Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 186, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 August 1914 — THE DESTRUCTION OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE DESTRUCTION OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH.

(By O. FREDERICK WRIGHT, L,L. D., F. G. 8. A., Geologist; Author of “The Ice Age in IJorth America,” “Man and the Glacial Period.” Etc.) "There never was found, in any age of the world, either religion or law that did so highly exalt the public 1 good as the Bible."—Sir Francis Ba- ; con, father of modern philosophy.

The southern end of the Dead Sea is In a played out gas and oil region. Bi-

tumen, which results from the evaporation of petroleum, is thrown up in great sheets by earthquakes from the shallow bottom at the south end of this sea. Oil still oozes from the crevices of the rocks surrounding it, and is found on the surface of the water. Moreover, the Dead Sea is 1,300 feet lower than the Mediterranean, and occupies a deep “fault” or

crevasse in the earth’s crust, where one side of the crack has slipped down thousands of feet and in the process has from time to time unloosed the forces pent up below. Earthquakes hare abounded in the region, thus recording the spasmodic movements in the eartb’J’j jprust which are the cause j of earthquake tremors. v The description of the destruction of Sodom in the Bible accords so perfectly with that of the explosion of a reservoir of gas and oil under high pressure that It bears upon its very facer indubitable marks of being that of an eyewitness. Abraham looked down from the heights near Hebron and *‘lo, the smoke of the land went up as the smoke of a furnace.’’ And In the direct description it is said: “Then Jehovah rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire 111 I M l liTfTri nr IW i M ' '