Does the Bible Talk About Dinosaurs?

Surprisingly, the answer is yes! As a matter of fact, the Bible dedicates practically an entire chapter to each one. I have to admit this is one of my favorite Bible topics. Before we jump right into those two chapters, allow me to lay a little ground work. We need to start at the beginning.

Look at Genesis chapter 1. I realize that people have varying views of Genesis 1. Some believe that Moses is speaking figuratively and condensing millions of years into 31 verses. Still others believe, as I do, that Moses is speaking quite literally. In other words each “day” of creation was a literal 24-hour period of time. The same author who wrote Genesis, Moses, also wrote Exodus and gives us some further commentary on the creation week. In Exodus 20:11, he wrote, “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.”

In addition to this reference in Exodus to a seven day week there are many other reasons why I take Genesis chapter 1 literally. Let me mention a couple of those reasons quickly. First, the word “day” in Hebrew is “yom.” In non-prophetic writings in the Bible, which Genesis is, the word “yom” always means a 24-hour period of time. Second, in non-prophetic writings in our Bibles if the Hebrew word “yom” has an ordinal associated with it, it always means a 24-hour period of time. So, when we read through Genesis 1 we find “And the evening and the morning were the 1st day” and we find the word “yom” with an ordinal associated with it in a non-prophetic context, we know it is a 24-hour day. The same rule holds true for the remaining six days as well.

Genesis 1

That being said I would now like to direct your attention to Genesis 1:21 which reads:

So God created the sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters abound according to their kinds, and all the birds according to their kinds. God saw that it was good.

And so, on day 5, we have our sea monster. More on him later.

Now, in Genesis 1: 25 & 26a. It reads:

So God made the beasts of the earth after their kinds, and the livestock after their kinds, and every creeping thing of the ground after their kind, and He saw that it was good. And God said, ‘Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness’.

This tells us that on the 6th day of creation God not only made all the beasts, which included dinosaurs, but He also made man. Both were created on the same day!

Behemoth and Leviathan

In Job chapter 38, we find ourselves in the middle of a discussion between Job and God. Satan has taken virtually everything away from Job. He has lost family members, livestock, his home, etc., and he is now questioning God about his current plight. God has heard enough and responds to Job, beginning in verse 1, where it says:

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said: Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Now prepare yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer Me. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?

God continues to bombard Job with question after question meant to establish God’s omnipotence. This line of questioning from God begins in Job 38:1 and runs all the way through the end of chapter 41. The last thing God does to further establish his omnipotence is to show Job two magnificent creatures.

Behemoth

The first is the behemoth. Turn your attention to 40:15 which occurs in the midst of this questioning. God, speaking to Job, says, “Look now at the behemoth, which I made along with you; he eats grass like an ox.”

In the margin of your Bible, more than likely, it will describe behemoth as being “perhaps an elephant or hippo.” Just for the sake of argument I will also include the rhinoceros, wooly mammoth, and the mastodon, as potential candidates. Let’s look at the text and see if any of these fit the description given.

The first thing we notice is that God tells Job to “look at the behemoth, which I made along with you.” I believe God is referring back to Genesis 1:24-26 where he made the beasts and man on the same day. Whatever this creature is God wants Job to look at it while God makes some observations. Let’s see if we can deduce what this creature might be based on God’s description.

• The first observation is “he eats grass like an ox”(v. 15). So whatever this animal is it is an herbivore. That could include any of the animals mentioned earlier.
• The second observation is “He moves his tail like a cedar” (v. 17). The cedars of Lebanon were renowned for their size and beauty. The behemoth moves his tail like one of these mighty cedar trees. Let’s think about the animals previously mentioned. Would the tail movements of any of them remind you of a cedar tree? No! As a matter of fact, they all have rather dinky tails relative to their great size. Whatever the behemoth is he is an herbivore with a giant tail.
• The third observation is “He is the first [some versions say “chief” – jt] of the ways of God” (v. 19). He is the largest creature God ever made. In my mind, it could only be one thing: a dinosaur!
• The fourth observation is “Indeed the river may rage, yet he is not disturbed; he is confident though the Jordan rushes into his mouth.”(v. 23). Of course he is confident; all he has to do is lift his head up over the water. He is a long-neck dinosaur! Which one? I don’t know. Brachiosaurus? Ultrasaurus? The only thing I know for sure is it was the biggest one.

Leviathan

Let’s move into chapter 41 where we are introduced to our sea monster. Verse 1 says, “Can you draw out Leviathan with a hook, or snare his tongue with a line which you lower?” This is a rhetorical question. The answer is “No, you cannot.” We need not go any further than in our text to see that this is some bad creature. In your Bible’s margin, you likely have Leviathan described as “an alligator or crocodile.” Just from looking at the evidence in that verse, it can be shown that both of those possibilities are incorrect. People catch alligators and crocs all the time with hooks and snares.

God says even more about this Leviathan. In this text He asks Job one rhetorical question after another and impresses Job with statements of this creature’s great power:

• Verse 1: “Can you draw out Leviathan with a hook?” No!
• Verse 1: “Can you snare his tongue with a line which you lower?” No!
• Verse 2: “Can you put a reed through his nose, or pierce his jaw with a hook?” No! And No!
• Verse 7: “Can you fill his skin with harpoons, or his head with fishing spears?” Uh, no! And no!
• Verse 9: “Indeed, any hope of overcoming him is false; shall not one be overwhelmed at the sight of him?” Yes!
• Verse 10: “No one is so fierce that he would dare stir him up.” I have a feeling, that were the Crocodile Hunter still alive, he would want no part of whatever this creature is.
• Verse 13: “Who can remove his outer coat?” Hmm, I actually have a pair of alligator dress shoes.
• Verse 14: “Who can open the doors of his face, with his terrible teeth all around?” Answer: No one. Would you really want to?
• Verse 15: “His rows of scales are his pride, shut up tightly as with a seal.”
• Verses 18-21: “His sneezings flash forth light, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. Out of his mouth go burning lights; sparks of fire shoot out. Smoke goes out from his nostrils, as from a boiling pot and burning rushes. His breath kindles coals, and a flame goes out of his mouth.”
• Verses 25-29: “When he raises himself up, the mighty are afraid; because of his crashings they are beside themselves. Though the sword reaches him, it cannot avail; nor does spear, dart, or javelin. He regards iron as straw, and bronze as rotten wood. The arrow cannot make him flee; slingstones become like stubble to him. Darts are regarded as straw; he laughs at the threat of javelins.”
• Verse 31a: “He makes the deep boil like a pot.”
• Verses 33-34: “On earth there is nothing like him, which is made without fear. He beholds every high thing; he is king over all the children of pride.”

What in the world could this creature be? One thing is for sure, this is not your normal alligator or crocodile! It is a fire-breathing dragon, and one bad reptile!

God spends 44 verses in our Bibles on these two remarkable creatures. He does this to show Job that He (God) is the omnipotent power which created the behemoth and Leviathan. These were two real creatures at which Job could look and with which he was familiar. Of course, he probably viewed Leviathan from a safe distance. We are not reading apocalyptic language here in Job. This book is not like the writings of Daniel, or John’s Revelation. No, these were two animals that lived at the very same time that Job lived: A dinosaur and a fire-breathing sea creature.

Evolution or Creation

Now you know where all those stories from ancient cultures originate: from real life. They were passed down through generations from people who saw those creatures. Some of you might still be thinking, “But that means that man and dinosaurs lived at the same time! What about evolution?” I have spent lots of time at the Dinosaur Valley State Park, which is located on the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas. I have walked in the riverbed on several occasions and seen, first hand, an approximate size 13 human footprint right beside a dinosaur track. I don’t know if the dinosaur was hunting the man, or the man was stalking the dinosaur or perhaps they both were just going the same direction a few days apart. But, there they were – right beside each other! I’ve also been in caves with drawings of men hunting dinosaurs with spears. Perhaps you’ve seen them also.

Evolutionary doctrine has no hope of giving a reasonable explanation for those events. In their understanding, no dinosaur and human good have ever walked in the same muddy river bed and no cave man ever saw a dinosaur or even a fossil. Yet, from the empirical evidence they left, we know that both events did occur. The dinosaurs that walked the earth with in the days of Job were immortalized in the cave art of Job’s descendants.

All Men Have Faith

I am a Bible believer. You may not be. But no matter which side of the evolutionary debate on which you find yourself, you have to have faith. You must have either faith in God or faith in time and chance. In Hebrews 11:3 we read, “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.”

See, I believe that God was behind this intelligent design. I believe that is why there is so much commonality in all life on this earth and a perfect balance that sustains it. We are the perfect distance away from the moon. If we were just a little further or closer to the moon, our tides would do some crazy things. We are also the perfect distance to the sun. Any closer to the sun, and we would burn up. Any farther away, and we would freeze. There is order in the universe. Like a fine watch to a watchmaker, this universe was constructed by God, the Creator. Effectively, the evolutionist sees a tornado rolling through a junkyard creating this same, perfectly constructed “watch” just by pure random chance. The creationist sees the steady, skillful hand of a Master Designer. Honestly, which view takes more faith?

Chicken or the Egg

Years ago, an old preacher friend asked me a question when discussing the theory of evolution. He equated it to the proverbial chicken and the egg question, but with a different spin. His question stuck with me for 30 years now. He said:

There is human and there is animal. So, which came first: a human mother or a human baby? If the evolutionists are correct, then either this monkey-type animal just turned into a human mother or this monkey-type animal gave birth to a human baby. Those are the only options. Either an animal one day became a human being or an animal gave birth to a human being.

You see, this is one of the things I love about the Bible. In this essay we have gone through a lot of verses in Genesis chapter 1. Did you notice the phrase that occurred after God created each thing? He created them “according to their kind.” That is one of the first laws of God: one “kind” never becomes another or different “kind.” A snake can never become a cat. A cow can never become a dog. A bird can never become a frog. A mouse can never become a grasshopper. A fish can never become a horse. A monkey can never become a man. Never!

The Bible vs. “Science”

Still skeptical? Here are a couple of facts. Neither science, nor archaeology has ever proven the Bible wrong. However, the Bible has proven scientists and archaeologists to be wrong on numerous occasions. I could list many but let me show you a simple example. All the way back to 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, everyone thought the world was flat. Yet, if you had read and understood your Bible you would have noticed it affirmed that the earth was round: “It is He who sits above the circle of the earth. . .” (Isaiah 40:22). Isaiah wrote that around 2,000 years before Columbus was born.

A Young Earth

I know that there are a huge number of people out there who believe with all their hearts that the earth is billions of years old. They believe that all life on this planet is derived through the process of evolution and that dinosaurs became extinct long before man walked the earth. Most scientists tell us that they “know” that based on this “formula,” or this “law” or that “process” the earth has to be billions of years old. How do they know? Were they there in the beginning?

I would like to leave you with a retelling of a parable from a book entitled The Young Earth by John Morris (Morris, John David. The Young Earth: The Real History of the Earth, Past, Present, and Future. Green Forest, AR: Master, 2007. Print.)  He describes:

. . . a person walking into a classroom, and there is someone up on the platform with a basket of potatoes. You notice that when the second hand on the clock reaches 12, this man reaches into the basket and begins to peel a potato. After he peels it, he puts it back into the basket. Then as the second hand reaches 12 again, the process repeats itself. You observe him peeling potatoes at the rate of one per minute for 10 minutes. You ask yourself, ‘How long has this nut been doing that?’

It’s virtually the same question a scientist asks when he is investigating the age of a rock, or dinosaur bones, or a stalactite, etc. How are you going to determine the length of time the man has been peeling potatoes? Obviously, you would first come up and count the peeled potatoes in the basket. Suppose you count 35 peeled potatoes. Using a couple of scientific observations, dealing with the present, here’s what you come up with. You observed the present state of the system (the number of peeled potatoes, 35), and you have measured the process rate (one potato peeled per minute). So you would likely conclude that the system has been in operation for 35 minutes.

Now here is where it gets fun. In order to come to that conclusion you had to make certain assumptions about the unobserved past. Has the man been peeling potatoes at the same rate as when you first walked in? Perhaps before you entered he had been peeling one potato per 30 seconds. Then sometime before you arrived he slowed down to one per minute. Maybe he was peeling one every 2 minutes before you came in and now he’s gotten better at potato-peeling. The thing is you have no idea. You weren’t there! Another assumption you have to make is that no peeled potatoes were taken out of the basket prior to your coming into the room. Maybe in the whole history of the basket the government came in and took 10 away. There is no way to know by just looking at the basket. And finally, what if there were already 5 peeled potatoes in the basket when the man started peeling?

I hope you see my point. When it comes to trying to determine the age of the earth, or how old those dinosaur bones are, or how long has it taken for that stalactite to reach a length of 2 feet or any number of other questions about the unobservable past; you have to make a whole lot of assumptions and do a whole lot of speculating. So scientifically speaking, you just don’t know. You really can’t know! Give the Bible a chance!