Bible Study 2022
Dinosaurs Biblically
Let us look at dinosaurs using the bible and what God says about them. In our culture there is a big battle, there are only two religions in the world, God’s Bible and not God’s. Either God is the authority or man is the authority. And if you reject God as the absolute authority, then man becomes the authority. That is the religion of humanism in the broadest sense.
All other religions, whether it is Buddhism, Atheism, Hinduism or anything else believe that man is superseding God and His Word. In our American culture we see a lot of secular humanism. Anytime you see the Big Bang, billions of years or evolution these are subsets to the secular forms of humanism. The same way the creation and the fall are subsets of Christianity.
Some people say this is science against Christianity. We know that science is observable and repeatable. But no one can say that about the Big Bang, and about billions of years. No. Has anybody observed the change of a single cell amoeba into a goat? No. So that is a religion that has been imposed on people in this culture. So this is a battle of two religions. There are a lot of forms of secular humanism.
There is secularism, atheism, agnosticism, naturalism and materialism, etc. Atheism says there is no God. Agnosticism says that you cannot know that God exists. But you can’t know if knowledge exists either. New Atheism is an aggressive form of atheism who are people that try to impose that on our kids. People like Richard Dawkins are doing that. Naturalism says that nature is all there is.
Some Christians accept some of these evolutionary ideas and mix it with Christianity. And guess what we get, something has to give because their views do not mix. Maybe the bible is incorrect. And some falsehoods are being taught in Christian Colleges. But what we really need to do is to get back to the Bible which is God’s inerrant Word. Let God be God and let us interpret what God says.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Light and water on the first day, He created everything in six days and He rested on the seventh. Is that too hard for an all- powerful God? No. And it was a perfect creation. Deuteronomy 32:4 says, “His work is perfect.” At the end of the creation work, God saw all that He made and it says in Genesis 1:31, “and indeed it was very good.”
Imagine a world without death, without suffering, without sin, no cancer, it was perfect. But then Adam and Eve disobeyed God and they ate from a tree that was forbidden. Disobedience is sin and God cursed the ground and animals and men so that they will die. The world is now imperfect. In fact, that is why we need a Savior to save us from our sin and death and to get a new heaven and a new earth.
And we see the catastrophe of a worldwide flood in Noah’s days. That is where we get these rock layers in high mountains full of fossils from the flood. Then we have the confusion at the tower of Babel and the effects are all over. Then we have Christ stepping into history, the Son of God became a man and thus became our savior because He loves us and stepped into history. Then we see the work of Christ on the cross.
The infinite Son of God took the infinite punishment from the infinite Father and that was enough to satisfy the punishment of the Father on all our sin. Only through the blood of Jesus. But Christ did not stay in the grave, He came out of that grave showing He had power over life and death. And we look forward to a new consummation in a new earth and a new heaven with no more death and suffering.
So let us look what God has to say about dinosaurs. What day did God make T.rex? Genesis 1:25, “And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.” This was day six where God made the land animals. What did T. rex originally eat?
Genesis 1:30, “Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so.” So T. rex originally was a vegetarian. Some people say, wait we have found a complete skeleton and inside its stomach we found fossilized animals. So at some point all this changed.
When did all this change? When Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, all this changed, God cursed the world. That is why we see a lot of attack and defense structures in animals. Sharp teeth on animals like alligators and talons on an eagle to grab fish out of the sea. And defense structures like a hard shell on a turtle to defend themselves from being eaten. So the original design was for everyone to eat vegetarian foods.
After the fall, things changed. Genesis 3:14 says, “So the Lord God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; On your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life.” And animals started to eat each other. Added changes after the fall, woman in Genesis 3:16 and for man in Genesis 3:17-19.
Genesis 3:18, “Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field.” They had to adjust to a broken world. So a good questions is, were dinosaurs on Noah’s ark? Yes, there were dinosaurs on the ark. Genesis 6:20, “Of the birds after their kind, of animals after their kind, and of every creeping thing of the earth after its kind, two of every kind will come to you to keep them alive.”
How many kind of dinosaurs needed to be on the ark? People have said that are 50 different kind of dinosaurs. Let us use dogs for example, Noah only required two dogs on the ark, but we now have a lot of descendants like wolf species, coyote species, dingoes and our domestic dogs. And if they can interbreed with each other they are part of the same kind. So we have large dogs and Chihuahuas.
It is the same way with dinosaurs, but because they have died out we can look at the Ceratopsian kind where we find variations within the same kind. Yes we have these species kinds like the Sauropod kinds with their variations. And young species do not take up a lot of space. Remember God controls everything and all the animals that He chose would go peacefully into the ark.
The rest of the large dinosaurs died in the flood. Genesis 7:21-22 says, “And all flesh died that moved on the earth: birds and cattle and beasts and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man. 22 All in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, all that was on the dry land, died.” Some of these large dinosaurs were rapidly buried by sediment rich water which seals out oxygen and they became fossils.
We see these big graveyards in Texas and Colorado, we see these fossils as if they were walking all in the same direction. Notice that dinosaur bones do not come with tags to say how old they are. So where do the age of these bones come from? Here creationists and evolutionist actually agree on something. There are rock layers in a geologic time scale. There are Cretaceous and Cambrian rock layers.
Where we disagree is how long it took to lay down those rock layers. Evolutionists say it takes 100 million years for the Cambrian rock layer to form and they say that that happens slowly and gradually over millions of years with no major catastrophe. Well, there are catastrophes all the time, right? We look at the same rock layers and we know that can only happen through a massive yearlong global flood.
Genesis 8:4 says, “Then the ark rested in the seventh month, the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat.” We know that the height of that mountain is 16,850 ft. high and it is located in Turkey, which supports this global flood. Genesis 7:19 says, “And the waters prevailed exceedingly on the earth, and all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered.”
Genesis 7:20-21 says, “The waters prevailed fifteen cubits upward, and the mountains were covered. 21 And all flesh died that moved on the earth: birds and cattle and beasts and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man.” Verse 24, “And the waters prevailed on the earth one hundred and fifty days.” A cubit is about 21 inches, so 15 cubits is about 26 feet.
Where did all that water come from? Genesis 8:2 says, “The fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven were also stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained.” The climate before the flood that allowed dinosaurs to grow to that enormous size was more like that of a greenhouse, where animals and plants grew abundantly and people lived longer because of the moisture and the limited ultra violet sunrays.
The current climate is different from the climate before the flood. Genesis 9:13-14 says, “I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between Me and the earth. 14 It shall be, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud.” Verse 16, “I will look on it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”
So you have the same rock layers with two different interpretations. Now we tend to find the dinosaur bones in the Cretaceous, Jurassic and Triassic layers. So when you find a dinosaur bone where do they come up with the age? You go to a paleontologist who study bones and you ask, how do they know their age? They simply look at a chart and say they are between 46 to 49 million of years old.
The global flood did not happen millions of years ago. The concept of millions of years comes from the rock layers. However, we have a current example from the volcanic eruption of Mt St Helens in 1980. Rock layers formed soon after that and they were independently assessed to be very old while we know that they are very young. So biblically how old is the earth?
The bible says that creation began on day 1, 5 days later Adam was created, from Adam to Abraham there is roughly 2000 years, from Abraham to today you have roughly 4000 years so the total is roughly 6000 years. Does the Bible talk about any dinosaurs? Yes, Job 40:15-19 says, “Look now at the behemoth, which I made along with you; he eats grass like an ox.
16 See now, his strength is in his hips, and his power is in his stomach muscles. 17 He moves his tail like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are tightly knit. 18 His bones are like beams of bronze, his ribs like bars of iron. 19 He is the first of the ways of God; only He who made him can bring near His sword.” So this is a massive creature, some people say maybe this is an elephant or a hippo.
Has anybody ever seen a tail like a cedar tree? No elephant has a tail like that. Job 41:18-21 talks about a Leviathan, “His sneezings flash forth light, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. 19 Out of his mouth go burning lights; sparks of fire shoot out. 20 Smoke goes out of his nostrils, as from a boiling pot and burning rushes. 21 His breath kindles coals, and a flame goes out of his mouth.”
This is a water creature, this makes you think of a fire breathing dragon. Some say leviathans and behemoths are just mythological creatures and not real. The Lord is speaking to Job in Job 38 – 41 and He is talking about a lion, is that not real? He mentions raven, donkey, wild ox, ostrich, horse locust, hawk, eagle, behemoth and leviathan, are they not real?
But can a dragon breathe fire? Let me just introduce you to a bombardier beetle. This insect takes two chemicals shoots it into a chamber where they ignite and fire comes out that will burn you. This is not the same type of fire that will burn your house down, but it will burn you. I saw a video where this beetle fries an ant that way. This is an amazing bug that God created.
If God can do this with a bug, can He do that with a Leviathan? Yes. The bible talks about other creatures that can produce fire. Isaiah 14:29 says, “Do not rejoice, all you of Philistia, because the rod that struck you is broken; for out of the serpent’s roots will come forth a viper, and its offspring will be a fiery flying serpent.” Isaiah 30:6 says, “The burden against the beasts of the South.”
Through a land of trouble and anguish, from which came the lioness and lion, the viper and fiery flying serpent, they will carry their riches on the backs of young donkeys, and their treasures on the humps of camels, to a people who shall not profit.” Numbers 21:6 says, “So the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and many of the people of Israel died.”
Deuteronomy 8:15 says, “who led you through that great and terrible wilderness, in which were fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty land where there was no water; who brought water for you out of the flinty rock.” Why don’t we find the word dinosaur in the Bible? Early translations of the Bible happened in the year 1516, the Tyndale Bible and the Geneva Bible is in 1560.
The King James Bible was translated in 1611 and most of our modern translations still have ties that go back to the King James Bible version. The word dinosaur was invented in 1841 by Richard Allen. The word dinosaur really means terrible lizard. What about the word Dragon? This word dragon is in the KJV (OT) 22 times and in the Geneva Bible (OT) 24 times.
It is all over the Bible, let us look at Isaiah 27:1, “In that day the Lord with His severe sword, great and strong, will punish leviathan the fleeing serpent, leviathan that twisted serpent; and He will slay the dragon that is in the sea.” Here leviathan is called the dragon. Psalm 91:13, “You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra, the young lion and the dragon you shall trample underfoot.”
So are dinosaurs and dragons basically the same thing? All dinosaurs can be called dragons, but not all dragons can be called dinosaurs. Dragon is more of an overarching term, it includes the flying reptiles, it includes the sea reptiles, but it also includes the serpent land reptiles. Dinosaurs are very specific land reptiles that had one or two hip structures. And by that definition they are different.
When did people start believing that dragons were a myth? In 1910, that was written in the Encyclopedia Britannica and now many people believe that dragons are a myth. But historians considered them real alongside other animals. And dragon legends are found in almost every town in England. In England before the Norman Conquest in 1066, the dragon was chief among the royal ensigns in war.
In China, the dragon appears as the national symbol and the badge of the royal family. The dragon adorned the Chinese flag until the founding of the Republic of China in 1911. If you look at history in a book called Aelian, written about animals in 220 AD it says, “But according to accounts from Phrygia there are dragons in Phrygia too, and these grow to a length of sixty feet.”
Pliny, Natural History, 70 AD says “Africa produces elephants, but it si India that produces the largest, as well as the dragon.” Why don’t we find dinosaurs today? They died out. People are trying to create the missing links that are not there. If that does not work, they fake it. When people do not believe in it they just lie about a creating missing link to prove that evolution is true.
Some people believe that an asteroid hit the earth and killed all the dinosaurs. Well, what other animals were killed? Some people think that they died of some disease. And some people think they died of overeating. Dinosaurs ‘gassed’ themselves so much that there was a climate change according to British scientists. Is there really a mystery why all those dinosaurs died out?
The ultimate reason here is because of sin. Ever since Adam and eve sinned, a lot happened in the world. Some specific reasons might be the changed environment after the flood. How do reptiles survive the ice age that came about? Not so well. How about hunted by men. Most species died of because of that. How about diseases? And how about catastrophic events like volcanoes exploding?
I hope you can see that the Bible is true and the message of the gospel is also true. God came down to save those who believe in Christ and He takes you as you are. But He doesn’t leave you as you are, He wants to make you more like Christ. And He dwells in you with His Holy Spirit, to make sure you get to heaven, Amen?