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It’s Not a Joke

A joke is designed to cause amusement or laughter, especially a story with a funny punchline. If you have a friend who is sarcastic, it may be hard to determine when they are serious or simply pulling your leg. Based upon the words of Moses, Lot may have had a tendency to joke around. Subsequently, as Lot goes to warn his future son in laws, they don’t believe a word of his story.

And the [two] men asked Lot, Have you any others here—sons-in-law or your sons or your daughters? Whomever you have in the city, bring them out of this place,13 For we will spoil and destroy [Sodom]; for the outcry and shriek against its people has grown great before the Lord, and He has sent us to destroy it, Genesis 19:12-13.

One of the best practical jokes I ever played was cruel and unbelievable. Jeanette, Debbie, Stephen and I used a game of Truth or Dare to fake Stephen’s death. On this particular evening, Hope who had a crush on Stephen and his white shirt, so when a similar bloody white shirt was found in a nearby woods and Stephen was nowhere to be found, Hope thought Stephen was dead or wounded. As a group of us slowly walked back to my house, Stephen ran around the woods, sitting on a lawn chair on my back deck as we arrived.

And Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, and said, Up, get out of this place, for the Lord will spoil and destroy this city! But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be [only] joking, Genesis 19:14.

As for Lot’s conversation with his two future son in laws, they break out laughing. Based upon Moses’ words, he leaves them to die in Sodom, forcing his daughters to find other men to marry. Despite having a sense of urgency, Lot closes the door, seeing these two alive for the last time. While the Bible is full of unbelievable events, this pyroclastic flow that leveled Sodom and Gomorrah was no joke.

by Jay Mankus

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