safety. The command given to her was not to look back, which is the command to the pardoned and regenerated soul until today.
The woman disobeyed, and, turning, fixed her eyes upon the burning city.
The awful picture had scarcely been made upon the retina of the eye, when she was as instantly destroyed and turned to a pillar of salt.
The disposition to look back on the world we have left, and the sinful life we have forsaken, is one of the strange facts we have to encounter in the spiritual life. The hymn-book recognizes it in the words, “Prone to
wander, Lord, I feel it; prone to leave the God I love.” We are called to deal with it as a principle in the moral life, and know it to exist in spite of the teachings of modern theology. It is the explanation of many strange things we see in the Church, and accounts for the cases of spiritual petrifaction we find in the pulpit and pew.
One would think that a regenerated heart would gladly push on to
mountains of a higher grace and deliverance, even as the angel told Lot and his family, “Stay not in all the plain; escape for thy life to the mountains.”
What is there in the old life to tempt us again? What is there in Sodom to draw us back?
And yet, in spite of Zindendorf and all his followers; in spite of an army of smaller writers, there is this disposition in the regenerated soul to look
back, and, worse still, the inclination becomes an act. As a consequence the ghastly miracle of people being turned to stone is still going on. We see it in faces and lives. Men and women once sweeping across the plains of salvation are now stationary, and become like adamant. The people not only see it, but they themselves feel it. Faces of stone in the pew, faces of stone in the official board, and faces of stone in the pulpit! We can not always tell when the backward look was turned, and what special thing or object occasioned it; but we all can see the life suddenly arrested, and the face of stone looking from the stationary life upon us.
The fourth look on Sodom was cast by Abraham.
He stood on the mountains next day, and saw the destruction which God had sent on the cities of the plain. The Bible says that the Lord rained fire upon them from out of heaven, and the smoke went up as the smoke of a great furnace. The spectacle must have been horrifying beyond all words to describe. To see a country which the day before was all beautiful and prosperous, with bustling cities, and teeming with multitudes of people, suddenly engulfed in fire, and literally swept with cyclones of flame and smoke, and, underneath it all, to catch glimpses of what was transpiring, was truly a scene of horror, and well calculated to fix the gaze of not only one man, but every eye that could endure the sight.
This look was not mentioned without a purpose. It is not less certain that one part of the human family will, from the heights of eternity, behold the overthrow and witness the destruction of this world. They will see the flames licking up cities, forests, and rivers alike, and leaping from the mountain-tops like wild animals. They will see whirlwinds of fire sweeping about like cyclones on the plains, vast pillars of smoke now appearing like waterspouts, and now seen falling here and there like great pillars under the touch of a Samson hand. Complete and overwhelming will be the ruin of terrestrial things on that day.
There was no joy in Abraham’s look that morning of disaster to Sodom, and there will be nothing of the kind in the heart of God’s people on the dreadful Day of Judgment. But there will be no dissent to, or disapproval of, the divine proceedings in that fearful hour. It will all come to the silent witnesses in that time, that it was in vain God loaded the people down with material bounties; in vain for them harvests waved, flowers and fruits
abounded, flocks and herds multiplied, cities prospered and Plenty waved her wand over the broad earth. It was in vain God gave his Son, sent his Spirit, and filled the earth with churches, Bibles, and preachers. It was in vain he bore with them, and warned and promised and pleaded ten thousand times. They would not have him to reign over them. They mocked at message and messenger. They broke every commandment, grieved the Holy Ghost, and trampled the blood of Christ under their feet as an unholy thing. They laid up wrath against the Day of Wrath. They made themselves ripe for destruction. And it has come at last. This is the end long foretold by prophet and affirmed by God. Time is ended. The earth is being burned up; the heavens are passing away; the nations who forgot God, and still can not pray, are calling for the mountains to fall upon them; and from the great cliffs of the eternal world, the Redeemed stand and view the dreadful scene. The typical look of Abraham is fulfilled at last.