The judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah really happened.
In 1996, archaeologist Dr. Stephen Collins, while preparing for a tour of the Holy Land with Sodom and Gomorrah next up on the docket, realized the accepted location of the “cities of the plain” at the southern tip of the Dead Sea was inaccurate.
The Bible puts the cities northeast of the Dead Sea on the Jordanian side of the Jordan River, inside the Kikkar Valley.
Kikkar (Hebrew for “fertile plains” or “disk of bread”) was used to describe the well-watered area east of Jordan, which was often compared to the garden of God, Eden. Other digs confirmed the Kikkar Valley had once been home to a thriving civilization with multiple cities and water and life as far as the eye could see.
Genesis corroborates such descriptions, with Lot finding the Jordan plains desirable for their wealth of water.
Collins took time to do more research, and in 2002 planned a trip to Jordan. When he and his entourage arrived, they focused on 14 sites in the plains east of the Jordan River documented by journalist R. G. Khouri, and they hit the jackpot.
Tall el-Hammam, directly northeast of the Dead Sea within the Kikkar Valley. A towering cityscape like an ocean liner “riding a sea of fields,” as Collins describes it.
The site matches the biblical description of Sodom and Gomorrah and experienced an extraordinary cataclysmic event that demolished everything for miles, turning the fertile plains into wastelands. And could be what caused the salty, lifeless Dead Sea.
Almost the entire plain (193 square miles) was super-heated to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit for a matter of seconds. Scientists know because pottery shards found there fused into green glass on one side. Trinitite. The same glass discovered in the Mojave Desert after the Oppenheimer nuclear tests during World War II.
Said glass formed within a split second of the blasts, same as cataclysm in the Kikkar Valley 4000 years ago.
Tall el-Hammam went uninhabited for over 700 years after the catastrophe, while surrounding societies continued to flourish and grow. And Ancient Near Eastern sources describe the place as cursed, a wasteland of mourning.
Brimstone deposits from boiling salt raining down on the plains was also found.
The approximate population of 40,000 to 65,000 people in the cities and all surrounding settlements was annihilated instantaneously. No better explanation has been offered for the catastrophe besides divine conflagration.
The Bible is true.
Every verse
Every story
Every word
And God abhors sexual immorality.