Dragons and Dinosaurs

The Behemoth

Here’s something to consider, and I find this fabulous!  Job knew what God was talking about when he said,

“Look at the behemoth, which I made along with you and which feeds on grass like an ox. What strength he has in his loins, what power in the muscles of his belly! His tail sways like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are close-knit. His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like rods of iron. He ranks first among the works of God, yet his Maker can approach him with his sword.

“The hills bring him their produce, and all the wild animals play nearby. Under the lotus plants he lies, hidden among the reeds in the marsh. The lotuses conceal him in their shadow; the poplars by the stream surround him. When the river rages, he is not alarmed; he is secure, though the Jordan should surge against his mouth. Can anyone capture him by the eyes, or trap him and pierce his nose?” Job 40:15-24

This is a land animal whose description sounds an awful lot like one of the large brachiosaurs with which we seem to be so familiar today. The African Elephant currently holds the record for the largest living land animal, and God’s description of the behemoth clearly describes some other extinct animal.

And I see a couple of obvious notes that make me smile:

1. Despite the atheistic viewpoint that the Bible was written by one lunatic with a plan to fool the world, it must be painfully obvious to accept that whoever that author was, deceiver or not, he knew about this dinosaur enough to write about it.
2. Since there were no archaeologists or scientists around in those days (even if the Bible were fake and written only 1000 years ago) to share such things with their fellow man, then such a beast must have been walking the earth either during the author’s time or in such recent history that its existence was passed down by word-of-mouth.
3. So, contrary to popular “scientific” myth, men were plainly around at the time of the dinosaurs, even though such scientists have somehow “proven” that millions of years have separated the two, and that this is not possible.
4. How then could one write about something so long ago that only recently was even known?

The Leviathan

Now dragons have always been ascribed to myth alone.  But why does every culture seem to have these myths? And how did men come up with the idea of a large dinosaur-like beast that spews flame from its mouth and has armor as its flesh?  A beast that can walk and fly and swim?  A beast so great that “nothing on earth is its equal.”  Once again, we can see that Job (a man) knows of what God speaks when He says: 

“Can you pull in the leviathan with a fishhook or tie down his tongue with a rope? Can you put a cord through his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook? Will he keep begging you for mercy? Will he speak to you with gentle words? Will he make an agreement with you for you to take him as your slave for life? Can you make a pet of him like a bird or put him on a leash for your girls? Will traders barter for him? Will they divide him up among the merchants? Can you fill his hide with harpoons or his head with fishing spears?

“If you lay a hand on him, you will remember the struggle and never do it again! Any hope of subduing him is false; the mere sight of him is overpowering. No one is fierce enough to rouse him. Who then is able to stand against me? Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me.

“I will not fail to speak of his limbs, his strength and his graceful form. Who can strip off his outer coat? Who would approach him with a bridle? Who dares open the doors of his mouth, ringed about with his fearsome teeth? His back has rows of shields tightly sealed together; each is so close to the next that no air can pass between. They are joined fast to one another; they cling together and cannot be parted. His snorting throws out flashes of light; his eyes are like the rays of dawn. Firebrands stream from his mouth; sparks of fire shoot out. Smoke pours from his nostrils as from a boiling pot over a fire of reeds. His breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from his mouth. Strength resides in his neck; dismay goes before him. The folds of his flesh are tightly joined; they are firm and immovable. His chest is hard as rock, hard as a lower millstone. When he rises up, the mighty are terrified; they retreat before his thrashing. The sword that reaches him has no effect, nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin.

“Iron he treats like straw and bronze like rotten wood. Arrows do not make him flee; sling-stones are like chaff to him. A club seems to him but a piece of straw; he laughs at the rattling of the lance. His undersides are jagged potsherds, leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge. He makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment. Behind him he leaves a glistening wake; one would think the deep had white hair. Nothing on earth is his equal—a creature without fear. He looks down on all that are haughty; he is king over all that are proud.” Job 41:1-34

There is a standing assumption that the earth is billions of years old, based on assumptions that God doesn’t exist.  Once you take God out of the equation, you have to start grasping at straws to make the universe  make sense.  But the universe doesn’t work without God.  Nothing does.  Those that choose to explain the beginning of the world as an accident must live with the belief that there is nothing more than a meaningless life without hope.

Why then do people fight so hard to survive while ironically giving their lives so that others may live?  Why do people demand justice?  Why do we claim to have any rights to anything if we’re all here by accident?

But the assumption of the age of the earth and of the dinosaurs is based on the process of carbon-dating, which, while accurate to within a few thousand years, is largely inaccurate because of the large assumptions that must be made with its use.  Following is an excerpt from an article that explains the problems associated with carbon-dating:

Those involved with unrecorded history gather information in the present and construct stories about the past. The level of proof demanded for such stories seems to be much less than for studies in the empirical sciences, such as physics, chemistry, molecular biology, physiology, etc.

Williams, an expert in the environmental fate of radioactive elements, identified 17 flaws in the isotope dating reported in just three widely respected seminal papers that supposedly established the age of the Earth at 4.6 billion years.  John Woodmorappe has produced an incisive critique of these dating methods.  He exposes hundreds of myths that have grown up around the techniques. He shows that the few "good" dates left after the "bad" dates are filtered out could easily be explained as fortunate coincidences.

Read the full article here: http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c007.html

Ultimately, what I see is just another desperate method of justifying our separation from God.  If one ascribes to the theology that “If I don’t believe in God I won’t have to answer to him”, then any theory that supports the “God doesn’t exist” assumption is instantly accepted.

But for Christians, it is imperative that we accept God’s Word as Truth.  When you start with THAT assumption, everything else that science seems to discover that is in contradiction to the Bible, can be seen to actually either be wrong, or in fact support what the Bible says.

As we see above, the world’s discovery of dinosaur fossils are not in contradiction to the Bible. In fact, they validate it.  Carbon-dating is not wrong, it’s just inaccurate and unreliable. The greatest assumption is that the atmosphere has remained unchanged since the beginning of time, which we takes a great leap of faith to believe is true.  How it’s differed over time, however, is unknown.

But again, making the initial assumption that the Bible is true helps us to seek understanding within that context.  And doing so will yield much more logical and acceptable results than the alternative.  The Bible says that God did not bring rain until the Flood of Noah, which occurred 1,656 years after creation (See the Timeline).

Wouldn’t this likely mean that the atmosphere was significantly different then?  Perhaps this is why men lived to be nearly a thousand years old until after the flood.  It’s unknown, of course, but you must consider these things when you look at the “constants” assumption necessary for the isotope-dating processes.

Anyway, back when I rejected the Truth, I wanted evolution to make sense.  It had a lot of holes, but I filled those holes up with faith: a faith that God wasn’t real.  But it took a lot of faith.  It took a whole lot more faith to be an atheist, and I ultimately came to find that I just didn’t have enough.

God and His Word is actually a lot easier to believe.  He’s a lot easier to trust.  He never changes.  He is the same, yesterday, today and forever.

God is like gravity.  We can always invent ways to lift ourselves up, but in the end he’ll just bring us back down to earth.