LUT

Lut was the nephew of Abraham, his father Haran died when Lut was still very young so Abraham adopted him as a son and brought him up. Lut was born in Ur; an ancient city of Iraq. Abraham also lived there. Lut was given prophet hood in Egypt. He had big black eyes, golden complexion with medium stature.  He was a farmer. 

Lut performed many miracles. Whenever he used to pray for rain, the sky would become clouded and it rained. When he slept using a stone as pillow the stone would have an impression of his head on it. 

 The first to believe Abraham was Lut and Sara. There were green valleys in the southern part of the Dead Sea between Eastern Jordan and Palestine. This area had two inhabitations called Sodom and Gomorrah. People were prosperous because Of their fertile lands and lush green fields and pastures. Fruits of all kinds and vegetables of all sorts were available in abundance and they enjoyed every comfort and luxury known in those times. 

But, they had forgotten about God, their Lord and had become haughty and few clever ones possessed means created for all. When the people from other areas visited there, they tortured them and plundered their belongings declaring them to be persona-non-grata and undesirable. Instead of taking the bounties as favors of God, they took them as earnings of their mind and sweat and had no feeling of gratitude for their Lord God. 

 Satan, the rejected one, is the eternal enemy of man, always endeavors to misguide and mislead man. High headedness, false vanity and pride and rebellion against the laws of God are the traits of satanic approach of thinking. People of Sodom had submitted completely to this pattern of thinking approach and had surrendered to greed, lust, jealousy, wealth worshipping and hurting the feelings of others and torturing the weaker for their pleasure and gain had become their second nature. Evil had been the norm of their lives and they had completely detached them from positive thinking. 

Satan had led them to such a state of perversion that for satisfaction of their sexual urges, instead of going for females, they preferred the males. 

 "Do ye indeed approach men, and cut off the highway? And practice lewdness even in your councils?"

         (S: 29,V: 29)

  We also sent Lut: He said to his people: “Do ye commit lewdness such as no people in creation ever committed before you?

(S: 7,V: 80) 

 They had become so obstinate in their shameful activities that they did all that openly and performed their heinous activities in front of people’s gatherings. 

 We saved him from the town, which practiced abominations:  truly they were a people given to Evil, a rebellious people.

(S: 21,V: 74) 

 God sent Lut towards them for guidance. He advised them to refrain from evil practices and tempted them to come towards light after getting out of the darkness of the ignorance and misdeeds. But, the people who were so engrossed in their lusts and pursuit of carnal desires detested his advices and hated him for forbidding them from their brazen lustfulness.

"For ye practice your lusts on men in preference to women: ye are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds.” And his people gave no answer but this: they said, ”Drive them out of your city: these are indeed men who want to be clean, and pure!”

(S: 7,V: 82) 

 God had sent Lut on a mission, he kept on warning them against the eventual fate of their crimes and sins. Whenever Sodomies saw him they ridiculed him and tauntingly asked him, “If your God doesn’t like as and is angry with us then lets see His wrath.”

  When it was established that these people would not mend their ways and stubbornly keep on transgressing. He supplicated before God, “O my Lord, give me conquest over these mischievous people." God acceded to his praying and the angels were given the task of exterminating them from the face of the earth for the good. 

 The angels deputed, first visited Abraham in humanly form and gave him the glad tiding of the birth of Isaac and told him about their assignment of extermination of the people of Sodom. Abraham being a kind man and good-natured person expressed his sorrow and said, “But some of them are the faithful.” The angels replied, “O Abraham! Seek not this. The decree of thy Lord hath gone forth: for them there cometh a penalty that cannot be turned back!

(S: ll,V: 76)

When Abraham insisted that at least Lut do not deserve to be included in this infliction, the angels said,“ 

Fear thou not, nor grieve: we are here to save him and those following him, except his wife: she is of those who lag behind."

(S: 29,V: 33). 

Those angels came to Lut at night in humanly form of young lads. They introduced themselves as guests. Lut knew that if the People of Sodom would know of their presence in his house they would intrude. He got perturbed and was behaving cautiously. Lut’s wife seeing that angelic beauty of those youths informed the People about them. The people of Sodom gather and demanded from Lut to hand over those young lads to them so they could gratify their evil desires with those whom he was hiding from them.

  Lut pleaded with them: saying: "These are my guests: disgrace me not: But fear God, and shame me not. "                               (S: 15,V: 68-69) 

 He even offered them to have his young daughters instead of his guests. They told him not to come in their way and get aside. When Lut refused to let them get in. They said, ‘This man had come here to stay, we in our pity let him live here and now he is dictating his terms to us.’ 

 Those brazen, unabashed and shameless people instead of listening to Lut’s pleadings attacked him and molested him mercilessly and they were close to the door to brake it open when the angels pulled him in and shut the door and using their anglic powers blinded the people out side. The people on the other side of the door were not able to locate the door. 

 Angels consoled Lut and told him. ”O Lut! We are Messengers from thy Lord! By no means shall they reach thee.’ Now travel with thy family while yet a part of the night remains, and let not any of you look back: but thy wife will remain behind: To her will happen what happens to the people. Morning is their time appointed: Is not the morning nigh?”

(S: 11,V: 81) 

Lut taking the members of his family, as was instructed by the angels, left Sodom in the darkness of the night and kept on traveling. At dawn when he reach a place known as Zoar, a stunning roar wrecked the nerves of the people of Sodom and brimstones started showering upon them and the entire inhabitation of Sodom and Gomorrah were obliterated from the face of the earth forever. The place where Lut had reached remained safe from this disastrous destruction.

Rain of fire:

 The story of this wrath is described in the Old Testament in these words: 

“Then the Loan rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of the 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 Ch 19, 24& 25) 

 Relics and ruins of this destruction can be seen even toady on the road that links Syria with Hijaz. Although more than four thousand years have passed, the desolateness of the area is persisting even today. The Dead Sea is also a sign of that inflicted people, which is also referred as Lut Sea. This Sea is the lowest area on the earth, once this place was a dry land and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah used to exist there. When those people were inflicted with wrath of God, this land resulting the earthquakes sank more than 400 meters below the sea level and all that remained after the rain of fire and brimstones, drowned in the water

And, the cities were right on the high road. Behold! In this is a sign for those who believed.

            (S: 15,V: 77) 

And We have left thereof an evident Sign, for any people who care to understand.

(S: 29,V: 35) 

AIDS: 

 In the story of Lut an unnatural act of sexual gratification has been mentioned. God detested this unnatural act because it causes such diseases for the mankind, which proves to be harmful and disastrous for other fellow beings.

 God Almighty is Merciful to His creatures and Loves them with a love that exceeds the sum of love of seventy mothers. When the people did not listen to His messengers and stubbornly insisted to destroy them by their involvement in moral turpitudes, God inflicted this destruction upon them so that the rest of the mankind and the coming generations could be saved of the lethal infectious diseases like HIV AIDS etc. 

Point to note: 

 Moral of the story of Lut narrated in the Holy Books is that transgression always suffers an agonizing ending. Followers of the Satan neither enjoy peace here nor they have any share in the hereafter. It is one of the laws of nature that no one can leave this world unless he is rewarded for his acts and deeds here. Can anyone claim that dishonesty and deceit have ever increased his delight and joy? Can a person after eating rotten and putrid food, stay healthy and can remain safe from diseases, anxiety and troubles? A good deed always has a happy ending and a bad deed ends up in destruction and humiliation. 

 When double standards and hypocrisy become the norm of a society, that society always suffers a disastrous destruction. Usually we ignore an evil thing on the pretext of its pettiness and triviality but when that ostensibly insignificant evil grows into a tree like form, then every spike of that tree, colorless flowers and dark dry and coarse leaves makes every one cry, which haunts the conscience with censures. Reprimands of a guilty Conscience gives rise to fatal diseases. 

 A diseased cell of the body becomes a colony. Just one infected single cell after multiplying itself into a multitude of cells besieges the entire body and turns into cancerous ailments and AIDS. Despite one’s efforts of safeguarding from such diseases, one cannot avoid them. Vice and virtue, good and bad are kinetic and living reality. Tree of virtue provides us shade of mercy and bounties and the tree of evilness bears the fruits of fears, phobias, anxiety, sorrow and grief.

Anger, hatred, jealousy, animosity, extremism and lobbying are the signs of a path leading to wrath of God. This path leads us towards false pride, high headedness, stubbornness and self-interests and takes us away from our Lord. This passage is lost in darkness and gloom. One trudging along this path faces winds of misery, grief and desolation. Traveler of this path eventually is disgraced even in his sight. A cancerous boil erupts in the heart, eyes are blinded and cannot see the right from the wrong and these are the people who remain deprived of reality and the cognition of God. 

Paradigm of thinking: 

We know that every act of man is based upon one’s thinking approach and the character of a person, a group of people or a family are also ascertained on the basis of their thinking approach. Those people also had their role in the history of mankind who opposed and slew the apostles and prophets of God and those too are preserved in the history that helped them, followed them and adopted that pattern of thinking, which they preached and demonstrated. 

 When we analyze the prophetic character microscopically, we do not observe a single thing, which is not good or virtuous. Whereas the other type of character belonging to bad and evil people does not have any good or righteous thing in their character, thus we can say that every character is based upon two types of patterns. One is that of godly type and the other is of satanic type. One who adopts the godly type of thinking approach becomes an active participant in the kingdom of God. All those types of approaches that take a person away from God are the satanic approaches. One who follows the thinking paradigm of prophets becomes a godly man, as the prophets are the representatives of God so they disseminate the Attributes of God to those who follow their thinking approach. And, when a person turns away from the prophetic approach of thinking he strays on those paths, which are dark and filled with spikes and thorns. 

Followers of the satanic paradigm of thinking remain overshadowed with grief and fears, at times he suffers from fatal diseases and on others he remains over burdened with problems of all sorts and he finds no way out". Uncertainty makes him whimsical, he cannot trust anyone, restlessness stings him, insomnia doesn’t allow him to sleep and blood-pressure makes the peace of mind alien for him. He doubts everyone, superstitions haunts him and his home becomes a wilderness for him and in order to escape from that wilderness he runs towards the social gatherings and finds people like him which further heightens his anxiety and restlessness. 

Whereas, people equipped with prophetic paradigm of thinking enjoy peace of mind and heart, they live in a world of tranquility and blissful ecstasy, even the angel of death appear to be a friend to them, angels inspire delight in them by reminding them of the favors and bounties of God bestowed upon them. They are versed with the art of dissociating themselves from the short-lived material world; their expectations are directed towards the Creator rather than the creatures of God. 

They befriend with the Lord of the worlds; nature assists them in everything, their life and death are all for the sake of God. God protects them from the evil designs of the mischievous people. These are blessed with the grace of witnessing God; they enjoy the blissful certitude of a still better life in the Hereafter. They know in the heart of their hearts that nothing is out of the reach of their Lord God. When they spend, they do so with this finality of their faith that they are spending it from that, which has been given to them by the Best Provider of the sustenance.