MY HEART BETRAYS ME. If I were trying out for a part in male-dominated Shakespearean times, I’d likely play the part of Lot’s wife with tremendous authority and conviction. I know what it is to stand in the blast zone and covet the worldly possessions which could not be hauled away during my evacuation. Much like Achan after the battle of Jericho, I too have struggled keeping my pockets empty of anything but the full armor of God—where carry-on baggage is concerned. How dreadful the temptation must have been for the covetous heart; the cultured, the refined, and the art aficionado; to destroy every brick and stone—even the artisan masterpieces hung upon them—from the ancient cities of the Promised Land. I am more afraid of my own heart than of our Elites and all their wicked schemes. We already know their fate. The architects of western civilization will one day be gathered and thrown into the Lake of Fire. It is me who must be tended to in light of this. I have within this flesh the great deceiver, idolater, and covetor. His name is Self.

As for Lot, who apparently put very little thought into his own society’s moral state of affairs, I might play him too. There was a time, before this cosmological revelation—that is, when no one needed convincing me of my active role in the great pilgrimage. For all I knew, my feet were actively engaged upon the straight and narrow, with my eyesight firmly pressed upon the Celestial City of John Bunyan’s novel. And yet this Flat Earth doctrine revealed to me, in no uncertain terms, that I’d never left the City of Destruction at all. Overcoming that was the true cognitive struggle. Was Lot any different, I wonder? Or perhaps I’d taken the straight and narrow only so far as to settle into Vanity Fair and any number of competing zip codes along the way. Despite my insistent use of such Evangelical Christian phrases as “kingdom living,” “community,” and “discipleship,” my adulterous love affair with the beast system was verifiable by my love and devotion to the pleasures of what Satan’s deception could afford. I was lied to. But worse—far worse, I had lied to myself. Those wonderful phrases which I’d comforted myself with were of a different kingdom, it seems.

In short, I was a willing recipient of the globe religion. And there are moments—albeit shamefully weak and untidy junctures of the heart—when I wish I’d never woken up to the truth of God’s creation at all. I have been granted the conscious option of evacuating Sodom. This I am presently engaged in. But the thing is—my life was comfortable there. I am every so tempted to stand in the blast zone and gaze back upon it. And so, I audition now for the part of Lot’s wife. I think I shall bring personal experience and clarity to the part.

EVEN IF I SHOULD PROVE MYSELF SO WICKED AS TO PRETEND I never set mine eyes upon the true shape and permanent fixture of the Earth, nor obeyed the Spirit’s call—all so that I might return to my formal comforts of living in the kingdom that shall soon be destroyed—I do not believe I could evade this truth for long. That is, unless I learn to creep and crawl through any subsequent reading of Scripture with the most deceptive of literary skills. Blinders will be required. There are some things which cannot be unseen. Flat Earth is one of them. So I believe Moses when he wrote of the once-fertile valley, where Sodom and Gomorrah co-ruled, that they were both conveniently positioned directly under heaven, just as the whole Earth, standing forever fast, is under heavens constant watch.

“The LORD rained upon Sodom and upon 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 (Genesis 19:24-25).”

HaShamayim, or simply Shamayim, is a Hebrew noun in the plural. It is shamelessly employed here by the writer, and it means “the heavens.” This wrathful barrage of fire and brimstone originated, we are told, directly from the highest heaven where the LORD dwells. That would be the third heaven. What we have here before us is without a doubt another necessary tenant of Biblical cosmology, for we need not imagine a scenario where the fire and the brimstone emanating from God’s presence traversed through infinity of space, with its maniac smorgasbord of universes and untold trillions of stars and planets. And should this wrath from the highest heaven travel at the speed of light, we need not wait around an uncharted millions of years before it arrives here, nor turn the clock back upon the furthest reaches of pre-history to discover when it was first sent. It took minutes; no more—perhaps seconds. Sodom and Gomorrah were no more.

Moses is working from a different framework entirely. And so we shouldn’t be surprised to find the same consistency in succeeding Biblical writers. On at least three occasions, fire from HaShamayim consumed a sacrifice. David offered one such offering on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite (1 Chronicles 21:26). King Solomon did too, during the dedication of the temple (2 Chronicles 7:1). And let’s not overlook Elijah’s water-drenched sacrifice on Mt. Carmel (1 Kings 18:38). His came in response to the prophet’s simple prayer. Before Elijah was taken away in a chariot of fire, he would be no stranger to the very miracle which once destroyed Lot’s hometown. Twice fire descended from heaven to consume a group of fifty soldiers sent by the wicked king Ahaziah to arrest Elijah (2 Kings 1:10, 12). The third captain with his fifty soldiers, having heard the report, was wise in surrendering to the LORD. God was merciful.

Even Satan has had his part in playing with “fire from heaven.” Such an event destroyed Job’s flocks (Job 1:16). We shouldn’t be surprised then to learn that the coming false prophet, whom I suspect will play the role as an evil Elijah of sorts, will bring fire down from haven as a means of deceiving the world into worshiping the Anti-Christ (Revelation 13:13). Be careful, Satan. Play with fire, and eve you too shall be burned!

There’s that. But then we are also not to be like two of Jesus’ disciples, James and John, who mutually desired a downpour of fire from heaven in judgment upon a Samaritan village. Its crime, James and John tell us, is that they did not welcome the Lord. Jesus however turned and rebuked them (Luke 9:55). For those who think His rebuking was simply a correction as to their cosmological error, and I am sure to receive a letter stating this; God is not yet done with His method of judging Sodomy. For though He assured His disciples, “the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them,” His wrath is still coming. This we are assured of. God will destroy the armies of Gog and Magog (Revelation 20:9) with fire from heaven, and this time with such ferocious effectiveness that we will not simply comb around in the salty ashes seeking archaeological proof of a city which is no more. No—no. This time Satan’s deception, including his terrible Copernican deception, will only be as provable as our eternal memories are effective.

“New Astronomy” loyalists like Collin Wong, however, the founder of eBible.com, assures us that the Copernican deception is not nearly as deceptive or untrustworthy as the Bible itself when he writes:

“We know heaven is a place that God resides, that is beyond Earth. The people in ancient times did not have a scientific framework to work with. So the closest word approximation to say that heaven is somewhere above and beyond.”

This is what we might say here in America (back when tobacco products were still commonly handed out as prizes), “close but no cigar.” The Holy Spirit, it appears, wanted to get at the heart of the matter, but was limited according to a lack of science. The ancients had failed God, due not only to sin, as the Bible claims, but also as a result to their lack of education, apparently. How tragic for three-millennia of trusting readers, who thought more of God’s Testimony than Science! Perhaps He should have waited for more academically acknowledged men such as John Locke, Thomas Aquinas, Emmanuel Kant, and Rousseau to write the Bible. Then the Darwinian and the Copernican would have less reason to mock and more reason to believe.

Should Moses hold to the integrity of his penmanship, he would likely be laughed right out of the most conservative Christian Universities and churches today.