Jesus knew what He was talking about | thebereancall.org

TBC Staff - EN

The story of the fate of Sodom is not credited by any of the "critics," and that of Lot's wife, given in connection with it, is regarded as not less preposterous than -- the  "rib story," or the story of Jonah in the fish. But Jesus more than once held up the fate of Sodom as a warning to his generation, which he could not have done honestly if there was no truth in it; and he especially emphasizes the lesson to be drawn from the fate of Lot's wife. In a speech recorded in Luke:17:1-37, after speaking of the flood, he says: "Likewise, even as it came to pass in the days of Lot, they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded, but in the day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all; after the same manner shall it be in the day that the Son of man is revealed. In that day, he who shall be on the housetop, and his goods in the house, let him not go down to take them away; and let him that is in the field not return back. Remember Lot's wife."

If this story was a legend, and if Jesus knew it to be such, it is impossible to reconcile his use of it here with the truthfulness and absolute sincerity, which belong to his nature. It would be impossible for him to thus use a fabulous tale, which had been manufactured by some unknown writer of the middle Jewish age; for the whole force of the warning depended upon the reality of the event on which the warning is based. 

--J.W. Garvey (March 1, 1829 – October 6, 1911, minister, author, and religious educator in the American Restoration Movement)