Entangled in the greater debate over the origin of life is a separate
debate over the age of the earth. Nearly all creationist groups believe
our planet is somewhere around 6,000 years old. Most scientists see the
earth's age as ranging from hundreds of millions to billions of years
old.
The Bible is extremely brief in its explanation of the origin of the
universe. Because we are provided with such a limited amount of
information, it's unwise to try to make the Word of God say something it
never really addressed.
I wouldn't tackle this topic if I weren't concerned about the
credibility of the Christian faith. Untold numbers of people have
already turned to evolution or a non-literal approach to Scripture based
on the realization that the 6,000-year theory offers no logical
explanation for an overabundance of fossil records. I want to reach out
to people who are unable to accept Christianity because of the young
earth view.
The attitude of the following individual perfectly represents the earth
age confusion that exists in the minds of many people:
"In literal terms, we might think of this God as an unreliable narrator. It's clear to me, if not to the creationists, that if He'd fool around with thousands of feet of rock just to trick us, He might also have stuck a few fibs in the Bible."
Believers always have been dreadfully inept in the task of verifying
statements made by fellow Christians. When an error is allowed to
masquerade as truth, the validity of even the Bible itself is brought
into question. For several years, I've used the following quote in my
email signature block: "In God we trust; everyone else requires
verification." This simple statement is so true.
I stand firmly with my creationist brothers against the idea that our
common ancestors once swung from trees by their tails, but I am also
very much troubled when they dogmatically tie the validity of the Bible
to their young earth model. The only thing evolutionists need to do is
prove the earth has existed for at least 100,000 years and they've won
the battle.
Weighing The Evidence
In 1650 AD, the Archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher, calculated that 4004
BC was the date of the creation year. Ussher's 4004 BC date has become
the most widely quoted for people who hold to a young earth. The
reliability of Usher's timeline came into doubt when it was revealed
that he failed to include a year zero.
The old earth view is not just the domain of evolutionists. Many leading
Christians believe in an earth that is millions of years old. The
legendary Bible commentator C.I. Scofield is probably the most well
known champion of old earth creationism.
A large portion of the arguments being used to support a young earth
view is based on evidence that ranges from blind faith to the outright
bizarre. In preparation for this article, I read through several books
by creationists, and it astonished me that there are so many of them who
believe dinosaurs still roam the earth.
I want to pull my hair out when I hear creationists proudly talk about
how they journeyed to the jungles of Brazil, Kenya and Indonesia looking
for dinosaurs. Of course, they all came back empty handed. Many of them
frequently cite the Loch Ness monster as solid proof that dinosaurs
exist. I'm certain that the legend of Nessy has more to do with the
Scotland tourism industry than it does with factual-minded science.
It's pure silliness to think that dinosaurs are in some forest hiding
from humanity. You would think that after all these centuries, someone
would have bagged one of these mammoth creatures. It is about as logical
for a creationist to proclaim rumors of prehistoric creatures as proof
of a young earth as it would be for anthropologists to declare Big Foot
as their evolutionary "missing link."
To be able to say that the earth is only a few thousand years old, we
would have to greatly abbreviate the historical evidence found in the
fossil records. The earth contains countless layers of sedimentary
fossils that reveal a vast wealth of geological and organic activity.
The evidence for an earth older than 6,000 years is quite lengthy. Here
is a list of some key indicators that point to an old earth.
Mega Meteor Impacts
Researchers have found dozens of meteor-impact
craters that are so large they would have profoundly affected the
earth's climate. One crater in Northern Canada is around 60 miles wide.
A giant meteor that struck the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula is blamed for
causing one of the largest mass extinctions of dinosaurs. It's
inconceivable that the biblical writers could have missed reporting an
event that would have blanketed the globe with a choking blizzard of
ash.
Super Volcanoes
Several of the earth's volcanoes periodically have
erupted with a force so massive in scale, they would dwarf any eruption
that modern man has ever witnessed. The Toba Caldera on the island of
Sumatra once exploded with a force that released a volume of ash 3,000
times greater than the amount produced by the 1980 Mount St. Helen's
eruption. Core samples taken 2,000 miles away from Toba have measured
ash layers as deep as 36 inches. Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming is
the home of one of these super volcanoes. If it were to erupt, much of
North America would be devastated by the blast.
Mount Everest
Ages ago, the Eurasian and Indian continents collided
spectacularly to form the Himalayan mountain range. Geological movement
continues to take place today as India is gradually pushed beneath China
and Nepal at a rate of about 3 inches per year. Going by the current
rate of upwelling, it has taken Mount Everest at least 100,000 years to
rise to its 29,035-foot elevation. Before the great collision, the
bedrock that makes up the Himalayan range was once at the bottom of the
Indian Ocean. The top 1,500 feet of Mount Everest is comprised of
limestone. This type of rock is slowly formed by the deposition and
consolidation of the skeletons of marine invertebrates. Because these
creatures are minuscule, it would take a very long time to accumulate
these limestone layers.
Coral Reefs
Coral is made up of the skeletons and calcium deposits of
tiny animals that live in warm, shallow seas. It takes an estimated 100
years to produce a few centimeters of coral growth. One coral atoll has
been measured at 3,900 feet in depth.
Light and Cosmic Events
The sun is one of countless numbers of stars
in the Milky Way. Our little galaxy is over 100,000 light years across.
This means that light from some stars in our galaxy has taken many tens
of thousands of years to reach earth. A common explanation for our
ability to see stars that are millions of light years away is that God
created the light from these distant stars already in transit. The
problem with the light-in-motion claim is that as light travels through
the universe, forces it encounters alter its properties, giving us a
travel log of its journey. Many of the cosmic events we see in the
universe take millions of years to occur. It doesn't seem logical for
God to have constructed such a multifaceted, elaborate hoax.
Bristlecone Pine Trees
The annual growth rings of trees are among the
most reliable measures of time. Some Bristlecone pine trees in the
White-Inyo mountain range of California date back beyond 6000 BC.
Algae Growth Cycle
During the springtime, tiny, one-celled algae bloom
in Lake Suigetsu, Japan. They die and sink to the bottom of the lake,
where they create a thin, white layer. During the rest of the year, dark
clay sediments settle to the bottom. The results are alternating dark
and light annual layers -- much like the annual growth rings on a tree.
Scientists have counted about 45,000 layers.
Moon Dust
Measurements by sensors attached to satellites show that
space dust accumulates on the moon at the rate of about 2 nanograms per
square centimeter each year. (A nanogram is one thousandth of a
millionth of a gram.) This rate would require 4.5 billion years to reach
a depth of 1.5 inches, which is approximately the depth experienced by
the astronauts who walked on the moon.
Cosmic Rays
The Los Alamos National Laboratory has developed a method
of measuring the length of time that surface rocks have been exposed to
cosmic rays. Cosmic rays stream into the atmosphere from all directions
in outer space and break neutrons free when they collide with air
molecules. When these neutrons hit rocks on the ground, they sometimes
react with a tiny number of mineral atoms that create radioactive
isotopes. At sea level, a few hundred modified atoms are created each
year in a gram of quartz near the surface of the ground. New measuring
techniques can detect very small numbers of these atoms and thus
estimate the number of years that the rocks have been exposed.
Scientists have found ages of about 8,500 years for "recent" glacial
moraines in Newfoundland and 830,000 years for extinct volcanoes in
Nevada.
Radioactive Decay
The "nuclide" argument is one of the best proofs of
an old earth. Nuclides are forms of matter that are radioactive. Each
nuclide decays into another form of matter at a certain rate. After an
interval of time equal to its half-life, only half of the original
material is left. Scientists have found that every nuclide with a
half-life of over 80 million years can be found naturally occurring on
earth. All nuclides with a half-life under 80 million years do not exist
naturally at detectable levels.
Ice Ages
In North America, more than 20 glacial advances and retreats
have occurred during the last 2 million years. It takes a foot of
snowfall to produce an inch of glacial ice. Since some of the ice is
thousands of feet thick, it takes centuries of snow to produce each ice
age event. These glaciers would have had to move across the land like
freight trains to fit into the 6,000-year model.
Hawaiian Island Chain
If we could remove all of the water in the
Pacific Ocean, we would find that the Hawaiian Islands are peaks on a
10,000-foot-high ridge that extends 3,000 miles to the northwest. The
Hawaiian chain gets progressively older and becomes more eroded farther
beyond the volcanically active region of the "Big Island" of Hawaii. All
three factors - the movement of the ocean crust, the building of
volcanic islands, and the erosion - are time-consuming geological
processes.
Seating capacity
A lot of creationists try to defend the narrow
timeline of the young earth view by arguing that Noah brought all the
animals that ever existed onto the ark with him. They fail to realize
that many of these prehistoric creatures were huge; some beasts weighed
as much as 100 tons. However, getting all those bulky dinosaurs onto the
ark would have been the least of Noah's problems. Scientists estimate
that a total of 10 million species have existed on the earth. Because
Noah never could have crammed that many animals into the ark, when the
rains came, it would appear that most of them were left standing at the
dock. It is interesting to note that scientists have calculated that
Noah could have fit all of the 16,000 species of land animals currently
living on the earth into the ark.
Coal
The Great Flood is frequently cited as the instantaneous creator
of many fossil records. Geologists tell us that coal took millions of
years to build up, and creationists point to the Flood as the source.
The claim is made that when the Flood transpired, it buried all the
earth's vegetation, creating the coal we mine today. The problem with
this theory is that the available amount of plant material could not
account for coal layers that are hundreds of feet thick. It would have
taken several feet of organic material like ferns, grasses, and a few
bugs just to produce a few inches of coal.
Salt Deposits
In the state of Utah, there is a huge, underground
deposit of salt created by the continual evaporation of a shallow sea
that once covered the land. The dome is nearly 5,000 feet deep and it
was pushed to the surface by volcanic forces. Noah's flood cannot
account for such a vast quantity of salt being deposited in a compact
location and in such short stretch of time. A steady stream of water
over millions of years is the only plausible solution.
Grand Canyon I
Young earth proponents like to disprove popular belief
that the Grand Canyon is the result of millions of years of erosion by
saying the Great Flood carved out the steep canyon walls in a few days.
There are several problems with this simple explanation for the
formation of the Grand Canyon. The Canyon is not the product of
flooding. It was formed by the uplifting of a plateau by
mountain-building events. The narrow inner gorge of the Grand Canyon and
its many tributaries are the antithesis of the erosion that would be
found as part of a broad floodplain.
Grand Canyon II
The Grand Canyon example is a two-parter in order to
also account for all those thousands of layers of sedimentary rock that
give the Grand Canyon its beauty. Creationists often say the Great Flood
laid down the layers and in its aftermath, the receding waters dug out
the gorge. One of the more prominent formations in the Grand Canyon is
the Coconino Sandstone. This layer is found only a few hundred feet
below the rim. Geologists have described this sandstone as originating
from an ancient desert. Remnants of sand dunes can be seen in many
outcrops of the formation in a phenomenon called cross bedding. Many
footprints in this sandstone have been recognized as those of lizards
scurrying across the desert. It's ridiculous to think there could be a
sandy desert formation wedged between a series of layers that were all
formed by the same flood event.
Long-Term Projections Based On Faulty Short-Term Data
Many young earth proofs are based on long-term projections made from
flawed short-term observations. It is bad science to simply conclude all
trends move in a continuous straight line. A Porsche GT2 can go from
zero to 60 mph in 3.6 seconds, but it can't go from zero to 20,000 mph
in 2 minutes. Even though the long-term projection for acceleration
matches the initial short-term data, at higher speeds, other factors
take over that hinder the car's ability to achieve higher speeds.
It would be foolhardy to assume the ocean tides coming in indicate
another global flood is about to take place. We have the rainbow as
God's promise that there will be no second Great Flood. In the next
three examples, I take creationists to task for misapplying short-term
trends to fit their young earth view.
The Earth's Magnetic Field
Over the past 150 years, there has been a
measured decrease in the earth's magnetic field. The decrease is hailed
as positive proof that the planet was created around 6,000 years ago.
The argument is made that if we went back in time a million years, the
earth's magnetic field would be too strong for life to exist. It's
baffling that some folks can assume the decline in the magnetic field
has been a continuous event. It is common knowledge that our planet's
magnetic field has frequently shifted between the North Pole and the
South Pole. When volcanic lava erupts onto the surface and cools, the
iron molecules embedded in the rock retain a record of the earth's
magnetic field. A detailed examination of core drillings retrieved from
the ocean floor has found the magnetic polarity of the poles has changed
several times.
The Gulf of Mexico
Several creationist books argue that the earth must
be relatively young because the Gulf of Mexico would have filled up with
sediment from the Mississippi River had the process been going on for
millions of years. True, a large amount of the sediment--some 500
million tons annually--is carried to the Gulf each year. However, it is
incorrect to assume that the Gulf Coast region has always been as we see
it today. Many moons ago, a shallow sea once reached all the way up to
the central Midwest. At one time, the mouth of the Mississippi River
would have been located in southern Iowa.
The Movement of Celestial Bodies
Young earth creationists frequently
cite the movements and gyrations of heavenly bodies to support their
views. They point to data showing that the sun is shrinking as solid
evidence that the earth can only be a few thousand years old. They claim
that if time were to be reversed by millions of years, the sun would
become too large and hot for life to exist on earth. They also cite
reports that show that the moon is pulling away from the earth at a rate
of 2 inches per year, adding that this, too, could not be a process
millions of years old. People who use these types of proofs clearly lack
the most basic understanding of the movements of the sun and moon. All
celestial bodies wobble and oscillate as they travel through space.
Gaseous bodies like our sun have the added feature of being able to
pulsate. Years down the road, we might find the sun expanding and the
moon slowly orbiting closer to the earth.
Timelines Fail To Match
The strongest evidence for an old earth view has to be the inability of
Ussher's timeline to account for or accommodate all the major
cataclysmic events that we find recorded in the fossil records. When we
add up all the meteor impacts, super volcanoes, earthquakes, mammoth
tidal waves, and ice ages, we end up with thousands of events that could
never fit into a 6,000-year timeline.
If time started in 4004 BC, we would have experienced a major global
disaster every couple of years. The fact that mankind has never
witnessed any of these large-scale calamities would seem to be enough
evidence that their occurrence had to have been spread out over many
millions of years.
Many leading creationists claim that most meteor impacts transpired
during the Great Flood. The heat generated by such a short-term
bombardment would have vaporized the world's oceans. It would have taken
divine intervention to prevent Noah and his poor animals from being
boiled alive.
Another point to consider is that these major events are not stacked on
top of each other in the fossil record. In between the layers of
volcanic ash and dust from meteor impacts are sedimentary bands
containing the remains of forests, meadows, lakes, seas, deserts, and
many other environments. It would only take a couple of unique fossil
records to create a problem for the time-pressed young earth view, but
in most cases, dozens of layers are deposited between these cataclysmic
events.
There Is No Necessity For A Young Earth
Fitting the age of our world into the 6,000-year time frame would
require disrupting our understanding of the speed of light, annual
growth cycles, the erosion process, historical records of tectonic
movement, rates of decay for radioactive atoms, climate patterns, the
historical content of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the
freezing point of water, and a host of other processes.
It would be foolish to modify everything we know about how the physical
world operates just to accommodate one single theory. I find the chasm
between reality and the young earth theory too vast for any explanation
to span. Even if one is kind enough to assume that the growth of coral
was once 10 times faster than it is today, some reefs would still be
more than 13,000 years old.
God is not going to vanish if it turns out that the world is a million,
a billion, or a trillion years old. There is the general idea in the
Bible that God created Adam and Eve a certain number of generations ago,
but the Good Book gives no exact reference for the age of the earth
itself.
The scriptural references to historical events are extremely brief. It
would only take one unknown factor to explain that there may have been
scores of millennial ages between the time of Adam and the present.
Far too many Christians have fallen into a group-think mentality that
holds the Bible hostage to a young earth way of thinking. Regardless of
what view is true, the Word of God is not facing any danger.
Filling In The Gap
I personally subscribe to "the gap theory" as the most likely
explanation for the earth being so old. This theory sees an undetermined
span of time existing between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. Genesis 1:1
says, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." This is
when the Almighty created everything, including the earth and the
dinosaurs. In the second verse, the earth is described being in a state
of disorder: "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was
upon the face of the deep."
Some Bible scholars speculate that Satan may have been in charge of a
world that predated Adam and Eve, and when he rebelled against God,
everything on earth was destroyed. This assumption is based on the
belief that God would not bring ruination to His own creation.
Because there are so many unanswered questions related to the dawn of
time, I hold to the gap theory very loosely. We are given such limited
factual information about the creation of the universe, I think a
"twiddling of the thumbs" theory would work just as well as any other.
Many times, the Bible says that God's existence is eternal. If God has
been around for a very long time, it doesn't seem logical for Him to be
twiddling His thumbs for millions of years before He came up with the
idea of creating the universe.
The Bible is not a book of science. It's obvious from Scripture that God
seems totally disinterested in explaining how He performs supernatural
feats. The Great Creator occasionally provides us with a few minor
insights into His handiwork that predate modern scientific discoveries.
For example, in the Book of Job, the Bible tells us, "He stretches out
the north over empty space, and hangs the earth upon nothing" (Job
26.7).
Because so many unknowns are associated with early earth history, we're
limited in the amount of knowledge we can gain from studying this period
of time. When we get to Heaven, an untold number of mysteries will be
divulged to us. Until that day arrives, it's best to concentrate on the
more important salvation issues.
___________________________________________
Dinosaurs (take 2)
courtesy https://www.clarifyingchristianity.com
Most of us loved reading about dinosaurs at some time in our lives. In
1993, the movie “Jurassic Park” stimulated the public interest in
dinosaurs far beyond its previous level. As a result, increasing numbers
of people have thought, “Since we have found all these fossils and
dinosaur bones, we know dinosaurs existed. How come they are not
mentioned in the Bible?”
Actually, dinosaurs are mentioned in the Bible, and we will prove it by
doing the following three things:
Examining the Bible’s text and the related scientific facts.
Explaining the accuracy of the Bible.
Exploring what we are taught in school and through the media.
The Bible’s Text
The Bible refers to many the common animals we know today. The list
includes lions, wolves, bears, sheep, cattle and dogs along with various
kinds of birds, rodents, reptiles, and insects. What is interesting is
that this extensive list includes three animals that we no longer
recognize. These three are (in the original Hebrew language) tanniyn,
b@hemowth (yes, it’s spelled correctly—at least as close as we can get
in Roman characters), and livyathan.
Although we alter the spelling of behemoth and Leviathan slightly, we
still use those same words in bibles today. However, tanniyn is always
translated into another word when we write it in English. Tanniyn occurs
28 times in the Bible and is normally translated “dragon.” It is also
translated “serpent,” “sea monster,” “dinosaur,” “great creature,” and
“reptile.” Behemoth and Leviathan are relatively specific creatures,
perhaps each was a single kind of animal. Tanniyn is a more general
term, and it can be thought of as the original version of the word
“dinosaur.” The word “dinosaur” was originally coined in 1841, more than
three thousand years after the Bible first referred to “Tanniyn.” To
make things clearer, we constructed the following table comparing the
scientific names with the Biblical names tanniyn, behemoth, and
Leviathan.
“Dinosaur” Names, Then and Now
Name and date first written in the Bible Scientific Name (best
estimate) and date the name appeared.....
(then) tanniyn (dragon) before 1400 BC..
(now) dinosaur 1841 AD
(then) behemoth before 1400 BC..
(now) brachiosaurus
1903 AD
(then) Leviathan before 1400 BC..
(now) kronosaurus 1901 AD
How we got these new names is interesting. In 1822, Mary Ann Mantell
became the first person to discover and correctly identify a strange
bone as part of a large, unknown reptile. Her husband, Dr. Gideon
Mantell, later named this creature an “Iguanodon.” From that time
forward, these forgotten animals were given names chosen by the people
who rediscovered them. Of course, the Bible, written between
approximately 1450 BC and 95 AD, does not include any of these names.
Reading the Bible carefully, you will realize that no living creature
matches the descriptions of behemoth and Leviathan. However, if you grab
your kid’s dinosaur book, you will notice several possible matches for
each one. Let’s examine those.
Behemoth has the following attributes according to
Job 40:15-24
It “eats grass like an ox.”
It “moves his tail like a cedar.” (In Hebrew, this literally reads, “he
lets hang his tail like a cedar.”)
Its “bones are like beams of bronze, his ribs like bars of iron.”
“He is the first of the ways of God.”
“He lies under the lotus trees, in a covert of reeds and marsh.”
Some bibles and study bibles will translate the word “behemoth” as
“elephant” or “hippopotamus.” Others will put a note at the edge or
bottom of the page, stating that behemoth was probably an elephant or a
hippopotamus. Although an elephant or hippopotamus can eat grass (or lie
in a covert of reeds and marsh), neither an elephant or a hippopotamus
has a “tail like a cedar” (that is, a tail like a large, tapered tree
trunk). In your kid’s dinosaur book you will find lots of animals that
have “tails like a cedar.”
We would expect behemoth to be a large land animal whose bones are like
beams of bronze and so forth, so whatever a behemoth is, it is large. A
key phrase is “He is the first of the ways of God.” This phrase in the
original Hebrew implied that behemoth was the biggest animal created.
Although an elephant or a hippopotamus are big, they are less than
one-tenth the size of a Brachiosaurus, the largest (complete) dinosaur
ever discovered. A Brachiosaurus could therefore easily be described as
“the first of the ways of God.”
Comparing all this information to the description
in your kid’s dinosaur book, you may come to the conclusion that
“behemoth” is not a normal animal, it is a dinosaur—the brachiosaurus.
We agree with that conclusion!
Note: Some paleontologists have found fragmentary leg bones, ribs, or
vertebrae which they propose belong to “new” sauropods larger than
Brachiosaurus. Examples of these include Amphicoelias, Argentinasaurus,
Sauroposeidon, Seismosaurus, Supersaurus and Ultrasaurus. There
currently is not enough evidence to really determine the size of any of
these, and some paleontologists believe that they are merely large
examples of known dinosaurs like Brachiosaurus or Diplodocus. In any
case, only the “modern scientific name” of behemoth would change. The
point would still remain that behemoth refers to a dinosaur, not a
“modern animal” like an elephant or hippopotamus.
Leviathan has the following attributes according to Job chapter 41,
Psalm 104:25,26 and Isaiah 27:1. This is only a partial listing—just
enough to make the point.
“No one is so fierce that he would dare stir him up.”
“Who can open the doors of his face, with his terrible teeth all
around?”
“His rows of scales are his pride, shut up tightly as with a seal; one
is so near another that no air can come between them; they are joined
one to another, they stick together and cannot be parted.”
“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 of his nostrils, as from a boiling pot and burning
rushes. His breath kindles coals, and a flame goes out of his mouth.”
“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.”
“On earth there is nothing like him, which is made without fear.”
Leviathan “played” in the “great and wide sea” (a paraphrase of Psalm
104 verses 25 and 26—get the exact sense by reading them yourself).
Leviathan is a “reptile [a] that is in the sea.” (Isaiah 27:1)
[a] Note: The word translated “reptile” here is the Hebrew word tanniyn.
This shows that “Leviathan” was also a “tanniyn” (dragon).
Unlike behemoth, who is huge, Leviathan is ferocious and terrifying.
Many references (we have not listed them all) refer to the sea, so
Leviathan is probably a sea creature. Although some bibles refer to
Leviathan as an alligator or crocodile (and both of these are fierce)
neither of these is a sea creature. They like the water, but they spend
much of their time on land. Further, the question “Who can open the
doors of his face. . . .” implies that nobody can open Leviathan’s jaws.
Although an alligator's jaws cannot normally be forced open, a punch to
their sensitive snout or poke in eye might startle them enough to
release their grip.[2] Although this is a good description of an
alligator characteristic, it does not fit perfectly with the description
of Leviathan, which in the context of the Bible was supposed to describe
an essentially impossible event, and we are not done yet.
The description of the scales is interesting. Several verses describe
these great scales. Compared to Leviathan’s armor, iron is like straw
and arrows ca not make it flee. Let’s face it, an arrow can do a lot of
damage to a crocodile or alligator. This is not a description of either
of them—or any living animal we are aware of.
And now for the key ingredient: fire. It is hard to read Job
41:18-21 without realizing the Bible is telling us that Leviathan
breathes fire. That alone will eliminate almost every living animal.
Yes, there is one animal like that in today’s world. It is called a
bombardier beetle. This beetle is a native of Central America, and has a
nozzle in its hind end that acts like a little flame thrower. It sprays
a high-temperature jet of gas (fueled by hydroquinones and hydrogen
peroxide with oxidative enzymes) for protection. Now, if a Central
American beetle can do it, so could Leviathan. By the way, crocodiles
and alligators are out of the picture on this one, don’t you agree?
Before we leave the topic of fire, there are two more notes you may find
interesting:
The history of every culture is filled with stories of fire-breathing
dragons. If you think about it, in all the past ages wouldn’t someone
have made up a story of a fire-breathing lion or something? Nobody did
because the dragon stories are based on truth, and only “dragons”
breathed fire. It is easy to imagine Leviathan as a member of the dragon
(tanniyn) family. (Plus, Isaiah 27:1 strongly implies this connection.)
Many fossil dinosaur skulls contain unexplained, empty passages. Scientists have not been able to guess the reason for these passages. Would it make sense that some dinosaurs used these passages as “gas tanks” for the combustible mixture used to “breathe fire?” We believe it does.
Comparing all this information to the description in your kid’s dinosaur
book, you may come up with the conclusion that Leviathan is a
kronosaurus. We have heard (and read) other suggestions, but the
kronosaurus is the best match of any known creature to the description
of Leviathan.
The Accuracy of the Bible
Some people believe that the Bible is not a scientifically accurate
book, and that it is only a “spiritual book,” that forgot about
dinosaurs or described them incorrectly. This is not the case. Nobody
has ever proven that the Bible contains any inaccurately recorded
information. You do not have to believe
the Bible just because someone says you are supposed to. That is blind
faith, and blind faith is something you do not need with Christianity.
The Bible and Christianity have been proven to be true.
There is no other religion or “holy writing” that can honestly
make the same claim.
What We Are Taught (In School and Through the Media)
Since humans are in the Bible, we
unconsciously think that dinosaurs were extinct—and therefore not
mentioned in the Bible. As you have just seen, the Bible not only refers
to dinosaurs, but has detailed information about two of them.
Unfortunately, our public school system and the media have convinced us
that dinosaurs were extinct at least 60 million years before man
appeared on earth. They have done such a good job in this area that we
can not imagine people and dinosaurs living at the same time. The fact
is that dinosaurs were created no more than one day before mankind, not
many millions of years earlier—and we have evidence to support that
statement.
_________________________________________
Is the earth millions of
years old? Is it 6000 years old? I've read brilliant arguments supporting both positions. Personally speaking, I have no idea how old it is. Sometimes I lean towards the "gap" theory making the planet very very old. Other times I lean towards the "young earth" conclusion. Thus, on this issue, you'll often see me swaying a lot. But the past doesn't interest me largely. I failed history at school. I've always been far more intrigued by the present, and even more intrigued about the future, and where I'll spend it. So from an old Dinosaur, who is certainly not married to an old Dragon, I'll leave you to reach your own conclusions about the past........ but please do make sure to get your future right. Keygar |