Answers Bible Curriculum Second Edition Unit 2 Lesson 16
In this lesson, we consider the issue of dinosaurs and dragons in creation. Does the Bible talk at all about dinosaurs? If so, what does the Bible tell us about them? And what of the universally accepted notion (among evolutionary scientists) that dinosaurs lived and died long before humans existed?
Our main texts for this lesson are Job 40:15-24 and Job 41:1-34.
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good morning and welcome back to Sunday school it’s good to see you all again happy new year we’re continuing in our chronological study of the Bible and you know we’ve been starting with creation and so that’s where we continue last time before the Christmas break we spoke about the expanded creation account of man man’s creation in Genesis 2 where so many foundational doctrines find their origin as we saw a right understanding of man himself gender sexuality marriage work they all begin with Genesis 1 and 2 but these accounts do not fit at all with an evolutionary understanding of human origins so then rather than adjusting the Bible to fit man’s theories man’s modern theories we have to adjust or even reject man’s theories in order to stand with the Bible a Bible it’s worthy of it it is God’s complete trustworthy word and therefore it must be our foundation for understanding the world and knowing what is true but what are we talking about today well before I get to that let me use for a little bit God’s creation is amazing isn’t it it counts of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are vivid display of God’s amazing power and his absolute command over everything in the universe now one you just created is so beautiful creative awesome diverse take the Cardinal for instance relatively common bird but you take the time to look at one closely you see it’s a work of art for the vibrant red and black feathers and it’s neon beak Cardinals and many other birds they move swiftly and gracefully through the sky pointing us to the beauty and creativity of God themselves well take the lion you think of the lion certain adjectives probably come to mind fierce powerful stately regal a lion is an impressive beast as strong muscles great speed a deadly bite terrifying roar we regard this creature not only as beautiful but also awesome and it reminds us again it points us to the awesome power and majesty of God but as impressive as these creatures are in their own ways there’s probably no creature that shows forth the awesomeness of God as creator like the space slug yes this gigantic creature so enormous it can swallow a spaceship in one bite and with the slab of its tail shake the ground for miles yet so mysterious this creatures only found in deep space what a testimony to the power creativity and mystery of God wait what what’s that you say the space lug is not a real creature it’s actually a made up creature from the movie star wars oh well I do beg your part I guess it it would be silly to praise God’s wisdom creativity and power by speaking about a made-up creature wouldn’t it it’d be silly to for someone to inaccurately but in detail describe a real creature and praise God on the basis of those inaccurate details wouldn’t it yes indeed it would however this is precisely what some suggest the Bible itself does in the book of Job see near the end of the book of Job we read descriptions of two creatures that too many today seem just plain mythical or at least extremely hyperbolic what exactly are these creatures mentioned in the book of Job called behemoth and Leviathan were they real well they just myth are they creatures that still exist in our world today or were they creatures that we don’t know or see today because they have died out were they perhaps even dinosaurs or dinosaur-like creatures and if they were dinosaurs what are the implications for our understanding of origins so as you saw on the first slide our topic for today is dinosaurs and Dragons I’ll go back to that slide for just a second here’s our our our agenda is we’re gonna first overview the topic of dinosaurs I’m going to zaman these two passages and Joe but I talked about we’re gonna consider whether these are indeed a description of a real creature or could it possibly be something else now we’re gonna finish today by watching a video clip from Answers in Genesis related to the topic of dinosaurs and Dragons so let’s pray before we go on further our Great Creator God I thank you for the truth of your word and your glory displayed in creation even God and some creatures that don’t exist today and yet a record of these creatures has been provided for us even in your word and how astounding God that you created such creatures and what a testimony to how we are to be posturing ourselves before you we cannot take a great place but you deserve the great place god I pray that the people would see that more today it equipped me to speak help the people to understand in this alright let’s talk in general about dinosaurs time source really once lived on the earth since the early 1800s people have found fossil evidence of dinosaurs existence the name dinosaur itself it was coined around 1850 and it comes from the Greek and it means terrible lizard not every dinosaur was fearsome and terrible but that’s what the name means terrible lizard now there are many modern scientific theories related to dinosaurs that are anti-biblical well let’s not miss understand dinosaurs themselves are not anti-biblical they’re not the enemy don’t feel like oh I need to do this if I’m gonna stand with the Bible I need to deny dinosaurs no you don’t fine and there’s plenty of evidence for them and they don’t contradict the Bible as Christians we should not be afraid to admit that dinosaurs once existed in fact we should give God glory and stand in awe of him for how he made dinosaurs and other great creatures that have gone extinct but dinosaurs do need to be rightly understood in light of biblical truth and that’s one of the things are trying to accomplish today now truly our culture is fascinated with Dinosaurs I think I don’t have to tell you that just think of the various movies marketed today or in the recent past that future dinosaurs kids especially seem to be attracted to reading about or watching shows about dinosaurs now why this cultural fascination part of the reason surely has to be dinosaur size right you and I often gave in awe at big things giant buildings giant machines even giant sandwiches so understandably we are amazed at giant creatures I mean there are some decently big animals around today but many dinosaurs were from what we can tell much bigger from what paleontologists conjecture based on discovered dinosaur phones the largest of the dinosaurs were the sauropods and I’ve given you a little picture of that sauropods were those herbivores with extremely long necks and Tails one of the longest sauropods was a hundred and fifteen feet long and that’s longer than the biggest creature we have today the blue whale blue whales about a hundred feet long the longest sauropod was 115 feet long the heaviest sauropod appears to have been de Brachiosaurus at about 27 tons or 54 thousand pounds now that’s a lot of weight for reference the average adult elephant is about five and a half tonnes or 11,000 pounds so just imagine five times the weight of an elephant and you’ve got something like the Brachiosaurus a big beast big heavy Beast but not all dinosaurs are extremely large the hips allow feed on for instance there’s about six feet long and only a foot and a half tall weighed about 125 pounds not a huge dinosaur but substantial other dinosaurs are even smaller remember this this is something that Answers in Genesis often repeats the average size of a dinosaur both in what could grow to be and what it would be starting off the average size of the dinosaur was the size of a sheep so don’t think dinosaurs know about all these towering creatures some of them got pretty big but dinosaurs themselves weren’t necessarily so they were about the size of a sheep on average now I’ve quoted a bunch of statistics for you remember these are estimates from what we can tell based on dinosaur bones paleontologist scientists they do revise these estimates but it gives us a little bit of an idea of these amazing creatures and why we’re fascinated with them these dinosaurs especially big dinosaurs they capture our imaginations just from their size that’s not the only reason I think bigger small dinosaurs also fascinated because they’ve apparently all disappeared they no longer exist from a time from before today a time lost to us now dinosaurs a mystery many scientists have devoted their lives to uncovering the mystery when did these strange creatures live what were they like and what happens then now since they appear to be ancient creatures dinosaurs invariably become part of a discussion surrounding origins the very beginning of life on Earth dinosaurs according to secular scientists today were some of the most ancient creatures on earth but we asked just from a biblical perspective when did dinosaurs live when did they first appear it’s pretty simple go back to the Genesis one account six days of creation on which day two dinosaurs appear these are these great land lizards they have to be on day six when all the other land animals were made and when man was made technically a dinosaur is a land creature sometimes might refer to a marine dinosaur but that’s actually inaccurate there were marine creatures from the dinosaur that listed lived alongside dinosaurs but technically dinosaurs are land creatures and certain kind of land creature but we won’t get back back today anyway so day6 land dinosaurs come on day six same time as man same time as the other land creatures which means that humans lived along in the same same world as dinosaurs this is what you get from a plain reading of Genesis what but if you suggest as much to an evolutionist today you will probably laugh at you we know he would say humans came much much later than dinosaurs dinosaurs appeared about 231 million years ago and died out around 66 million years ago the first humans didn’t evolve from apes until about 2.3 million years ago it’s a big gap bit and this is clear in the fossil record there is no way humans lived with Dinosaurs this is what the modern evolutionist might say but hopefully we know enough by now even from our study in Genesis wanted to to reject the evolutionary timeline and accept what God gives us in Genesis 1 just from the creation account of Genesis 1 and 2 we would know that dinosaurs did indeed exist on the earth when they appeared day 6 and that man lived in the same world as dinosaurs but is there anything else in the Bible that would suggest or prove that humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs and I would say there is this is now what we want to turn to the book of Job please open your Bibles go to the book of Job job and look at chapter 40 job 40 we’re gonna be looking at verses 15 to 24 but before we do that let’s get a little context of this passage Joe this elderly man or this older man after suffering calamity after calamy in his life for no good reason that he can see he expresses to his friends that he wish he could talk to God and ask God why all this tragedy has come upon him Jobe increasingly becomes convinced that his suffering is unjustified so he wants to defend himself before God and even ask God for an explanation God why is this happening to me I can’t see any reason why this would happen in chapter 38 of Job Joe gets his wish God appears but rather than explaining to Joe what God is doing God gives Joe a series of rebukes and the form of questions questions about creation mostly through these questions God reminds job of God’s great power God’s wisdom and God’s right to do exactly as God wishes without explaining himself to anyone as short God is humbling Joe Pudding job helping Jobe go back to his rightful place his rightful posture before God now glance for a moment fear in chapter forty glands from Owen chapter 39 won’t read this chapter but in this chapter God asks Jobe a series of questions related to different animals we won’t discuss the questions but if you scan the passage you’ll see the various animals mentioned verse one we have the mountain goats verse one also the deer verse five the wild donkey verse nine the wild ox verse 13 the ostrich or could be the stork or the peacock verse 19 we have the horse verse 20 the locust verse 26 the hawk verse 27 the eagle these are all real creatures are they not and the descriptions given to us brief descriptions given to us in this passage they do accurately describe these animals and their behavior if they did not God’s words would make no sense to job he’s asking job to consider this various creatures if God were to say it’s something inaccurate about these creatures that would defeat God’s purses purpose and bringing him up to joke so this is right before our chapter but let’s now look at chapter 40 in the beginning of chapter 40 God commands job to give an answer hey job you know so much you’re such a you’re such a great being why don’t you tell me about certain things he asked job answer but then he resumed his interrogation of job starting in verse 15 and this is where we want to start reading look at job 40 verses 15 I think I wrote 22 there but I’m gonna read down to verse 24 job 40 verse 15 God says behold now behemoth which I made as well as you he eats grass like an ox behold now his strength in his is in his loins or his strength in his loins and his power in the muscles of his belly he bends his tail like a cedar the sin is of his thighs are knit together his bones are tubes of Broad’s his limbs are like bars of iron he is the first of the ways of God that his maker bring near his sword surely the mountains bring him food and all the beasts of the field play there under the Lotus plants he lies down in the covert of the reeds and the marsh the Lotus plants cover him with shade the Willows of the brook surround him if a River rages he is not alarmed he is confident though the Jordon rushes to his mouth can’t anyone capture him when he is on watch with Barb’s can anyone Pierce his notes alright we’ve read our passage as is our practice aren’t with using our adducted Bible study method let’s start by making just plain observations of the text notice what genre we are looking at here this is poetry you’d be poetry you see a lot of the Hebrew parallelism that’s so characteristic of that poetry but this poetry mean non factual or untrue no no poetry is still part of the Bible the Bible is inerrant poetry is also accurate it doesn’t contain errors but with poetry we should understand you’re not gonna expect more figurative language things like simile and metaphor they’re still gonna be indicating true things they’re still gonna be accurate but we wouldn’t be ready for that more figurative language this passage is about a creature that God calls behemoth and notice a number of things about this creature notice what behemoth eats eats grass these plants God says that specifically what sense do we get at this creature size he’s big this is a large creature and look at the descriptions that emphasize the creature size he’s called the first or the chief of the ways of God it says the mountains bring him food which seems indicate he eats a lot I mean he needs a whole mountain to bring him food if a river rages he’s not alarmed he’s confident through the Jordan rushes to his mouth that means he’s able to move through the water even against a rushing river he bends his tail like a cedar it says the Lotus plants cover him with shade and the Willows of the brook surround you now this is interesting verse 20 true is translated a little differently and depending on your Bible translation new American Standard says Lotus plants that ESV says Lotus trees NIV says lotuses King version says shady treats what are we talking about we talking about a small aquatic plant bush tree what I’m talking about well this is a rare word and he appears only one time in the Bible but I think we need to understand this term more on the tree side why do I say that well the Lotus plant as we know it today is essentially just a flowering lily pad that’s not gonna give you much shade unless you’ve got a whole lot of them and you’re completely underwater moreover verse 22 as poetry would is is featuring some Hebrew parallelism it says just as the Lotus plants cover this creature and give him shade so the willows surround him and provide shade willows or trees so to keep that parallelism it would make sense that whatever the Lotus plant is it’s also talking about a tree a larger plant bottom line notice many plants many trees aren’t involved in giving this one creature shape not just one tree not like the Lotus plant or willow tree we got a whole bunch that’s pointing to the great size of this creature how is the creatures tail described notice it is like a cedar Cedars a treat and notice some other descriptions that emphasize the creatures strength his strength is in his loins God says his powers and the muscles of his belly his bones are tubes of bronze his limbs are like bars of Honor for river rages he’s not alarmed and then we have that rhetorical question towards the end can anyone capture him expected answer is no well there’s also the location descriptions they are consistent with one another in this passage so what kind of environment does this creature seem to live in some kind of swampy land with rivers and trees this creature likes to be near the water and likes plants notice also pastor says who is able to approach this creature with the sword says let his maker bring near this wood this isn’t something for anyone else to just try and tackle this is only something for his maker a beast for his maker to deal with right so we’ve made these observations let’s go to our second step of our method now and interpret and we want to first take a step back and ask the question of what is the point of this passage we’re not here merely to learn about an ancient creature oh I didn’t bring this up to joke save let me tell you about this one creature so that you and future generations will know about it and we do learn but that’s not the main point its passage why does God bring up this creature to joke God once job to understand the limit of his own power understanding compared to God God has unlimited power and understanding he created this amazing and large creature that joke cannot handle but God can handle this is to help job remember who he is and remember who God is job needs to see his smallness and God’s bigness God is using behemoth as it as a means to prove that point but the question that’s more in line with our main topic today is what exactly is behemoth what is this animal certainly this animals big strong and familiar to job B no point in God bringing up an anima beat and that job had no idea what God was talking about consider behemoth you know there’s one creature you don’t really know about but he’s really big and he’s really strong it doesn’t make any sense job had to know about this creature otherwise God has no point in bringing it up so we know he’s big strong from a dojo but can we say more can we identify this animal specifically – most commonly identified animals with this creature by biblical interpreters so to see this in study Bibles see this and commentaries are the elephant and the hippo they say behemoth is the elephant or behemoth is the hippo one of these features Oh Delfin hippo do fit with some of the details of this passage certainly they are large they are strong and they live in environments near watery marshes but not all the details this passage fit with those creatures especially one big one which detailed doesn’t fit with the elephant or the hippo the tail right it says he bends his tail like a cedar now this tail is a big problem by the way this picture on the on your screen that’s those are cedar trees this animal is supposed to bend his tail have a tail moves tail like a cedar now obviously as a tree cedars don’t really move if they might sway with the wind so this is talking about the size of that creatures tail the behemoth has a tail like a cedar now let’s look at the tails of the elephant and hippo mm-hmm not very reminiscent of the cedar trees that we just looked at these don’t look like big or strong tails now someone might say well maybe tail here is actually supposed to describe an elephant’s trunk and not its tail well it’s an interesting thought but the the word here the Hebrew word for tail there’s no linguistic evidence inside or outside the Bible that suggests that this word might be used for something other than tail it pretty much just means tail it wouldn’t be used for a trunk though an elephant’s trunk does have some strength to it now someone else might say well maybe when God described the tail being like a cedar he meant the branches of the cedar tree and not the trunk you know the branches a little smaller well first of all many of the cedar trees branches are actually quite thick branches are pretty big second of all how would it fit God’s purpose to draw attention to the behemoths small branch or even twig like tail I mean the whole point of the passage as I try to emphasize is that no one can control behemoths except God because behemoth is so big and powerful so why would God in the middle of that presentation say oh by the way think about the behemoth tail do you know that you know that not very strong not very big tail that would not fit with God’s purpose God is trying to show that this creature is way beyond Joe even in his tail because of their tails neither the elephant or the hippo could be the Bema the image has to be a different creature what other animal do we know that actually existed and had a big tail I’m strong like a cedar tree well sauropod dinosaur this is a creature that fits all the descriptions of the passage he has a tail like a cedar he has that power in his loins he has bones like tombs of bronze he would live in an environment described in this passage so probably behemoth was a dinosaur like one of these sauropods now that’s a pretty big deal because that means that job is an example of a human living at the same time as a giant creature that no longer exists today even the same times as dinosaurs so contrary to the claims of evolutionists today humans did live alongside these giant creatures at one time humans and dinosaurs lived together but it’s not just behemoth because God’s not done look at chapter 41 God wants to use another great creature to reinforce job’s smallness and gods bigness and that is the sea creature known as Leviathan now we the description of the biotin is quite extensive we don’t have time to read the entire passage but look at chapter 41 and I just want to highlight certain details about this second creature – you look at job 41 verses 1 & 2 God continued speaking and he says to job can you draw out Leviathan with a fish hook or press down his tongue with the cord can you put a rope in his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook I got a number of rhetorical questions from God again what is God emphasizing to Jove about this creature you can’t handle the fire and joke you can’t capture him you can’t do him now skip down to verses 8 to 10 verse 8 of chapter 41 God says lay your hand on him remember the battle you will not do it again behold your expectation is false will you be it laid low even at the sight of him no one is so fierce that he dares to arouse him who then is he that can stand before me oh wow what is God now emphasizing to job Leviathan is a fierce creature that no one can overcome but God is even more powerful God is even less overcome a bull he made Leviathan the one that you can’t handle the one that you just look at him and you get terrified it makes you think you can stand before God and something unique about Leviathan though other than his strength and his ferocity jump down to verses 18 to 22 and Jobe 41 very intriguing descriptions here starting in verse 18 God says his sneezes flashed forth light and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning out of his mouth go burning torches sparks a fire leap forth out of his nostrils smoke goes forth as from a boiling pot and burning rushes his breath Kindles coals and a flame goes forth from his mouth in his neck lodges strength and dismay leaps before him so what strange ability based on these verses does the Leviathan appear to have would you say breathe fire it’s some sort of fire ability before someone says that way this is poetry this is just figured it can’t really breathe fire well please pay attention to how much emphasis in these verses is put on this flammability these animals heat inflames eight to ten lines about that mean yeah we can be bigoted but you can’t explain all this away this is emphatic that this animal has some fire abilities smoke fire light all associated with this animal repeatedly this is this is way more than a metaphor for ferocity description is too detailed to elongate it into emphatic Leviathan apparently has the ability to breathe fire now there’s other parts of this passages that go on to describe a Leviathan and even more amazing way he’s said to be so armored that his skin cannot be penetrated by darts and arrows he’s so large and powerful that just when he moves he stirs up the sea Leviathan is a massive creature that struck fear into the hearts of men and this creature himself feared nothing look what creature is like this today there’s any creature that we know of that’s still around does it fit the descriptions of this passage some interpreters suggest this animal might be a crocodile because no crocodiles got it got scales this little bit armored like it’s kind of a fierce animal and a little big or maybe a great white shark that’s one of the scariest creatures we have in the ocean but compare the great white shark or crocodile to this description and it doesn’t sit doesn’t sit all the way present age creatures don’t line up with what we read here in joke Leviathan must be a giant fire-breathing sea creature that’s key this is not some lake a river creature this is something in the ocean but unknown to us today some kind of scaly dinosaur like sea creature from a time gone by Jobe knew this creature in fact Jobe lived at the same time as this creature that’s why God can mention it to joke remember it makes no point for God to bring up a preacher that job doesn’t know by the way this is not the only time Leviathan is mentioned in the Bible there are three other references to Leviathan in the Old Testament one is Psalm 104 verse 26 you can investigate these more a little bit later on if you have time Psalm 104 26 mentions how God as part of his creation he made Leviathan to play in the sea while human ships go passing by Abhaya ‘then existing at the same time as humans and Psalm 74 verses 13 to 14 Leviathan is used in a metaphorical way there Asaph the writer recounts how God in a display of his unmatched power at one time destroyed various sea monsters including Leviathan and gave him up as food to various wilderness creatures actually I’m not sure whether it’s metaphorical I would have to look that past a little bit more it actually could be literal God could be describing the decimation of this animal or of one particular one particular Leviathan that was notable in history or he might be talking about how God devastated the nations will abound around Israel and he’s using Leviathan as a metaphor for that but just because of the vine is used in a metaphor don’t misunderstand it doesn’t mean that he’s mythical no the Bible uses real creatures as metaphors all the time lions Eagles etc but it’s interesting that Leviathan is mentioned because that means if you’re gonna use a metaphor you got to use something that people know the people knew Leviathan Asaph knew Leviathan and he expected his audience to one other reference appears in isaiah 27 verse 1 and this one definitely is metaphorical but it’s interesting the way the metaphor is used as a 27 verse 1 refers to Leviathan as a serpent or a sea dragon both of those terms appear in the NASA nasbe translation around Leviathan it uses a number of descriptors Leviathan but Leviathan serpent and sea dragon and it is used metaphorically in that passage as to describe the mighty enemy of Israel that God will slay which is appropriate right from what we’ve read in Jobe who can stand against Leviathan no human but God can only God can take down Leviathan which one see speak metaphorically about the enemies of God they may stand you as Leviathan for God will slay them God has total power so what’s the point Leviathan was not only known to Jobe but by others in the Bible and these statements the other statements in the Bible they fit with the description given of Leviathan in job so an even greater point the Bible gives us good reason to say that humans and dinosaurs as well as other great creatures that have gone extinct humans lived at the same time in the world as those creatures they lived alongside each other now when I say alongside don’t misunderstand I don’t mean that humans are regularly hanging out with dinosaurs I mean after the fall or at least after the flood dinosaurs probably acted toward humans like most other animals do with hostility or with fear so it’s not like dinosaur some humans for best buds now you may be wondering if dinosaurs lived at the same time as some humans of the Bible what happened to the dinosaurs why don’t we see any of them around today the Bible doesn’t give us an answer to that question whoever we’re gonna watch a video now that will shed some light on that question and also tie up many of the ideas that I presented to you this morning so here’s what we can cue up the video this clip from Answers in Genesis is about 11 minutes long who’s gonna talk specifically about legends and stories that have to do with dinosaurs dragons so let’s watch the video now while you’re doing that I always thought throw up on one other picture this is instance in Genesis artistic concept of what Leviathan may have look like we have some descriptions of passes of course we can’t say specifically what it looked like but here’s an aquatic sea creature scaly reptile light creature is able to breathe fire anyways we’ll hear more about Leviathan in just a second here in England there’s a popular legend just outside an ancient city lived a fire-breathing dragon in order to pacify the dragon and satisfy its hunger every day the people of the city gave the monster to sheep when the Sheep failed to satisfy the dragon human sacrifices were required lots were drawn to determine the victim one day the lot fell to the daughter of the king himself the King offered all his wealth to purchase a substitute to no avail and so the young maiden dressed as a bride was led away to the marsh where the dragon lived there was a soldier a follower of Christ named George who happened by and saw the condemned girl when the dragon attacked George outfought the mighty Beast he then asked the maiden for her garter and bounded around the scaly neck of the dragon after which the princess was able to lead it like a lamb they went into the city the grateful King offered the soldier up to half his kingdom but the man refused he simply asked the people to consider the Christian faith the people rejoiced and were baptized that’s the legend of Saint George the patron saint of England and the dragon a myth surely an allegory filled with symbolism but in the centre of that myth is this strange creature where did such a creature come from well dragon legends are found in many cultures and traditions all around the world Dragons abound in Chinese children’s stories Babylonian legends at Aztec tales in Japan dragons are generally considered friendly creatures children read stories of great dragon keepers and heroic dragon riders medieval European legends feature dragons who lived in wild remote regions guarding great treasures images of dragons are preserved on family crests and national shields but what could have inspired all these stories is the Dragons simply the creation of inventive minds or could Dragon stories be based in reality possibly related to dinosaurs or other amazing reptiles that we find in the fossil record many scientists contend that dinosaurs died off over 60 million years before humans came to be the possibility that humans and dinosaurs ever coexisted is unthinkable to them but what does the Bible say Genesis 1 tells us that God made the animals of the land air and sea in the same week that he created human beings in this case humans would have been alive on the earth at the same time as these creatures dinosaur fossils believed to be laid down during Noah’s Flood suggests that dinosaurs were certainly alive at the time of Noah only a few thousand years ago and since the Bible tells us that Noah took pairs of every kind of land animal on board the ark he certainly brought dinosaurs with him as well this is consistent with recent discoveries of soft tissue and red blood vessels preserved in dinosaur fossils a find that suggests dinosaur bones are not nearly as old as many scientists assume what of Noah’s descendants is job and in the book of Job we find two mighty creatures probably the largest animal on land and the fiercest animal at sea behold now behemoth God says to job as recorded in chapter 40 which I made along with you he eats grass like an ox his strength is in his loins and his power as in the muscles of his belly he moves his tail like a cedar some Bible footnotes suggest that this may be a reference to an elephant or hippopotamus but ask yourself does the tail of an elephant or hippo look anything like a swaying cedar tree look instead at this depiction of a sauropod dinosaur doesn’t this resemble the behemoth described in Job there’s one possible place where the Bible describes a dinosaur and it would be the behemoth described by God to job in the book of Joe and God’s talking to Jive about a specific animal and he goes into a great amount of detail to describe this animal in fact it’s one of the most detailed descriptions of an animal in the entire Bible he’s got a description there several verses describing his attributes his characters when you compare those descriptions with living organisms it doesn’t fit but it does fit the description of a sauropod dinosaur the brontosaurus type dinosaur the Apatosaurus dinosaur it’s big everything about it is enormous and strong and as you read that you can picture in your mind immediately one of the great sauropod dinosaurs I suspect that the animal described in job chapter 40 all behemoth is in fact a dinosaur that lived in the days of Job the book of Job not only describes a behemoth it also tells of another creature this one called a Leviathan the the animal given the name Leviathan is described as a sea creature fast-moving covered with scales apparently can come out of the water to interact with humans at the surface of the water has teeth terrible roundabouts and so on and most amazingly it’s described as breathing fire out of his mouth go burning lamps and sparks of fire leap out out of his nostrils doth smoke as of a seething pot or cauldron his breath can live coals and a flame goeth out of his mouth there’s a lot of mystery with Avaya –then it’s a most extraordinary creature so if dinosaurs lived alongside humans and Noah even brought pairs of young dinosaurs with him on the ark what happened to them where did they all go when I find fossils of dinosaurs in the record I also find with them other organisms including certain kinds of plants I suspect those of the plants dinosaurs actually ate if that’s the case then dinosaurs ate a different type of plant than we find commonly today they ate a gymnast firmest type of plant that is uncommon in the present so the dinosaurs had food but it was limited and so I suspect the numbers of dinosaurs were kept to a very small number following the flood I suspect there were few dinosaurs about making it possible and this is what I believe happened to them ultimately for humans to pick them off to kill them perhaps humans killed predatory dinosaurs because they were afraid of them or because they wanted to show off when you start with a biblical perspective the text and other evidence suggest that dinosaurs and other incredible reptiles of the sea and air once lived alongside people at the time of creation during the flood and for centuries thereafter so it is hardly surprising that the world would be filled with legends of heroes like Saint George and their encounters with mighty beasts all right that’s good so you saw many things that we looked at together from the passages emphasized in that video but also a little bit of new information hopefully you got the main point if we start with the Bible and what it presents to us about the great land and sea creatures presence of legends about dinosaurs should not surprise us at all neither should the rock drawings or other ancient human-made artifacts that depict dragon-like creatures because humans and dragons ie dinosaurs ie the large creatures of the Bible they’ve lived in the same world because they were created at the same time that’s 6 24-hour day of creation they bring up two objections before we open up for more questions in the class number one couldn’t the behemoth and Leviathan just be made-up mythical creatures that Joe had heard of that he knew about but weren’t real that God simply used to illustrate God’s power so people do make this argument but hopefully you’ve seen especially with the way that I’ve structured the lesson today that the answer must be no it would make no sense for God to pretend that a creature was real when it was not it either makes God deceptive or it just makes God incompetent God is trying to emphasize his power as displayed over the creatures that God made that would make no sense of God brought up a creature that he didn’t make I said by the way consider behemoth this great creature you can’t even handle him my job would be like but he’s not even real so what’s your point God that’d be ridiculous it’d be is ridiculous and deceptive as bringing up space slugs as an example of God’s might it doesn’t mean anything if it’s not real or if it’s just a great exaggeration then again we still have problems cuz joke can be like you’re saying these things about Leviathan but leviathans not actually like that so again God what’s your point now these have to be accurate descriptions of real creatures yes poetic but still accurate and so behemoth and Leviathan must have been real and they live around the time of joke second objection is if humans lived alongside dinosaurs how come we don’t see any examples in the fossil record of human bones alongside dinosaur bones now this is actually great in thorough response from Answers in Genesis at their website go to Answers in Genesis org and you look at the article why don’t we find human and dinosaur dinosaur fossils together why don’t we find human and dinosaur fossils together that’s the title of the article get a really great answer from Answers in Genesis but let me give you just a brief summary of that answer first let’s remember if the Bible says something the Bible asserts something and we don’t find evidence of that thing in the world around us no that actually doesn’t really matter too much because what does Paul say may God be found true there every man be found alive our faith in authority of the word of God is never dependent on finding corroborating evidence and other sources of the world God’s Word alone is trust word that’s what it means to believe in the Word of God if you say I believe God’s Word but then if you don’t find the evidence in the world you don’t believe it do you really believe God’s Word second it does not follow that not finding fossils together means that those two types of creatures did not live together this is one of those arguments from Silence had to be really leery of such arguments because there may be many explanations as to why certain things didn’t come to be that we just don’t know about or that have not been considered consider one creature to illustrate this point the coelacanth the coelacanth was once thought to be an ancient fish that had become extinct millions of years ago this is because the fossils of this fish were found below and at the same layer as dinosaur bones but never higher meaning this fish certainly lived at the same time as dinosaurs and perhaps before but did they live afterwards no fossils of this fish whoever found with humans so it was assumed that this fish had gone extinct before humans evolved whoever in 1938 strange thing happened a population of living coelacanth fish were found in the indian ocean and they continue to exist today right alongside humans all of this story just because you don’t find bones of two different organisms together does not mean they didn’t live at the same time there are other explanations as to why they didn’t didn’t end up together remember this maxim one man said this well about archaeology and it applies to science archeology and many other things absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence it just means if you don’t find something it doesn’t mean it didn’t exist it just means you didn’t find it there may be many many good reasons why you didn’t find it and when it comes to animals and dinosaurs they just didn’t happen to be in the same place they didn’t put themselves in the same place when where they could be fossilized together that’s probably because dinosaurs were afraid of humans and humans were afraid dinosaurs they didn’t hang out so they didn’t they weren’t buried and fossilized together and again we can come up with many other explanations for why why those bones don’t show up together anyways other questions do you have any other questions about what you’ve heard today or about dinosaurs about these passages and joke one person might have occurred to your mind we’ll talk more about this later is if dinosaurs did live at the same time as humans and Noah was supposed to bring dinosaurs on the ark how did he possibly fit all the dinosaurs well there are a number of ways to answer that question our number of parts the answer rather first of all we’re talking about dinosaur kinds you didn’t necessarily bring every species of dinosaur and estimate is that only 50 or so dinosaur kinds so we’re not talking a huge number of animals and also Noah had no reason to bring the largest versions of each kind on the ark you probably brought the juveniles only would that save space but that would give them the longest reproductive cycle don’t bring the really old big animals because they won’t have this much chance to reproduce once they get off the art bring the young animals so that they can have lots of dinosaur babies etc so that and other reasons is not for those reasons and others it’s no problem for Noah to bring dinosaurs on the ark but dinosaurs ended up going extinct like many other creatures did dinosaurs are not extinct yeah not unique and going extinct we have many other creatures even in our own lifetimes that have gone extinct every year we have species going extinct that’s just because changing conditions in our world now the activity of humans and other things so dinosaur she not not unique in that way especially big creatures big creatures have a hard time surviving because they’re so obvious they’re so threatening and man just has a tendency to kill big creatures so when you think about elephants or rhinoceros is their populations keep on blooming because they’re big and because they have certain things that humans value and it’s probably similar to what happened with dinosaurs let me bring a few other questions to your mind before we close today I don’t want you to miss some other questions that go beyond really the informational or apologetic aspect of dinosaurs you first pose this question to you for you to consider for yourself God used the behemoth and Leviathan to make a point to Joe but we need to understand the same point consider your own concept of God is your God the God of the Bible that is is he as big as the God the Bible is your God big enough to uphold you through trials is your God big enough to keep all his promises to you is your God big enough to not to need to explain himself to you or bend to your weight of thinking how big do you make yourself out to be in comparison to God does God need to remind you about the dinosaurs and dragons he made behemoth Leviathan God created and he could easily subdue these creatures what about you will you then stand pridefully before your same maker as Jobe was tending towards doing learn the lesson that God was teaching job through behemoth and Leviathan humble yourself before God remember God says many times throughout the Scriptures God is opposed to proud it gives grace to the humble dinosaurs actually are a lesson dinosaurs are a lesson in humility the humility that we are to have towards God do you have that kind of community another question have you been proactive in teaching your kids about dinosaurs from a biblical perspective kids love to learn about dinosaurs but consider the material that’s available to children today I mean most of it is just completely evolution you know no consideration of the body why not take that opportunity to inform your children even from an early age their real information about dinosaurs don’t just leave it’s the world to educate them because the world is not only going to give you accurate information but they will not give glory to God that God deserts God deserves glory for dinosaurs we want to make sure our kids understand that so is that something that you’ve taken advantage of then finally consider how might even dinosaurs be used as an avenue for the gospel in your conversations you say what dinosaurs in the gospel think about your – at least two avenues that you can use when it comes to the dinosaurs in the gospel you can talk about how dinosaurs existed and they don’t anymore what happened to the dinosaurs well they died off oh these great big creatures it’s such a shame we don’t have dinosaurs today yeah you know what you’re right do you know why that happened because of scene because of the fault God didn’t design for it originally designed for dinosaurs to just die out but this is what happened because Adam and Eve rebelled against God this is because man has rebelled against is created the world is cursed death has entered into the world and even great creatures like dinosaurs that perish because of it but dinosaurs aren’t the only ones are gonna perish so will each one of us which is why we need to be made right with our queen that’s one Avenue you can take where you can just go the same route that God took with Joe you have dinosaurs are amazing yeah I love to learn about dinosaurs but you know what God said to Joe in the Bible about dinosaurs and other big creatures he reminded him that Joe can’t handle those creatures how much more the maker of those creatures and what about you have you learned the lesson that job needed to learn have you humbled yourself before God so dinosaurs are not just interesting and informational they actually points us I believe to God they give glory to God and they show us the humility that we ought to act before God so this was a lesson all about dinosaurs but that’s it for this week if you have other questions or other things you’d like to learn about dinosaurs definitely email me or go to the Answers in Genesis website they have lots of information next week we’re going to be talking more about the fossil record as we consider a much larger issue that is the age of the earth there are plenty of sweet brethren that we have in Christ don’t believe in evolution well nonetheless believe that the earth is quite hold even millions of years old is that legitimate is that helpful we’ll talk a little bit more about that next week let’s close in prayer our Lord God we thank you for how you did display your glory creating dinosaurs and use dragon like creatures but God I prayed that we would learn the lesson of joke and be humbled because we couldn’t handle dinosaurs yeah they were scary they were fearsome they were they were so great and large but how much more the Creator Lord you are creator you are the one with whom we have to do but there’s no way we can stand before you you can make and break dinosaurs you can make him break us but Lord God you’ve made us so through Jesus Christ we don’t have to be broken but we can be saved so I pray that each person’s trust would be in Christ that each person would be approaching you humbly not as one who deserves but as one who desperately asks for your kindness because you were gracious to those who seek you humbly when I paid you bless the rest of the service for Calvary and bless those who have heard the lesson today Jesus name Amen