The Evidence We had Prayed For We had asked several of our friends to be praying that we would find the evidence that was needed. Sometimes its hard for us to know if something we feel led to work on is something the Lord wants us to pursue, or whether its a project of our own choosing. We all felt like this was important, but we also still knew we needed that "definitive" evidence. In Oct., when Richard and Ron arrived, they discovered it had just rained. This is a very rare occurrence in this area which receives as little as 1/4 to 1/2 inch of rain a year. It was still overcast while they were there, which helped immensely. The bright sun on the white ash was almost blinding, but now they could see quite well.
As they wandered through the area, Richard saw what looked like an open room or cave up ahead and asked
Ron if they could go investigate it. They would have never gone in that direction if Richard hadn't seen this, but now they headed for it. And as they walked, they came upon a very large chunk of ash that had just recently fallen from quite a high section- probably because of the recent rain. Ron stopped to view this and saw numerous yellowish balls inside this broken ash, all surrounded by a reddish-black, crusty ring. Prying one out, he recognized it as sulfur. Smelling it, he KNEW it was sulfur. Here was the evidence they needed- all through the ashen remains were round balls of sulfur (brimstone) encapsulated in burnt sulfur. Now we knew what my "eyeball" was! In my specimen, however, the sulfur had apparently fallen out as it separated while I was carrying it for several hours.
As they looked around, now knowing what to look for, they saw these sulfur balls literally everywhere they
looked. Before, we hadn't been able to see them because the loose ash had covered everything. But now the rain washed away the loose ash and caused this section to fall way, revealing these sulfur balls embedded through the ashen material. The reddish-black crystalline material surrounding the sulfur balls showed that they had once been on fire. It seems that as these burning balls of brimstone fell from the sky, they burned right through everything. And as they burned, after a while, molten material surrounding the sulfur cut if off from the oxygen, preserving it in the interior of the ashes.
What was discovered was that as the ashen material erodes and these sulfur balls become exposed to the surface, they fall out of their capsule and can be found laying all over the ground. But we hadn't been able to see them before because they had been covered with the loose layer of ash.
We began to research sulfur to see if sulfur in this form had been found anywhere else. Richard, Ron and I went to the Smithsonian and viewed their display of sulfur in its various forms, none being rounded balls. But to be sure, we asked to see their other specimens, and were shown their complete collection of sulfur which consisted of over 50 specimens. Again, none were in this form.
In Newsletter #8 (July 1994) we briefly discussed the crystalline capsules which surround the sulfur. The reddish color surrounding the sulfur balls was a result of the heat:
The Colour also changes, deepening from yellow to dark red, and, finally, to black at about 250 degrees C (482 degrees F). The variations in both colour and viscosity are considered to result in changes in the molecular structure." "Encyclopaedia Britannica (1985) Vol. 13, p. 816.
(
PLEASE NOTE- in our July newsletter, it stated that 250 degrees C (Celsius) was 280 degrees F (Fahrenheit), which was what the encyclopedia showed. However, it was in error. The accurate conversion from Celsius to Fahrenheit is 482 degrees- multiply C by 9/5 and add 32 degrees to attain the Fahrenheit equivalent.)
The same encyclopedia, Vol. IX, p. 660, explained why these capsules surrounding the sulfur balls were of a crystalline structure:
"Monoclinic, or prismatic, sulfur, which is obtained when liquid sulfur is cooled slowly, consists of long, needle-like crystals."
An Earlier Report of the Sulfur Balls Sulfur in such a pure form, in rounded balls simply isn't found anywhere else on earth except in this region, that we've been able to ascertain. And reports have come in that these have been found quite far north, which verifies Ron's belief that this plain was quite large. We have talked with numerous geologists and chemists without telling them why we were asking. However, we weren't the first ones to discover these sulfur balls in the region. When William Albright and Melvin Kyle set out to find the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in 1924, they, too, found these balls of brimstone; however, they were looking for the sites at the southern end of the Dead Sea:
"...a region on which brimstone was rained will show brimstone. Well, it does; we picked up pure sulfur, in pieces as big as the end of my thumb. It is mixed with the marl of the mountains on the west side of the sea, and now is to be found scattered along the shore of the sea even on the east side, some four or five miles distant from the ledge that contains the stratum. It has somehow scattered far and wide over this plain." "Explorations at Sodom" by Dr. Melvin Kyle, 1928, pp. 52-53.
Influenced by the common misconception that the cities were at the southern end, these men obviously were on the very sites, yet misinterpreted them as being "marl", or an earthy limestone deposit used as fertilizer on soils deficient in limestone. And the reason that these sulfur balls are found throughout the entire plain is simple- the Bible says the entire plain was included in the destruction of the cities:
GEN 19:25 And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.
