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Transcript 325D — What Happened to the Dinosaurs?
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: I have a child in the second grade, and in school they're studying about dinosaurs. And she was reading some of the answers to me, and it says that they lived 200 million years ago. Now I have heard someone say that you wrote a book called "Adam When" and you believe that our earth is really not as old as scientists believe. Now I have two questions. Can you tell me how old you think our earth is, and where did these dinosaurs go? I mean, if Noah was to bring two of every animal onto the ark, what happened to the dinosaurs?
HC: The question is, How old is the earth? I believe the earth is about 13,000 years old. I believe that God created the heavens and the earth, Adam and Eve and the dinosaurs and all the other animals, in the year 11,013 BC, according to Biblical reckoning.
Now according to the fossil record, the archaeological record, the early earth was much warmer than it is today. They have found many fossils of broad-leafed plants, fossil fuels (oil and so on) in the earth, which come from heavy vegetation that existed early on the earth. The evidence is that during the first several thousand years of the earth's existence it was warmer than it was subsequent to the flood.
Then, in the year 4990 BC, the flood occurred (6023 years after creation). Noah was commanded by God to put two of every kind, as well as seven of the clean animals, into the ark. And this would have included a couple of dinosaurs, certainly. They didn't have to be full grown dinosaurs. They could have been baby dinosaurs. After all, the purpose was simply to continue the species.
After the flood, however, the earth became much colder. This would have introduced the Ice Age. The fact is, immediately after the flood, according to the theological evidence, the continents were about 30% covered by ice. Today they're still about 10% covered by ice. So the world was quite a bit colder. So the climate was not conducive to the maintenance of these large animals that were heavy vegetable eaters.
However, in the Bible itself we find language that seems to speak of this kind of a huge creature living all the way until about 1800 BC. The book of Job was written about that time, about 1800 BC, and if you read Job 41, it is speaking of some kind of a fierce animal, a very fierce animal. You might find in the margin of your Bible that it speaks of a crocodile, but that is simply somebody's speculation. The word crocodile is not found here.
And when you read the language here, you will find that it is really talking about some kind of an animal that lived, and it sounds like a huge dragon of some kind. It could very well have been a dinosaur or some related creature that still continued to live up until 1800 BC.
At any rate, as a whole kind of animal, it did become extinct, probably to a large degree as a result of the colder temperatures that followed the flood.
Now in the fossil records, which are bones of animals in the rocks, in the sandstone, that is, rocks that have been put down by water deposition, we find imprints of leaves and even footprints of animals in clay. The reason that we find them is because of the cataclysmic nature of the flood. Today fossils are not being formed. When an animal dies, gradually the skeleton of that animal withers away and returns to the dust. And it would take a huge landslide to cover that animal, and other conditions prevailing, to produce a fossil. And that ordinarily does not happen.
But we find all kinds of animals that have been fossilized, and sea creatures and leaves and plants, because of the instantaneous, cataclysmic nature of the flood. Now it's significant that in some of the fossil beds, here in the United States, they have found the footprints of a dinosaur in the same stream bed, in the same clay strata, with the footprint of man, indicating that man and dinosaurs lived simultaneously, which of course is exactly what the Bible teaches.
CALLER: How come they never bring that up, though, when they're teaching science?
HC: Because the scientists ordinarily have decided on evolution, and they have developed their timetable for evolution. And because they have a blind faith in evolution, therefore they don't want to face these other questions. There are all kinds of embarrassing questions they could face which they do not face. They simply call that an anomaly or a puzzle that doesn't fit the pattern. But they just don't want to face this. They are locked into their evolution theories.
CALLER: Would that then go along with their finds of heads that they say are millions of years old, and they try to trace this back to then? Was this a human being from the flood time? Would that be it? Or is it an ape?
HC: You see, this introduces another very interesting fact. The Liekes, scientists who are working in Africa, frequently have their findings written up in the National Geographic Magazine. And it wasn't so many years ago that they believed that the oldest human, as we know him today, was about several hundred thousand years old. They found other fragments of skulls, or fragments of other bones. (Ordinarily they don't find a whole skeleton. All they find is some fragments, and they try to reconstruct from that.) But in an examination of these fragments they concluded that there was some kind of a man-like animal that lived as long as maybe two million years ago.
But in recent years they have found fragments of skulls, and parts of skeletons, in Africa, that date by their method to as far back as two and a half or three million years. And yet they have all the evidence of being a normal human being. And of course this is a great puzzle to these scientists. We of course who believe in the Bible say, no, that's no problem at all. First of all, their timetable is all awry. It's all wrong. While they decide that the skull is three million years old, we know that that's an impossibility, because the Bible won't permit it, and neither will the scientific evidence permit it.
If we look at the character of the oceans, and so on, it can be proven very readily, just from the scientific evidence, that this world couldn't be more than 15,000 years old, or thereabouts.
But nevertheless, on their own timetable, they find this. And we say, No, that's not a problem. The human beings have been here as long as the animals have. Now they may have found skulls and pieces of bone of apes, or monkeys, or even other animals that lived before the flood and have since become extinct. But anything at all that looks like a human is a human. Mankind began as a full-blown human being, in Adam and Eve. The fact is, Adam and Eve were more perfect humans than any of us are. We are the product of the degeneration of the human race because of sin. We have our twisted spines and our sloped shoulders, and our whatever it may be, our weaknesses in our bodies and skeletons, and so on, as a result of the curse of sin upon the earth. And Adam and Eve began as perfect humans.
CALLER: One other question. I was reading this book—and this really startled me—it said that Christ was crucified in the nude. Is that true?
HC: That is true. The Bible says that they took His garments from Him. Now you must remember that Christ had become a curse for us. To endure hell for our sins is to be under the curse of God. It is a terrible thing. It is to be cut off by God. And it is to have all of our sins exposed before God. When Christ was stripped of His garments, that was really a figure of the fact that He had become sin for us. He stood exposed before God, with all of our sins. He had become a curse for us. It is the language of the Bible to indicate the awfulness of the price that Christ paid for our sins.
Someone says, "He was crucified in the nude," as if, "Horrors! He was naked. Couldn't somebody throw a blanket around Him?" No, no. That isn't the point at all. The fact that His garments were stripped from Him indicated He had come under the curse of God. He was the off-scouring. He was the refuse. He had been abandoned by God. He was naked before God. It's to indicate the terrible, terrible thing that Christ had to undergo in order that He might be our Savior.
CALLER: It makes you just want to sit down and cry that they would do that to our God.
HC: But this was required in order that we might be saved. This is the evidence of God's love. Had Christ not done this . . . remember, they did not crucify Christ. But Christ willingly came to be crucified. Christ was born to be crucified. Christ came to be crucified. Christ came to Jerusalem and made certain that they would crucify Him. It was His purpose to be crucified. This was the only way that He could become our Savior. This had to be, because of God's love for us.