A Pride Festival on Sodom’s Doorstep?!

Judgment has fallen before and this world still does not fear God.

Reports say a four day festival called Pride Land is being planned for June 1 through June 4 in the Judean Desert near the Dead Sea. There will be hotels, beaches, music, bodies and laughter. The Dead Sea will sit beside it all, flat as poured metal, ringed with rock and salt, a place where the earth itself seems scorched and left to remember.

That region has long been associated with Sodom and the symbolism is plain enough to make a sober man stop and stare.

Jesus pointed to that old ruin and made it a warning for the last days. “Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot… the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed” (Luke 17:28-30).

He described people eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building. Life felt sturdy in their hands. Their tables were full and their plans looked sound. A city that glowed at evening. Then judgment fell out of a clear sky.

That is why this news lands with such force. A pride festival beside that sea becomes a sermon in the landscape. Barren hills stand around a body of water where nothing lives. Salt glitters in the light like ash.

The whole scene feels like a memory of wrath that never quite left the ground. Yet modern man sees a place that ought to make him tremble and decides it would be wonderful place for a pride event. Judgment has fallen before and people still do not fear God.

Luke 17 presses harder as our Lord begins by warning His disciples about stumbling others. “It is impossible but that offences will come,” He says and then He speaks with frightening seriousness about those who become traps for souls. Better a millstone. Better the sea. Better a sudden grave than the guilt of helping another person walk cheerfully toward ruin.

Christ cares deeply about the effect of our example, our liberties and our tolerated sins on others.

That cuts through this hour. Our age does not keep rebellion behind closed doors. It packages and teaches it.

America has done the same for years. We flood screens with lust, market confusion as freedom and turn shame into performance. Isaiah saw our day when he cried, “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20). The sin itself is grievous. The public celebration of it drags more souls into the dark.

Then Christ speaks about forgiveness. “If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him, and if he repent, forgive him.” Christians do not smile at sin as though love had no backbone. We rebuke, but we also forgive. We do both with clean hands and low hearts, remembering how much mercy we ourselves have needed.

There is a warning there for us too. A believer can watch the moral collapse of the world, speak truly about it and still carry a hard spirit. Pride can preach against pride.

The apostles heard Christ’s demands and cried, “Increase our faith.” That is still the cry of Christians reading headlines like these.

Jesus answered that real faith, even faith as small as a mustard seed, takes hold of the word of God and finds strength there. We need hearts gripped by Scripture, hearts that believe God when the whole age screams the opposite.

“When ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants” (Luke 17:10). The Christian who serves long, labors hard and stands firm still has no room for self applause.

That matters here because moral outrage can become its own theater. A man can denounce a public parade and secretly enjoy feeling superior. Christ will not allow that. Tears fit this moment better than swagger.

Still, the deepest burden is larger than one festival near the Dead Sea. Sodom is not simply a buried city. It is a mirror held before the nations. Whenever desire climbs onto the throne, whenever people mock warnings, whenever men trade the fear of God for the thrill of appetite, the old fire speaks again.

“The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Those words hang over small towns and big cities, over quiet homes and crowded beaches. History has not changed because the human heart has not changed.

This is why the gospel of Jesus Christ shines with blazing mercy.

The Son of God entered this world of rebellion and never once bowed to it. He obeyed the Father completely. Then at the cross He stood in the place of sinners. The wrath that should fall on the guilty fell on Him. He was crushed under judgment, buried in the earth and raised in victory on the third day!!

There is pardon in Him for the sexually immoral, for the proud, for the self righteous, for the liar, for the secret hypocrite, for the churchman with a clean reputation and a dead soul.

So do not merely shake your head at a festival by the Dead Sea. Let it warn you and strip away the fantasy that sin is safe because it is celebrated. Flee to Christ. Flee from your private loves, your cherished lusts, your polished religion, your respectable pride.

Come with empty hands and a filthy record. Come now. He receives sinners. He washes what hell has stained and breaks chains that years of shame could not loosen. Giving a new heart, a living Spirit and a future where wrath will never touch you, because it has already fallen on the Lamb.

---

For more devotions click here.

Sign up for my email list here.

For a list of other essential Christian reads click here.

---

Enjoying this content? If you’d like to support my work and help me create more Bible-centered resources like this devotion, consider buying me a coffee! Your support means the world and helps keep this ministry going.