Tyrannosaurus rex Fossil Exhibit — at American Museum of Natural History. The photo was taken by Minister Leonard V. Johnson
THE OTHER DAY I was watching a program on television and I heard a Protestant minister telling someone, “You know, dinosaurs were never real. Scientists have made up this lie to prove their teaching of the theory of evolution.” This hearing reminded me of something which occurred to me in my youth while I was attending church services with my grandmother. One Sabbath a senior member of that organization asked me how school was. And very innocently I answered, “Great, in school I’m learning about dinosaurs!” And you could have heard a pin drop after I said this. And he very loudly and assuredly said to me, “Dinosaurs are not real!”
Well, take a walk through any natural history museum! I did! Back in 2020, I visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York, NY! The largest in America! And I saw a plethora of ancient skeletons of prehistoric life!
My Protestant friends, there really were literally MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures which roamed a pre-Adamic world here on planet earth! Why!? And how did they suddenly disappear!?
Scientists are befuddled as to how and why a great catastrophe occurred which caused a time of great death!
Sadly, the average student of God’s living word – the Holy Bible – does not properly understand that the existence of dinosaurs as well as other prehistoric creatures DOES NOT disprove God’s living word! And no wonder, for what most professing Christians have been taught about God’s word is wrong!
No one need fear the facts of science. And I’m aware that there are in this world theistic evolutionists (one who believes in a God creating all things, but then had a “hands-off” approach, hence evolution), and atheistic evolutionists (also commonly known as Darwinian evolutionists, the belief in no God at all), neither of which we here at the Church of Jesus Christ Online Ministries or our affiliated churches are. We believe and teach that God’s living Word is TRUTH! – John 17:17. God says what He means and He means what He says!
“Then God [the great Elohim, the family of God] said, ‘Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth [the SAME DAY] across the face of the firmament of the heavens.’ 21) So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 23) So the evening and the morning were the FIFTH DAY” – Genesis 1:20-21, 23.
God, literally (not figuratively) created with the Word (see John 1:1-3) the sea creatures and birds which fly above the earth ON THE FIFTH DAY! This TRUTH is in direct opposition to the Darwinian view that birds evolved from land animals. Notice that land animals were not created until the SIXTH DAY!
“Then God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth [not in evolutionary steps, but in an instant from the Word of God] the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind’; and it was so. 31) Then God saw everything that He made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the SIXTH DAY” – Genesis 1:24, 31.
God’s living word, however, was not written as a science textbook. It came into existence as a type of “Owner’s Manual” for all mankind.
Carl O. Dunbar - an American paleontologist who specialized in invertebrate fossils – openly admitted in his well-known 1949 geology book, Historical Geology, that not one prehistoric creature was known to have lived to see the Cenozoic Era!
“The end of the Cretaceous, like the close of the Paleozoic, proved to be a great crisis in the history of life. … For example, the dinosaurs were highly varied and apparently adaptive right up to the end of Laramie Time, yet not one is known to have lived to see the dawn of the Cenozoic Era. … The decline and extinction of the ammonites and belemnites at the very close of the period, and the passing of the several stocks of reef-forming clams (rudistids) show that the marine invertebrates did not escape the crisis.It is difficult to account for the simultaneous extinction of great tribes of animals so diverse in relationships and in habitats of life. … Whatever the cause, the latest Mesozoic was a time of trial when many of the hosts were 'tried in the balance and found wanting' — wanting in adaptiveness to their new environment. Walther has picturesquely called it ‘the time of the great dying’.” 1
Two tyrannosaurus rexs’ (“king”) - the Late Cretaceous period - inhabited this planet before the creation of man
Great tribes of prehistoric creatures SUDDENLY disappeared from the geological records without any gradual extinction as the theory of evolution requires.
From the earliest of school learning involving dinosaurs, we learned this! Yet, schools continue to teach the theory of evolution as fact! And an innumerable amount of books have been written trying to reason just why the SUDDEN EXTINCTION of the dinosaurs!
In 1961, the distinguished American vertebrate paleontologist and prolific researcher and author, Edwin Colbert writes in his final thoughts of his book, Dinosaurs: their discovery and their world –
“At the present time we can therefore only look upon the problem of extinction of the dinosaurs as a hard fact, as a closing of a most spectacular chapter in the history of life on the earth.” 2
Well, the very real fact – the “hard fact” – of the extinction of the dinosaurs as well as all the many other prehistoric creatures is that they were deposited in Mesozoic rocks – and this creates a problem for theistic evolutionists as well as atheistic evolutionists. For their theories do not allow for any SUDDEN appearance or disappearance of any life forms! Yet, God’s living and undeniable word says that it did! I will cover this in just a moment.
Well, scientists who teach and support this theory of evolution somehow need to account for the sudden disappearance of the many varied life forms. And they also need to account for their sudden appearance as well.
Professor Dunbar once again –
“G. G. Simpson has said, the most dramatic and in many respects the most puzzling event in the history of life on the earth, … is the change from the Mesozoic, Age of Reptiles, to the … Age of Mammals. It is as if the curtain were rung down suddenly on a stage where all the leading roles were taken by reptiles, especially dinosaurs, in great numbers and bewildering variety, and rose again immediately to reveal the same setting but an entirely new cast, a cast in which the dinosaurs do not appear at all, …”“Throughout the long Mesozoic Era — for more than a hundred million years — reptiles completely dominated life on the Earth; but at its close, their dynasty suddenly collapsed. Turtles, lizards, snakes, and crocodiles survived, but they are mostly small and restricted in their range, … At the dawn of the Cenozoic Era, the dinosaurs were extinct, the pterosaurs had disappeared, and the great marine reptiles were gone.” 3
Such as the megalodon shark – which estimates suggest was about 52ft long and weighed upwards of 114 short tons! – that’s nearly three fully-loaded tractor trailers!
Truly, the “curtain” rose SUDDENLY on a whole new set of players! The reptiles alive today are no comparison to the impressive dinosaurs of the prehistoric era! – the Mesozoic Era! The curtain closed with an earthshaking destructiveness the likes of which this earth had not witnessed before – a violent catastrophe!
CHAOS On Earth!
Artistic impression of the asteroid slamming into tropical, shallow seas of the sulfur-rich Yucatán Peninsula in what is today Southeast Mexico. The aftermath of this immense asteroid collision, which occurred approximately 66 million years ago, is believed to have caused the mass extinction of dinosaurs and many other species on Earth.
Now friends, in my library, I have a book entitled Cosmos, by the late renowned astronomer, planetary scientist, and astrophysicist Carl Sagan. And it has one section which mentions experiments that were performed in the early ‘50s by a graduate student – who had argued that the early atmosphere of the Earth was hydrogen-rich (scientists have reassessed their theories as to why dinosaurs grew so large, they have since discovered “that oxygen concentrations in the atmosphere were likely lower than that of the present day.” 4 But they also continue using today’s land creatures as their guide) – and that the origin of life occurred before the hydrogen was lost, and that such gases sparked, creating life. That life began in the ocean with temperatures that began to fall, and the amino acids, and the proteins and the nucleotides – and how these different chemicals and the different aspects of this old earth – which condensed out of interstellar gas and dust some 4.6 billion years ago – and how they came together to form the earliest stages of life – a kind of organic soup. And how over time these different molecules that evolved would put away the characteristics that were not working for them and rather inherent characteristics that were better. He gives an example in the book – the invention of sex. With the invention of sex, two organisms could exchange whole paragraphs of their DNA code, producing new varieties ready for the sieve of selection. And, of course, I have read through this book, writing notes, reading it objectively, yet listening to what Mr. Sagan had to say. Yet, in the back of my mind truly say – all of this is foolishness. Because God created all of these things that they see in their greatest of powerful microscopes. But what they don’t realize is that what they are looking at – such as when they look at the skulls and bones of ancient apes or dinosaurs – is that this earth was turned upside down at one point in time! And if they would only read and believe the living word of God, especially what the apostle Peter says, “But this fact is hidden from them – they themselves choosing to ignore it – that by the Word of God the heavens existed of old, and the earth came forth out of water and amid water” – 2 Peter 3:5, NET. The EARTH had become “without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep” – very likely when Satan the devil – and let’s not forget about this evil one – was thrown down unto tartaroo, this earth.
Since the writing and publishing of Dr. Dunbar’s informative history of geology, in 1991, researchers found evidence of a giant crater near the town of Chicxulub in Mexico. And it came into being about the same time as ‘the time of the great dying.’ So, some 66 million years ago utter destruction – a massive asteroid (about 6.2 miles in diameter) carved out the Chicxulub crater and greatly aided in the death of all these creatures – some instantaneously with food still within their mouth. An INSTANT destructive force which destroyed the dinosaurs, and legendary flying pterosaurs, called pterodactyls. And the largest species of the Late Cretaceous, Pteranodon, attained wingspans of up to 30 feet, much larger than any flying birds alive today. Just amazing creatures that were inhabiting the face of this Earth!
So, using some facts from science, let us see just what God’s living word does say. Let us begin “in the beginning” – Genesis, chapter 1.
The SIX DAYS of creation are well known by any dedicated Bible student. And, contrary to some, these were literal “DAYS” – each day consisting of a 24-hour duration! For proof, be sure to read Genesis 1:4-5 in which God gives the very definition of what He calls “light” and “darkness.” Along with the very TRUTH that our Lord Jesus Christ asks the simple question, “’ Are there not twelve hours in a day?’” A “Day” is a twenty-four-hour period of time.
Now, to NOTE Leofranc Holford-Stevens, author of the book The History of Time, as well as any good encyclopedia, shows us that it was always custom to end and begin days at sunset - until a few hundred years after Christ. It includes a period called “NIGHT”, and a period called “DAY” and Jesus said they contained TWELVE HOURS for each period – a total of 24 hours in this epoch.
Let’s closely see God’s living word’s account of events that occurred on these SIX DAYS. Here I will dwell on the animal and plant life mentioned in the account – carefully note the description of this New Creation.
“Then God [again, the great Elohim, the family of God] said, ‘Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth’; and it was so” – Genesis 1:11.
Well, in science – notice what William Darrah, who was an American professor of biology at Gettysburg College, specializing in paleobotany – amazingly admits back in 1960 –
“Suddenly – and suddenly is the proper word – a rapid diversification and radiation of the flowering plants occurred.Seward called the upper Cretaceous “the dawn of a new era” and Lesquereux many years ago observed that “the flora of the globe has become modified as by a NEW CREATION.”There has been no adequate explanation for this apparently SUDDEN modernization of the earth’s flora. The angiosperms appear in familiar form, not in small variety but in great numbers of existing families and genera. It is this perplexing paradox which has obscured the origin of the angiosperms.” 5
Friends, these grasses, herbs that yield seed, and the fruit trees that yields fruit described here for us in Genesis 1:11 (which are known as angiosperms) appear SUDDENLY on the geological record!
In verse 20 – the FIFTH DAY of creation we see the addition of “the waters abounding with an abundance of living creatures, and the atmosphere teeming with birds” – cf. Genesis 1:20-23.
Notice this amazing bit of information from zoologist Tracy Storer in his 1972 book General Zoology –
“Most modern families [of fish] and a few existing genera probably date from the Eocene epoch [Fig. 31-14].” 6
The very name Eocene comes from Ancient Greek, meaning “dawn” and refers to the “dawn” of modern (‘new’) fauna that appeared during the epoch.
In 1928, leading authorities at the time came out with a book entitled Creation By Evolution; a consensus of present-day knowledge as set forth by leading authorities in non-technical language that all may understand wrote –
“In the following Cretaceous seas, there were a few fishes that had the bony support of the tail as well formed as that of most existing bony fishes; indeed, the reign of the modern thin-scaled bony fishes, completely adapted for rapid movement in water, had begun, …” 7
So, according to this world’s expert in fossil fish, the fish of the prehistoric seas did not have THIN-SCALES of modern fish. The modern fish of today appeared SUDDENLY at the time of Adam, as God’s living word records for us – cf. Genesis 1:21.
Let us also notice this bit of fascinating information, again from Professor Dunbar –
“Modern types of birds, all toothless, appeared BEFORE the close of the Cretaceous, and in the Eocene, most of the present orders were represented.” 8
So, according to this world’s master in his field, modern true toothless birds were NOT present BEFORE the “close of the Cretaceous.” Again, facts of geology substantiate the teachings of Almighty God!
Beginning in verse 24 – the SIXTH DAY – God created the “’ cattle and creeping thing and the beast of the earth, each according to its kind’; and it was so.” Clearly, the modern classification of creatures such as cows, and other beasts in the classification of Mammalia. And as we have just read from Dr. Dunbar, this is when the “Age of Mammals” began.
Why Were the Dinosaurs Destroyed?
In a series of Personals, I began writing, I went over Some Prehistory Facts. And I began with the rebellion of the evil one – Satan the devil. Because of this rebellion, physical destruction occurred to the earth! Notice this – Genesis 1:2, “The earth [became] without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep.” The Hebrew words which our great patriarch and prophet Moses used are tohu and bohu – which truly means “chaotic and in confusion.”
Science fact surely tells us that this earth was created at an indefinite time – depending on which geologist you ask, the earth is some 4.54 Billion years old. Man – the true Homo sapiens – has ONLY been on this earth for about 6,000 years. And this can be proved by Biblical chronology and supported by various historical records of many nations around the world.
Hêlēl (in Hebrew #1966), Lucifer in Latin – meaning “shining one” – became known as Satan the Devil and rebelled, influencing a third of the holy angels to follow his rebellion and an attempted coup d'état of the Third Heaven – the very throne of the Master of the universe! He attempted to seize the very GOVERNMENT of the entire universe! – cf. Revelation 12:4; Jude 6.
Satan the Devil did not want to continue in the beautification of the earth – preparing it for the age of man. And as I have said before - we learn from God’s living word that angels were never meant to rule the earth or the universe – “the world to come” cf. Hebrews 2:5. He became filled with pride and jealousy – cf. Isaiah 14; Ezekiel 28.
A great battle for the control of the universe literally caused great physical destruction upon the earth – Genesis 1:2. Truly, between the first verse and the second verse of Genesis chapter 1, billions of years could have passed. The earth BECAME chaotic and void; and DARKNESS (of which Satan and his demons are) was on the face of the deep. The very word “deep” in Hebrew is tehôm, meaning “depths, with the associative meanings of darkness and secrecy, controlled or inhabited by mysterious powers.” Life was taken from the earth – including the dinosaurs as well as all other prehistoric creatures.
In verse 3, God began to RENEW THE FACE OF THE EARTH – see also Psalm 104:30. God rebuilt the surface of the earth and created man along with the innumerable creatures described in Genesis chapters 1 & 2. And “God blessed them [mankind], and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill [or rather replenish] the earth and subdue it; …” The earth had to be “replenished.”
The LORD our God’s living TRUTH becomes clear! The earth had been populated by various forms of plant and animal life BEFORE the creation of Adam. There have been many misconceptions about who created as well as why dinosaurs were created. A great many believe that Satan and his demons created them. No, Satan the Devil, and his demons cannot create life.
But, why did God create dinosaurs!?
From my youth, I’ve believed, from the study of God's living word as well as secular sources – and great advancement in scientific and geological research has helped solidify this – the earth was once covered with a vast landmass known as Pangaea. And as an example: For a period of time from the Late Cretaceous to the early Paleocene, there was once a large inland sea called the Western Interior Seaway that split the continent (North America) in two. The Western Interior Seaway is known to have been a shallow sea and one that teemed with remarkable diversity and abundance of marine life. And thanks to these shallow seas, these extremely large dinosaurs could take advantage of these seas to support their huge bodies that otherwise would have been impossible. The very existence of such a huge, diverse, and enduring population of dinosaurs significantly contributed to EARTH’s present store of Biodeposits – such as limestone, marble, coal, oil, and natural gas.
Returning once again to Professor Dunbar’s book Historical Geology we see the very usefulness of the plants described for us in Genesis 1:11-12 –
“ … the angiosperms [our modern plants and trees] are the most specialized of all plants and the ones destined to dominate the Earth during their geologic time. … they supply nearly all the plant food for the mammals that now dominate all other life upon Earth. Angiosperms provide the nuts and fruits of the forest, the grasses of the prairies, the cereals which furnish fodder and grain for man and his domestic animals, and all the vegetables and fruits that man has cultivated, …” 9
My friends, these angiosperms DID NOT inhabit Lucifer’s world before man. The plants and animals man uses for food were not in existence in the pre-Adamic world! When God created man, He also created at the same time the necessary angiosperms (the plants, trees, and grasses) necessary to sustain mankind.
Also, the IMPORTANCE of mammals to man cannot be over-emphasized! Yet, the same CAN NOT be said of the creatures that existed along with the dinosaurs in Lucifer’s pre-Adamic world.
The dinosaurs as well as all other prehistoric creatures were destroyed in an INSTANT and buried in a vast fossil graveyard – and, with the development of this new and highly logical hypothesis of the Chicxulub asteroid impact – that could have been the very moment of their SUDDEN ‘time of the great dying’ – their SUDDEN COLLAPSE!?
But, as we know, mankind has rejected the LORD our God’s vast knowledge and wishes to substitute his own theories and hypothesis – who suppress the TRUTH in unrighteousness – Romans 1:18-22.
“The fear [reverent fear] of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, But fools despise wisdom and instruction” – Proverbs 1:7.
ANYONE without God’s living word as their guide – without JESUS CHRIST and His mind, His Spirit, guiding you into all TRUTH – will always learn but will NEVER be able to come to the knowledge of the TRUTH! – cf. John 16:13; 2 Timothy 3:7. □
Bibliography:
1) Dunbar, C.O., Historical Geology, New York, J. Wiley, 1949, pgs. 345, 348.
2) Colbert, E.H., Dinosaurs: their discovery and their world, New York: Dutton, 1961, pg. 259.
3) Ibid, Dunbar, 426, 404.
4) How Did Dinosaurs Get So Big!? Science World, 18 August 2015 - https://www.scienceworld.ca/stories/how-did-dinosaurs-get-so-big/. Retrieved 22 June 2022.
5) Darrah, W.C., Principles of Paleobotany, New York, Ronald Press Co., 1960, pg. 219.
6) Storer, T.I., General Zoology, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1972, pg. 680.
7) Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, Creation By Evolution, The Progression of life on earth, New York, The Macmillan Company, 1928, pg. 131.
8) Ibid, Dunbar, 435.
9) Ibid, Dunbar, 336.
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