Sin City?

I'm back! My trip to "Sin City" was super busy with work and I'm exhausted. I did get some free time while I was there and managed to wonder up and down the strip to do a little shopping for my family. As I walked by all the homeless, by the guys/gals handing out hooker cards, by the many people to drunk to be coherent, by all the people on vacation enjoying the sights, by all the hard working people trying to make a living (you get the idea)...I remembered that (in the past) I have referred to Vegas as "Sodom and Gomorrah". Everyone knows that story from the bible. But as I walked around the city, it occurred to me that Vegas is really no different than any other big city in America. Let me explain.

While Vegas may be different in many ways than most cities, It is also very similar. How? The people. The people are what makes a city. And the people in Vegas are from everywhere. It's a conglomerate of people from all walks of life from all areas of the world. Knowing that, I felt is was unfair for me to label a city of people with such prejudice. To be honest, I was just repeating what I had heard from almost every preacher I've ever listened to. I've decided to leave that decision to God. I found a couple of verses in the bible that you've prolly never heard or had pointed out to you that refer to Sodom and Gomorrah.

First-Let's look at what happened. In Gen. 19 we read: "Early the next morning Abraham...looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah...and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace."
And so for thousands of years that city has served as a warning from every pulpit of what happens when God decides to judge a city. But know let's read about those verses you never hear from the pulpit.

In Ezek.16 the Profit has a series of visions and has a promise from God that He will "restore the fortunes of Sodom and her daughters" and they will "return to what they were before."

Here's another, In Matt. 10 Jesus travels to Galilee, asking people to see things a new way. He encounters great resistance from the devout religous people and  He warns those religous people that "it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah than for them on judgement day". He tells highly commited, pious, pompous, religous people that it will be better for Sodom and Gomorrah than for them. Hmm?

Here's a few more for the heck of it:
In Matt. 19 "renewal of all things", Acts 3 - Peter says that Jesus will "restore everything", Paul says in Col. 1  that through Christ "God was pleased to...reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or things in heaven".
Sounds to me like God's in the restoration business, not the destruction business.

Sooooo, lesson learned. I will no longer repeat hateful prejudices I hear from the mouths of men but will search the heart of God on such matters from here on out.

What say you?