Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah
A disaster called an “overthrow” was delivered in about 2050 B.C. on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:24-28).
19:24 Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven;
19:25 And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.
19:26 But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.
19:27 And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place where he stood before the LORD:
19:28 And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.
That event was so spectacular, swift, and complete that it became proverbial for the severity of judgment that God’s righteous anger could deliver. (5) Jesus spoke “woes” exceeding those spoken against Sodom and Gomorrah on Galilean cities that rejected His teaching (Matthew 10:15; 11:23-24; Luke 10:12). The swiftness of Sodom’s judgment was used by Jesus to illustrate how sudden His return will be (Luke 17:28-30).
Of the five “cities of the plain” (Genesis 13:12; Genesis 14:8), only Zoar is described as surviving the catastrophe. Zoar is the site to which Lot and his family fled with the approval of the angels (Genesis 19:20-23). As a city, it flourished through the time of Moses and the kings of Israel, even being described as a city of the region of Moab by the prophets. (6) Arab historians in the Middle Ages refer to Zoar and identify the city as modern Safi southeast of the Dead Sea in Jordan. Because Lot and his family made the journey by foot in just a few hours (Genesis 19:15, 23), Sodom must be less than about 20 miles from Zoar (modern Safi). Two Early Bronze Age archaeological sites southeast of the Dead Sea (Bab edh-Dhra and Numeira) reveal evidence of catastrophic collapse and burning along the eastern border fault of the Dead Sea Transform Fault. These two sites are likely the remains of Sodom and Gomorrah.
(7) A thick disturbed zone within the Dead Sea sediment core, assignable to the Sodom and Gomorrah event, occurs at a depth of about 18.5 feet.
References
Dead Sea salt refers to salt extracted or taken from the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is popular with tourists from all over the world for its reputed therapeutic effects. The water of the Dead Sea has a salt content of 29%, compared to 4% in the oceans, and is consequently substantially denser.
People use these bath salts for their "therapeutic effects". What they don't know is dead sea salts are the remanets of The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah!
FineTunedUniverse.com AnyCalculator.com (Earthquake Magnitude Calculator)
Another mighty act of God that tends to be disbelieved is the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Scoffers, both Christian and secular, have a field day with this biblical event because it not only involves God’s supernatural workings and cataclysmic acts of nature, it also represents God’s righteous judgment of sin. This is hard for people to think about, especially today when the specific sin being judged is homosexual behavior. Did the destruction of these cities really happen? Is there archaeological and geological evidence to support it? Do other ancient writings mention it? Yes, to all.
The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is a certain fact of history. The Genesis account is written in narrative form and alluded to by several other Old Testament writers. Jesus Himself obviously believed it and in fact was an eyewitness as the pre-incarnate Lord. Extra-biblical writings (including tablets unearthed at Ebla) mention Sodom and even give specific references to its location along the Jordanian shore of the Dead Sea.
Genesis uses Hebrew action verbs such as “destroy” and “overthrow” to describe the destruction. This does not necessarily infer total annihilation, and thus some remains might have survived. In the early 1970s, Jordanian authorities noticed well-preserved artifacts from ancient times flooding the black market. An investigation led them to an Early Bronze Age graveyard on the southeastern side of the Dead Sea that was in the midst of being plundered. Along five “wadis” (dry riverbeds) flowing westward into the southern Dead Sea, an archaeological survey identified five ruined cities that appear to be the cities of the plain mentioned in Genesis 14:8. The most prominent and northerly one was in ancient times called Bab edh-Dhra, which seems to be the Arabic rendering of Sodom. Next in line was Numeira (Gomorrah), then the modern city of Safi (Zoar or Bela, to which Lot fled and which was not destroyed), then Admah and Zeboiim. The key was finding Zoar. Mentioned in other Scriptures and ancient maps, it led to the discovery of the other nearby ruins.2, 3
These five cities had all been situated along the Dead Sea Rift, a major plate boundary. At God’s command the rift ruptured, spewing great quantities of liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons high into the atmosphere. These ignited, setting the whole region ablaze and covering it with “fire and brimstone.” Abraham saw the conflagration from Mamre, about 20 miles away. The fiery mixture almost certainly didn’t come from a point source, such as a volcano, but destroyed the whole area along the linear fault. The cities were crushed and burned, just as the Bible describes. The city of Sodom actually straddled a fault, causing half of it to fall about 100 meters. No one survived. Today, numerous bodies remain trapped in the rubble.
Biblical archaeologist Dr. Bryant Wood of Associates for Biblical Research located city gates, crushed graves, towers, a temple, the water supply, and thick city walls. Uninhabitable since the destruction, the remains were identified by Dr. Wood as Sodom and Gomorrah. Creation geologist Dr. Steve Austin studied the geological evidence, including the fault zone, the burn layer, the bitumen that erupted, and the city’s calamitous fall to its ruin. Together, they have confirmed the truthfulness of the Genesis account.
The San Francisco Bay region straddles the Pacific and North American plates, with accumulated stress distributed among a number of principal faults, including the San Andreas, San Gregorio, Calaveras, Hayward-Rodgers Creek, Greenville and Concord-Green Valley faults.
The Ramapo Fault zone spans more than 185 miles (300 kilometers) in New York. It is a system of faults between the northern Appalachian Mountains and Piedmont areas to the east.