DINOSAURS AND THE BIBLE

Presented by

Blake Brown

Does the Bible mention dinosaurs? Yes, it does. First, it discusses them in the same place where it tells us about bacteria, kangaroos, and anteaters. Where is that?! In Exodus 20:11, the Bible says, “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.” Genesis 1:20-27 teaches us that God made all of the living creatures on days five and six of the Creation week. Then, Genesis 2:1 tells us that at the end of day six, God was finished with His creation. If God created everything in six days, and if He did not create anything else after those six days, then dinosaurs must have been a part of that six-day creation.

Second, while God was having a discussion with Job, He asked Job if he had seen the “behemoth” [be-hee-moth] that God had created. God described the animal by saying: “He eats grass like an ox. His strength is in his hips, and his power is in his stomach muscles. He moves his tail like a cedar; the muscles of his thighs are tightly knit together. His bones are like beams of bronze, and his ribs are like bars of iron. He is the chief of the ways of God” (Job 40:15-19). No other creature—living or extinct—fits this description better than a dinosaur. Many dinosaurs had huge tails “like a cedar tree.” Their bones were like “beams of bronze.” Their ribs were like “bars of iron.” And they could very easily be called the “chief of the ways of God” since they were the largest land-living animals ever to roam the Earth!

Why, then, doesn’t the Bible simply call the behemoth a “dinosaur”? The word “dinosaur” did not enter the English language until 1842. The King James Version of the Bible was published in 1611—231 years before the word “dinosaur” even came into existence. The word “dinosaur” couldn’t have been put into the Bible back then, because the word didn’t even exist! But is the description of a dinosaur given within the book of Job? Yes, it is—which means that men and dinosaurs lived together on the Earth at the same time.

But where did the dinosaurs go? In Genesis 6, we read about how wicked people had become. As a result, the Lord said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the Earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them” (Genesis 6:7). But there was one man by the name of Noah who was righteous. God told Noah that He was going to send a flood to destroy all of the wicked people. He then told Noah to build a large ship called an “ark” that would save him, his family, and many of the Earth’s animals from this flood. The Bible says, “And Noah did according to all that the Lord commanded him.” Later, when God sent the flood, every person and every land-living animal outside the safety of the ark died.

Were dinosaurs on Noah’s ark? Yes, they were! Dinosaurs are land-living animals. The Bible tells us that all land-living animals outside the ark died in the flood (Genesis 7:21). We know, however, that some dinosaurs must have survived the flood because the book of Job was written after the flood, and it mentions animals that appear to have been dinosaurs. The fact that God talked to Job about dinosaurs that were living after the flood shows us that dinosaurs were still alive. But how could dinosaurs have survived the flood—unless they were on the ark?

You might ask how animals as large as dinosaurs could fit into Noah’s ark. First, it is important to remember that the ark was approximately 450 feet long (that’s one-and-a-half football fields!), 75 feet wide, and 45 feet tall. Until 1858, the ark was the largest sea-going vessel ever built. Second, it may be possible that God allowed Noah to take into the ark baby animals. That would have saved a lot of space. Some scientists have suggested that even when all the animals went into the ark, it still was only half full.

So were dinosaurs on Noah’s ark? Yes they were! What an awesome and powerful God it was Who created the dinosaurs! He is the same God Whom we love and serve today. Who would have thought that dinosaurs could have told us so much about God?

[NOTE: This sermon is the second of two parts. To view the html document containing the first part, click here. To view the PDF of the first part, click here. To view the handout that accompanied these two sermons, click here.]