While war is anything but romantic, it is certainly interesting due to the strategies. Often, commanders will take their cues directly from the Bible, ordering what would appear to be assaults of Biblical proportions. Such is the case during events on this day in 1943, three years and 10 months into WWII.
Allied Forces, led by England and the United States, started a concentrated attack on Hamburg, Germany. Americans attacked by day, the most dangerous time of all to attack. England attacked by night under the cloak of darkness. However, their strategy was amazing.
They had developed a unique “technology” called Window. Strips of aluminum foil were dropped from the bombers along the way to their target. As the strips fell, they created a window that confused German radar, causing the Germans to estimate a far larger number of bombers than there actually were. The foil foiled and fooled the Germans so that the British bombers could hit their target.
“Between 1:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m., 2,300 tons of bombs were dropped on the city, setting a new world record. Included in the aerial salvo were 8,000-pound “block busters” and 4,000-pound “cookies,” along with over 350,000 individual incendiary bombs. It was these incendiary bombs that caused much of the havoc. Eyewitnesses described the next few hours as filled with a continuing stream of explosions…
“RAF Bomber Command’s Air Marshal Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris determined the northern German city a worthy target… [because of its] many manufacturing plants and transportation centers, and was home to the Blohm and Voss shipyards, which built the U-boats threatening the very existence of Great Britain. Planning to strike this center of industry, Harris ordered a 10-day-long campaign targeting the city, code-naming it Operation Gomorrah, a reference to the biblical rain of ruin and fire coming from above.”1
Genesis 19:23-29 says, “The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar. (24) Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; (25) And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities,
and that which grew upon the ground. (26) But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. (27) And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place where he stood before the LORD: (28) And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.”
The Bible doesn’t tell us that God took 10 days to destroy the city. Instead, the Bible says that this is how their morning began. Imagine the sight of the fire and brimstone falling from the sky! The people must have been terrified, but this was the righteous judgment of God.
Gomorrah has stood as an example of God’s judgment. The military referenced it in WWII. It’s been used other times in culture to describe a horrific, inescapable event. However, it doesn’t seem to wake people up!
Peter uses several examples in 2 Peter 2 to set up the power of God’s future reign of judgment. 2 Peter 2:6, 9, Peter writes, “And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes condemned 
them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly… (9) The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished.”
When God reigns judgment on this Earth during the Tribulation Period, it is going to make the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and WWII combined look like a Sunday School picnic. The devastation will be far greater and the message it sends will be one from which there is no recovery.
As a whole, the world will never learn, even though Scripture shows very clearly what has happened and what’s going to happen. When the handwriting is on the wall, nothing good is going to follow. Though we can be ready to be rescued and raptured before these days occur, let’s never lose a desire to rescue as many as we can before that day.
Jude 1:7 warns, “Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.”
1https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/operation-gomorrah-first-firestorms
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