The case became for all future time a standard illustration of God’s most sudden, fearful and utter destruction of the wicked. (See Deut. 29: 23 and Isa. 13: 19 and Jer. 20: 16 and 50: 40 and Amos. 4: 11 and 2 Pet. 2: 6 and Jude 7.) It classes itself naturally with the deluge of Noah’s time and with the fall of Pharaoh’s host in the Red Sea, and the swallowing up of Korah and his company in the wilderness――all combining to show that God never lacks the means or the power to begin his threatened retribution upon the wicked here in time whenever he deems it wise for the moral ends of warning. The question of secondary agencies is of altogether secondary importance. It may well suffice us that _God’s hand was there_. It matters but little whether he made use of the agencies of the natural world――lightning and the combustible materials of that locality, or otherwise. That these natural agencies were employed is perhaps probable.――――The locality of those cities is undoubtedly identified, viz. at the southern extremity of the Dead Sea, now and for many ages submerged though in quite shallow water. The adjacent soil affords bitumen and other inflammable substances in abundance, indicating with great probability that a prodigious discharge of electricity ignited the whole region, fire from the Lord out of heaven gleaming and crashing; the atmosphere all ablaze with flames and the very ground on which the city stood burning with terrible fury. It might seem that the deep moral pollutions of its people had doomed that vast plain to be first purified by fire and then sunk from human view for all the coming ages by its subsidence beneath the waters of the Dead Sea.――――In view of this appalling scene, how terribly significant become the words of Jude――“Set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire”! How easily and yet how fearfully can the Almighty execute the judgments written against guilty sinners who scorn his words of warning and dare his vengeance! “_The Angel of the Lord._”