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In Revelation 19:11, John writes about this moment: “And I saw heaven open and behold a
white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth
judge and make war.” The rider is none other than Jesus, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.
He is followed by an army of angels. Verse 19 describes the reception waiting below: “And I
saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against
him that sat on the horse, and against his army.”
Ezekiel’s description of “the fire of my wrath,” (38:19) “a great shaking,” (38:19) “an
overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone,” (38:22) “I will send a fire,” (39:6)
certainly paints a picture that will be very similar to the destruction meted out by God at Sodom
and Gomorrah.
This event, which occurred about 1897 BC, and is discussed in Genesis 19:24-29: “Then the
Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; And he
overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew
upon the ground ... and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.”
In 1924, a joint expedition of archaeologists W. F. Albright and Mervyn G. Kyle, from the
American School and Xenia Seminary, discovered five oases, on a plain, 500 feet above the level
of the southeast corner of the Dead Sea in the Moabite foothills. Evidence of a walled area was
discovered at Bab-Edh Dra’a (Bab edh-Dhra) in 1965, part of a fortification built by the
Canaanites during the time of Abraham; and from 1975-79, excavations of pots and other items
were unearthed, which dated back to 2500 to 2000 BC. Four other sites have been identified on
the east side of the Dead Sea as part of the ruins of the five plain cities involved in the turn of
events, including Numeira (discovered in 1973), Safi (identified as Zoar), Feifa, and Hanazir.
Because of evidence which proves that the area was fertile and densely populated, all of these
sites, along with Sodom and Gomorrah, are believed to be the five cities of the plain.
Excavations made since 1974 at the Tell Mardikh, site of the ancient Ebla, in northern Syria,
have turned up tablets from their archives which refer to all five cities of the plain, and on one,
even names them in the same sequence as in Genesis 14:2.
Nelson Glueck, while Director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem
(1932-39), made a survey of the southern Transjordan area, east and south of the Dead Sea, and
discovered that the area had been settled before 2000 BC, but suddenly had been abandoned.
These cities were located at the Vale of Siddim, at the southern end of the Dead Sea in the Great
Rift Valley, which extends from Mount Hermon and the Sea of Galilee in the north, as far south
as the Gulf of Aquaba, and includes the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea region. It is part of a
huge fracture in the Earth’s crust that begins several hundred miles north at the foot of the
Taurus Mountains in Asia Minor, and ends beyond the Red Sea in Africa. It is 1,320 feet below
the level of the Mediterranean Sea.
The Dead Sea, between Israel and Jordan, is the lowest spot on the Earth’s surface, and is fed
by the Jordan River. Without an outlet, the water has evaporated for hundreds of years, leaving
behind a variety of minerals, including sodium chloride, potassium chloride, magnesium
bromine, magnesium chloride and hydrogen sulfide. As the name suggests, fish cannot live in its
waters. Along the southern end of the Dead Sea is a ten mile mass of salt called Jebel Usdim
(Arabic for ‘mountains of Sodom’). The salt at its base is 150 feet deep in places, and geologists
have also indicated the presence of sulphur, natural gas, oil, and bitumen. The “slimepits”
mentioned in Genesis 14:10, refer to the bitumen, asphalt or pitch, a lustrous black petroleum
product which melts and burns. There are vast beds of it on both sides of the Sea, with heavier
concentrations at the southern end. The Nabataeans collected the bitumen which floated to the