The movie Jurassic World is out and a few of my friends went to see it. I have seen the trailer and some interviews with Chris Pratt who stars in the movie. I was glad to see he is a believer and I’ll leave it at that. He is a funny and an interesting guy but his humor is a bit vulgar at times. I like him though.
It was interesting to me that some of my friends started asking about and were legitimately interested in dinosaurs. This has been a topic of interest for me since I was a child. Years ago I was happy to have come across a very scientific and plausible explanation for dinosaurs that in no way conflicts with the truth and trustworthiness of the Bible… and the age of the earth. Which according to Jewish scholars is 5775 years old since creation.
I had such a vivid dinosaur dream just the other night:
I’m looking out the window of a mountain house and a T-rex comes lumbering through the yard. I lose sight of him as he passes the house and I go outside to get a better look. Brilliant, right?
I go outside to see a Triceratops slumbering under a tree and consider pouncing on him. He wakes up and see me. I run back into the house scared. Like a curious puppy dog he follows me and presses against the glass door. It bulges and I think it is going to shatter any moment. I then realize he is attracted to the lights.
I try to switch off the many many light switches and for every light I turn off another is turned on. He sees me run into an adjacent room and goes around that side of the house. I tell Catherine, we gotta get out of here. He smashes through the door and into the room and I grab Emma and Catherine and we run.
There is another part which I will spare you as there are very few people in the world who actually enjoy listening to other people’s dreams… except for my five year old Ellie who was so thrilled by the gripping tale that she wanted to hear it again and again.
So it’s fun to imagine seeing and interacting with dinosaurs for yourself, isn’t it? Would it surprise you to learn that many people have experienced dinosaurs in the past and that humans were created on the very same day as dinosaurs? (And really, most would not have been considered dinosaurs – which literally means “terrible lizard” – until they had grown up.)
Interesting Fact About Lizards:
Lizards grow throughout their whole lifetime.
This is interesting because if they grow really old, they get really big.
One thing you read about in Scripture is people living just shy of a thousand years. The oldest man on record is Methuselah who was 969 years old. He died the year the flood came… and the bible suggests it wasn’t because of the flood that he died, but that his death was a sign to the world that the flood was imminent. His name means “His death shall bring” and is part of the genealogy mentioned in Genesis 5 which, if you link all the name meanings together it spells out a Gospel orientated sentence. I’d encourage you to research this for yourself.
Before the flood, the conditions of the world were vastly different. It doesn’t matter what scientist you talk to, it is agreed that the early earths atmosphere contained about a fifty percent greater oxygen level than todays. What does this mean for living creatures? Well, it means everything grew bigger and faster and also that aging just slowed way down. Cells were able to reproduce themselves with much less defect or error. “The air’s oxygen content was 35% during this period, compared to the 21% we breathe now” (Source: A MUST READ ARTICLE on this topic) This is how a Apatosaurus (Brontosaurus) with its massive size could still supply the oxygen it needs to live with what some have speculated the lungs the size of a horse and how a pterosaur with a wing span of 11 meters could still fly (It couldn’t in todays atmosphere).
So What Causes Aging?
The way I understand it, God originally created the cells within our body to reproduce themselves perfectly (ie. you could live forever). Our skin is constantly replacing itself and some parts take a great deal longer but every so often there is a point when you completely replace yourself to where you don’t contain any of the same cells you did when you were born. This in itself is noteworthy. As obvious as this point is: You are not your body. You are a spiritual being having a temporary physical experience inhabiting a body.
But, because of harmful rays from the sun, toxins, and the above mentioned lack of oxygen, our cells don’t reproduce perfectly. All biological life grows more slowly and ages far more quickly compared to those living before the flood.
So back to dinosaurs. On top of having a lush and plentiful food supply in the jungle of pre-flood earth, they also had the oxygen to thrive as well. Since they keep growing as well, it is easy to see how dinosaurs roamed the earth some 4500 years ago… and have you considered the fact that many dinosaur species are not extinct at all. They are simply just small. You can even buy a “triceratops” at a pet store today… well, at least it could be. =)
Noah did not obviously take the very old and very large lizards on the ark but healthy, young, and small specimens.
All the fossils were formed being rapidly buried under tons of sediment carried along by the violent waters of the flood. Coal and oil were also formed at this time as well – which consist of all the plant and animal matter buried under sediment. Think about that next time you are filling up on gas. As you drive you are burning dinosaurs and mammals and some of the perhaps more than a billion wicked people than roamed the planet prior to the flood.
How different are we as a human race then they were? How far off of God’s ideal for humanity are we right now? Are we prime candidates for another judgement? I think about this question. I pray for mercy. I pray to find my place in “the ark” that is Jesus Christ and to bring others into Christ to be spared the coming judgement. Because it is only in him that we are considered blameless like Noah was.
All the information in this blog is widely available. It’s on the internet! Of course you can trust it! Ha! But seriously, it is on the internet. And, in this case, you can trust it. (However above all else, and, because I am your friend, I would strongly advise and encourage you to place your trust first and foremost in Jesus Christ and in the book he trusted and said we could trust: the Bible.)
If you want to learn more about this topic, please visit this very interesting website: www.genesispark.com and this one: www.answersingenesis.org
Here you can read some of my other blogs on the subject: