Dinofacts :)

This past Saturday I went with some members of my church's college group to witness around the Missouri State campus and downtown Springfield. It was my first time really street witnessing and I loved it, I was able to talk to a girl named Cherry and just to see the hunger and desire to have answers to her questions made me want to stay and talk to her all night, but I had to leave so we could meet up with the rest of our group because it was getting really late. So if you could just pray for her, that she keeps thinking about what we discussed and that her desire for answers never stops. Also pray that whatever seed God planted through me is growing and developing in her life.
Towards the beginning of our chat she told me she had so many questions about things that nobody has really been able to answer for her. So I tried to answer as many as she asked that I could, but as our discussion went on I realized that I didn't really know an answer to many of the questions she had asked, which made me really dive in to find answers to these questions that everyone asks.
One of her questions was about dinosaurs. "Why doesn't the Bible mention dinosaurs?" And at first you would think that this was some sort of trick question she was trying to throw in my face but just by her tone and real sincerity you could tell that she really was curious. At the moment though all I could tell her was that in Genesis it tells us of how God created the world and on the 6th day he created all of the animals. I also told her that the Bible is a story of God's plan to redeem us and make it to were we can be with him again after sin had entered the world, and how the Bible is one big picture of that and of how Jesus sacrificed himself for my sin and hers. So dinosaurs just weren't needed to be discussed in the Bible because they really had nothing to do with Jesus  dieing for our sin and redeeming us.
But when I got home I was really curious at the Christian view on dinosaurs, so I spent this week researching the views on dinosaurs.

 To start off, there are two very different opinions of the dinosaurs

According to Evolution dinosaurs evolved 235 million years ago, lived before the dawn of mankind, and disappeared 65 million years ago (most likely due to some cataclysmic event).

According to the Bible dinosaurs were created when all of the other animals were,

Genesis 1:21 "And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind, and God saw that it was good."

So according to the Bible, which I believe is the inspired literal word of God, dinosaurs were living during the same time as man. Also, dinosaurs could not have died before sin, because according to Romans 6:23 the wages of sin is death.

So, what happened to them? Scientist have found that for fossilization to occur it requires a sudden burial. Unique conditions are required to preserve the animal and replace it with minerals. The flood account can help determine why a large number of dinosaurs suddenly died and would also explain the "quick burial" required for fossilization. Although there were a few dinosaurs that were on the ark the rest of the species died with everything else in the flood.

Now, here's where someone would most likely question how the dinosaurs that were on the ark were able to fit inside of it. Well, the average dinosaur was the size of a lamb. Dinosaurs that reach the massize sizes are really really old, because they keep growing with age. So if the purpose was to have animals to repopulate the earth God would of had to call young, small, and fertile dinosaurs to board the ark. The contorted shape of the large groups of dinosaur skeletons found help support the Biblical flood story and the massive death and burial of the dinosaurs. After the flood, the dinosaurs, like the other animals would have dispersed and started repopulating. And after time became endangered and eventually extinct.

We can also find many biblical and historical accounts of dinosuar like creatures. And I now know why the Bible doesn't mention dinosaurs by name. In 1841 Sir Richard Owen, a British anatomist coined the term "dinosaur" from the Greek words meaning "terrible lizard" while he was viewing the bones of Iguanodon and Megalosaurus. But the KJV was first translated 230 years earlier. So dinosaur wasn't even a word that could be used in the Bible because it wasn't even a word yet. But we do find many accounts of dinosaur like descriptions of animals in the Bible

  Genesis 1:21 . . . sea dragons

Psalm 74:13 . . . dragon in the sea waters

Isaiah 27:1 . . . dragon in the sea

Job 40:15-19 . . . God describes the largest land animal he made, in verse 17 he compares the tail of the animal to a large cedar tree.

Many say that he is describing an elephant or a hippo. And even though they are large animals, they do not match the description because their tails are short and tiny. But the behemoth Brachiosaurus does fit the description in Job.

There are also many non biblical accounts of dinosaur creatures. The people of India worship huge hissing reptiles that live in the caves. Gilgamesh slaid a large dragon in the 2000 BC Sumerian tale. In England stories of how St. George slew the dragon in the cave. And Petroglyphs (cave drawings) of dinosaur like creatures have been found. These are all account of creatures that could very well be dinosaurs when humans are alive.

And finally there is evidence in the fossils. Scientist at Montana State University have found T-rex bones that weren't totally fossilized. They are calling them "fresh bone" and they found blood cells and hemoglobin. If it was really from millions of years ago there is no way that traces of these things would still be around.

 I know that this was a really really long post but I'm glad to have researched all of this, so I can have a more detailed answer to whomever may ask me that question next. I also hope that this could come in handy for whoever may read this as well. I got my information from answersingenesis.org in an article by Ken Ham entitled "What really happened to dinosaurs" I checked his references before I posted any information I learned from his article and they are all legitimate resources.

Finally, I would like to say that with any question just remember to bring it back to the Bible and see what God has to tell us about it. The Bible is the complete word of God for us and it has all that we need to know, and it is still very much relevant today! I hope you enjoyed this topic as much as I did when I was researching it!