Faith meets the Facts

Faith and Fact are two different words but when you look up for their meanings, they are almost the same. Faith is a complete trust or confidence in someone or something and Fact is a thing that is known or proved to be true.
Do most of the people who have faith in their Lord are aware of the facts behind the things described in the books that they believe in? Or every faithful thing is called faithful because somehow it contains facts behind it? These were my questions when I tried to know about the history according to the religious books which described the whole events of destruction of the places that has been discovered by the archaeologists in the exact position as they are mentioned in the books.
Yeah! It sounds quite fascinating to me as well. So I dug a little deeper to understand- how are these incidents that took place thousands of years ago is mentioned in the Quran and the Bible which is also proven by the scientists and archaeologists? How come the faith meets the facts?
Let us find out-
SODOM AND GOMORRAH
According to the Old Testaments, Lot was the nephew of Abraham and a companion for some distance of his long journeys.
Lot was sent as a messenger to one of Abraham’s neighbouring communities. The people who lived in these communities practiced perversion, which was then known as Sodomy. When he told his people to stop the act of perversion, they denied him and kept on doing what they used to do.
That is when Lot prayed to the God-
“O my Lord! Help thou me against people who do mischief!” (Quran- Surat al-Ankaboot: 30)
Upon Lot’s prayer to His Lord, He sent two of His angles in the form of men who went to destroy the insolent people of Lot.
They (the angels) came to Lot and told him to get rid of the place with the people who obeyed the Lord’s command (which was only as big as a household, containing his believers and daughters). According to the estimates this incident took place in 1800 B.C.
“And we rained down on them a shower (of brimstones): then see what was the end of those who indulged in sin and crime!” (Quran- Surat al-Araf: 80-84)

“Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstones and fire from the lord out of heaven” (Genesis: 19:24, Old Testament)
As the angels told him (Lot) to go and never look back, he took his wife, daughters and some of his believers out of the city before the destruction took place. But his wife who is known as the 'one who lacks behind' looked back at the horrified demolition of the Sodom and Gomorrah and was caught up in its wrath.
“We turned (the cities) upside down, and rained down on them brimstones hard as baked clay, spread, Layer on layer, marked as from thy Lord: Nor are they ever far from those who do wrong! (Quran- Surah Hud: 82-83)”
The statement of “turning (the cities) upside down” implies that the region was totally destroyed by a violent earthquake.

It is said that the statue of Lot’s wife still stands in that particular place. Let’s see what science has to say about this incident:
A German archaeologist Werner Keller said: “Together with the base of this mighty fissure, which runs precisely through this area, the Vale of Siddim, including Sodom and Gomorrah, plunged one day into the abyss. Their destruction came about through a great earthquake which was probably accompanied by explosions, lightning, issue of natural gas and general conflagration."
In an effort to explain this phrase, it is said that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was caused by an earthquake which somehow explosively ignited methane gas and sulfur found in the local tar deposits and shot it up into the sky. However, earthquake activity such as this is unprecedented and implausible in terms of geology.  For those familiar with astronomy and ancient literature, the expression “fire falling from heaven” is not a cryptic expression nor a literary device that needs some sort of fanciful explanation; it is a simple descriptive phrase.  “Fire from heaven” is an accurate description for cosmic material, either a meteor, asteroid, or comet, burning in the atmosphere (“fire”) as it comes in to strike the Earth.
The impact of even a small cometary fragment over Sodom and Gomorrah could release energy equivalent to the explosion of many hydrogen bombs and raise a mushroom cloud like that in nuclear explosions.

And as for the Lot’s wife who is said to have looked back does not simply mean that she turned back but it means that she went back to the place to watch the destruction. The comet impacts raised and produced vast amount of dust. This might have resulted on her being suffocated and covered by the hot dust and as that dust cooled down, her body must have been preserved and became the pillar of dust.
This also reminds the volcanic eruption rained down on the Italian city called POMPEII whose people were covered by the ash and dust.
THE WRATH UPON POMPEII
Pompeii or the “sin city” from the ancient time of the Roman Empire had a very similar end as Sodom and Gomorrah. The historical records show that it was a center of perversity and dissipation. It is known that the city of Pompeii was overflowing with sexual perversity. People used to trade sex so much that even the numbers of the brothels were unknown. The most amazing fact is that it was happening under the nose of Roman Emperors.

The address to any brothel was represented by the original shape of the male organs. Even their crockeries were made in the form of a phallus. According to this tradition, rooted in Mithraic belief, sexual organs and sexual intercourse should not be hidden but displayed openly.  
Pompeii is known to be the richest archaeological site in the world in terms of the sheer volume of data available to the scholars. Everything that happened in the city is preserved like it has been frozen for two millennia for us to find out and see the lives of the ancient people.

The eruption of the Mount Vesuvius (also known as “Mountain of warning”) appeared in about 1780 B.C. near the shores of bay of Naples, wiped out the whole city in a single moment. An interesting fact about this eruption is that nobody seems to notice about the catastrophe as it caught everyone in its wrath.
As it was then, Pompeii remained mostly untouched until the excavation of 1748, when a group of explorers came to Campania to discover ancient artifacts and began to dig. They found that the ashes had acted as a marvelous preservative: Underneath all that dust, Pompeii was sustained exactly as it had been 2,000 years ago. Its buildings were intact; skeletons were frozen right where they had fallen. Everyday-objects and household-goods littered the streets.
Later, archaeologists even uncovered jars of preserved fruit and loaves of bread. A family eating their meal were petrified right at that moment. There are many homosexual couples who were found in the act of intercourse. The faces of some of the petrified human corpses unearthed from Pompeii were unharmed. The general expression found on those faces was bewilderment.
Here is the biggest question-
How did thousands of people caught by death without seeing and hearing anything?
This aspect of the event shows that the wrath upon the Pompeii was similar to the destructive events mentioned in the Quran.

In the 31st verse of Surat al-Qamar, the
“Instantaneous annihilation” is emphasised when the destruction of Thamud is recounted;
“For we sent against them a single Mighty Blast, and they became like the dry stubble used by one who pens cattle.”
The death of the people of Pompeii took place instantaneously as just as the events recounted in the above verses.

Pompeii is considered as the most attractive historic discovery of all time. That is why the discovery of Pompeii is now being taught to the children in their history books.
Did you know?
Mount Vesuvius has not erupted since 1944, but it is still one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world. Experts believe that another Plinean eruption is due any day--an almost unfathomable catastrophe, since almost 3 million people live within 20 miles of the volcano’s crater.
Following is the photograph of the History book published by Bindu Rana, creator and architect of The Millennium School:

Like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the wrath of Pompeii, there is another incident of The Noah’s Ark, the flood which drawn the whole world into the abyss and where Quran and Bible both mentioned about the advent of destruction.
Since these destructions happened more than once and it had been proven by many archaeologists and scientists, we may consider that it cannot be a coincidence. Maybe we should give a deeper look into the God’s description and learn what would be the future of the mankind.
P.S. - Whatever written above is a religious context with the evidence of science because most of the people think that facts and faith are incompatible. So I have provided you the faith and the facts. Now it’s up to you that how you decide.




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