Dinosaur (The Bible’s Forgotten Prophecy) by Richie Cooley Jr. - HTML preview

Dinosaur

(The Bible’s Forgotten Prophecy)

By Richie Cooley

Licensed by:

Richie Cooley (2015), [heavily revised (2018)]

Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 International

Email: richieacooley@live.com

Table of Contents

I. Introduction: Popper and Plesiosaurus

II. The Giant Find

III. It Was Written

IV. It Was Prophesied

V. Conclusion: Creator and Constancy

VI. Citations

Before getting started, let’s review a few notes …

*This work mostly uses British spelling, except for the quoted material, which often employs U.S. spelling.

*New Testament Scripture is normally taken from the Analytical-Literal Translation of the New Testament: Third Edition (ALT3). Copyright © 2007 by Gary F. Zeolla of Darkness to Light ministry. Previously copyrighted © 1999, 2001, 2005 by Gary Zeolla.

*Old Testament Scripture is normally taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE® (NASB), copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

*The ALT3 distinguishes between singular and plural second-person pronouns by means of an asterisk (*).

*Divine pronouns are normally not capitalized, unless they appear that way in Bible versions or other quotes.

*As a general rule, words that appear in brackets within quotes are not found in the original texts, and were added by the translators or are my personal comments, etc.

I. Introduction: Popper and Plesiosaurus

People often choose a paradigm and stick to it, interpreting everything along those lines. Ergo, they become very convinced of their theory—becoming solidified through their peers—and thereafter interpret everything as “evidence.” After all, was not Darwin only putting forth a theory to explain the “origin of species?” Why then do all branches of science, from astronomers to psychologists, cite Darwinian evolution as a cornerstone of their knowledge? What do galaxies and emotions have to do with naturalistic observations made from the HMS Beagle?

Phillip Johnson, the Berkley law professor who is the grandfather of the I.D. movement, stated something poignant about the vapid universality of modern constructs in the final chapter of his famous book, Darwin on Trial…

Karl Popper provides the indispensable starting point for understanding the difference between science and pseudoscience. Popper spent his formative years in early twentieth century Vienna, where intellectual life was dominated by science-based ideologies like Marxism and the psychoanalytic schools of Freud and Adler. These were widely accepted as legitimate branches of natural science, and they attracted large followings among intellectuals because they appeared to have such immense explanatory power. Acceptance of either Marxism or psychoanalysis had, as Popper observed,

The effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, opening your eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated. Once your eyes were thus opened you saw confirming instances everywhere: the world was full of verifications of the theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it. Thus its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth; who refused to see it, either because it was against their class interest, or because of their repressions which were still ‘un-analyzed’ and crying aloud for treatment…A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history; not only in the news, but also in its presentation -- which revealed the class bias of the paper -- and especially of course in what the paper did not say. The Freudian analysts emphasized that their theories were constantly verified by their ‘clinical observations.’

Popper saw that a theory that appears to explain everything actually explains nothing. If wages fell this was because the capitalists were exploiting the workers, as Marx predicted they would, and if wages rose this was because the capitalists were trying to save a rotten system through bribery, which was also what Marxism predicted. A psychoanalyst could explain why a man would commit murder -- or, with equal facility, why the same man would sacrifice his own life to save another. According to Popper, however, a theory with genuine explanatory power makes risky predictions, which exclude most possible outcomes. Success in prediction is impressive only to the extent that failure was a real possibility.¹

Humankind has the nasty habit of bending its entire outlook to conform to a pet idea, thus making its paradigms beyond the ability to disprove. Dr. Keith Wanser, a young-Earth creationist who has several degrees (including a PhD in condensed matter physics from the University of California), wrote similarly…

One of the major problems with the so-called theory of evolution is that the details depend on who is telling the story. Those details that become commonly accepted as “facts” are often changed in light of more recent discoveries. This has happened on numerous occasions, with little notice that the supposed prior facts were not facts at all. In other words, there is not one theory of evolution, but a body of opinions, speculations and methods for interpretation of observational facts so that they fit into the philosophy of naturalism.

An example of a supposed fact demonstrating an ancient age of the earth is the rate of growth of stalactites and stalagmites in limestone caverns. As a young boy I toured Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico and remember the tour guide informing us matter-of-factly that the limestone caverns and formations were formed over many millions of years, which did not seem to agree with what I had been taught in Sunday school. A sign above the entrance until 1988 said the caverns were at least 260 million years old. In recent years, the age on the sign was reduced to 7–10 million years, then 2 million years, and now the sign is gone perhaps as a result of observations that stalactite growth rates of several inches a month are common.²

The Bible on the other hand has continually demonstrated an uncanny ability to be outside the possibility of distortion while also fulfilling “risky” predictions. Manifold expositors of Scripture try to muddy the waters through bad translations and even worse interpretations, but the truth is there, well preserved in the Hebrew and Greek.

Look at Messianic prophecy. No one fully understood what passages like Psalm 22, Psalm 118, Isaiah 52-53, etc., fully meant until the Lord Jesus was rejected, scourged, and crucified. Yet who cannot look at these Scriptures now and clearly see the suffering Messiah predicted? Messianic prophecy is so compelling that the world has been forced to come up with ridiculous pseudo-theories to explain them, such as Caesar’s Messiah (an idea that sky-rocketed in popularity after Richard Dawkins tipped his hat towards it; so does this mean Dawkins admits “Messianic prophecies” need explaining?).

The Hebrew and Aramaic words that make up the prophecies have been terrifically preserved for all to behold, whether there are periods of bad translations and interpretations or not. This is true when it comes to Messianic prophecies (i.e., the predictions of what would happen when the Messiah came the first time) and eschatology (the predictions of what will happen before he comes again), but there is also a “general” category. There are prophecies that neither deal with the first nor second coming of Christ explicitly, such as what would happen to various nations. The most remarkable example of a general forth-telling that has come true in recent history is the discovery of dinosaur bones.

Join me on a brief and Biblical dinosaur safari. First I will give an overview of the dinosaur’s significance from natural history and then I will give a quick, Biblical sweep of the passages that clearly describe them. Finally I will attempt to show how God even uses a dinosaur motif in describing the two Advents.

II. The Giant Find

The existence of “dinosaurs” in modern times was confirmed less than two hundred years ago. The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs gives a very succinct, bog-standard description of this history…

Dinosaur remains have been found by humans for millennia and probably helped form the basis for belief in mythical beasts including dragons. A few dinosaur bones were illustrated in old European publications without their true nature being realized…

Modern dinosaur paleontology began in the 1820s in England. Teeth were found, and a few bones of the predatory Megalosaurus and herbivorous Iguanodon were published and named. For a few decades it was thought that the bones coming out of ancient sediments were the remains of oversized versions of modern reptiles. In 1842 Richard Owen recognized that many of the fossils were not standard reptiles, and he coined the term “Dinosauria” to accommodate them...

The first complete dinosaur skeletons, uncovered in Europe shortly before the American Civil War, were those of small examples…³

Now let’s back up and take this standard description a step at a time.

First of all the hand is waived over all the many ancient stories of dragons, which could actually go to prove that dinosaurs and man once lived together in the recent past. These anomalies scattered throughout the pages of history—including the Bible—cannot possibly be pawned off as being inspired by early, haphazard palaeontology. Job’s record, which will be described later, dates back to the dawn of recorded time and is incredibly detailed. It’s much easier to surmise that such accounts were not penned because someone stumbled upon dinosaur “remains” but that there was contact with such creatures…

For evolutionists, legends of men slaying dragons must be mythical because their timeline has creatures like dinosaurs die out over 60 million years before humans existed. But dragon accounts aren’t easy to dismiss as mere fantasy.

Dragons are memorialized in legends, historical accounts, and artwork from around the world. To name a few, there’s an Aboriginal depiction of a water monster that resembles a plesiosaur, an ancient historical account of serpents in Egypt with bat-like wings, the epic poem Beowulf with its account of a fiery flying serpent, and Native American petroglyphs (etchings in stone) that resemble dragons. Dragons are depicted on flags, emblems, tapestries, maps, pottery, pictographs, and more.

Although from disconnected cultures, the descriptions are remarkably similar -- perhaps because dragons were real?⁴

Moving on, the history from the field guide then goes on to say that, “A few dinosaur bones were illustrated in old European publications without their true nature being realized.” A famous example of this involved a scientist named Robert Plot (1640-1696). The Oxford University Museum of Natural History relates a finding of his…

Come we next to such [stones] as concern the…Members of the Body: Amongst which, I have one dug out of a quarry in the Parish of Cornwell, and given me by the ingenious Sir Thomas Pennyston, that has exactly the Figure of the lowermost part of the Thigh-Bone of a Man or at least of some other Animal, with capita Femoris inferiora, between which are the anterior … and the large posterior Sinus…and a little above the Sinus, where it seems to have been broken off, shewing the marrow within of a shining Spar-like Substance of its true Colour and Figure, in the hollow of the Bone...In Compass near the capita Femoris, just two Foot, and at the top above the Sinus...about 15 inches: in weight, though representing so short a part of the Thigh-Bone, almost 20 pounds…

Plot decided, on the basis of the internal structure, that this specimen was indeed a petrified bone but, given its great size, what animal could it have come from?

According to Plot, some specimens did seem to have a true organic origin. If this large specimen was indeed part of a femur, from which creature did it come? Nowadays we can identify it as part of the femur of the dinosaur Megalosaurus, but this was not an explanation available to Plot.⁵

The Princeton field guide then goes on to give brief mention to the man who really started it all: Richard Owen. This scientist isn’t given the credit he deserves. There was a good article by a British newspaper a few years ago about him…

In 1861, William Gladstone, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, stood up in the House of Commons and paid tribute to a man he called a “splendid genius”, and the world’s greatest living naturalist. Yet today, Professor Richard Owen may be remembered as the first superintendent of the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, but for little else.

In fact, when listing his achievements, it is hard to know where to start. Elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1834, at the age of 30, he was a comparative anatomist with an extraordinary range and depth of knowledge in zoology, biology and palaeontology. He described and named an astonishing number of creatures new to science, and published more than 600 books and papers on subjects as diverse as the duck-billed platypus and the gorilla. It was Prof Owen who gave the name “dinosaur” to the order of great extinct reptiles that were then being discovered.

Owen’s greatest legacy is the Natural History Museum, but he was also an adviser to governments, reported on environmental health issues and was awarded more than 100 honours -- including a knighthood. He was a famous lecturer, tutored the royal children in science and was awarded a grace-and-favour home by Queen Victoria. His friends included Charles Dickens, Sir Robert Peel and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.⁶

So why have so few people heard of him? The article gives the reason…

…He fell out with Darwin…

It’s amazing that even in the very early days of Darwin he was given immediate, haloed, sacrosanct status by the establishment. His theory could have hardly had enough time to be “proven” at this point, and his very famous book about the matter openly admits the many weak spots that needed strengthening. “Darwinism” was fairly untouchable from the beginning, yet clearly not because of scientific rigour.

So moving on, the guide ends its historical overview by stating how more fossil finds became increasingly expansive and impressive, finally culminating in a large public interest.

Ultimately, it’s important to understand that the knowledge we have of giant dinosaurs like T-Rex or the Brontosaurus have only recently been in the public domain.

Before closing this little chapter on the discovery of dinosaurs, I’d like to make a few comments on what their fossils contribute to the subject of creation versus evolution. In the past I’ve given long quotes regarding anomalies (such as soft tissue and blood) in dinosaur fossils, providing tremendous proof of the validity of young-Earth creationism; so I won’t go over that ground again. Moreover, since I’ve mentioned elsewhere most of the bigger issues categorically I’ll keep this brief. Apart from the soft tissue/blood findings, I think three of the greatest points that can be urged is (1) catastrophism, (2) stasis, and (3) the counter-intuitive assumptions of evolutionists.

(1) Catastrophism

In the past I’ve given a quote about the tremendous dinosaur graveyards scattered throughout the world. In many places there are massive amounts of dinosaur bones all clumped together; why? This is even more pertinent when you consider the fact that fossils are normally only formed when creatures are encased at the time of death. How did all these dinosaurs become buried together throughout the world? The best answer is Noah’s flood.

Paleontology is not totally a modern endeavour. There is a natural understanding that flood waters and fossils go together, and many ancients were much more unbiased in admitting this…

Ancient historians like Josephus the Jew, Berosus the Chaldean, Hieronymus the Egyptian, Mnaseas, and Nicolaus of Damascus (Josephus even mentions these last four) discussed a powerful flood that occurred in the past.

Ancient Greek historians like Xenophanes, Herodotus, Eratosthenes, and Strabo all commented on fossils being from a significant water event in the past.⁷

Another interesting point is that dinosaurs made for good fossils because of their size, but their ecosystem often isn’t represented in the fossil record in the same place. In other words, many fossils obviously were swept away together and sorted by water. This is why bones are found in one place and plants (coalbeds) are found in other places. Ariel Roth, who has a PhD in biology from the University of Michigan, comments on such oddities…

Animals require plants for food in order to survive. Yet in several of our important geologic formations we find good evidence for the animals, but little or no evidence for the plants necessary to support the animals. The fossil assemblages found represent incomplete ecosystems. How did the animals survive for the millions of years postulated for the deposition of these formations without adequate food? Examples include:

1. The Protoceratops dinosaur-bearing layers of the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, where the paucity of plants is considered “baffling” [D.E. Fatovsky, D. Badamgarav, H. Ishimoto, M. Watabe, D.B. Weishampel, The Paleoenvironments of TugrikinShireh (Gobi Desert, Mongolia) and Aspects of the Taphonomy and Paleoecology of Protoceratops (Dinosauria: Ornithischia), Palaios 12:59–70, 1977.].

2. The Coconino Sandstone of the southwestern United States, which has many hundreds of good animal trackways, but no plants.

3. The important dinosaur-bearing Morrison Formation of the western United States, where “identifiable plant fossils are practically non-existent” [T.E. White, The Dinosaur Quarry, in E.F. Sabatka, editor, Guidebook to the Geology and Mineral Resources of the Uinta Basin, Intermountain Association of Geologists, Salt Lake City, UT, p. 21–28, 1964.]. What did these behemoths eat as they evolved over the millions of years? It is estimated that a large dinosaur would eat 32 tons of vegetation in one day.

A more plausible scenario for these deposits is that they represent layers laid down rapidly during the biblical Flood, with the waters of the Flood sorting the organisms into various deposits, the plants forming some of our huge coal deposits.⁸

(2) Stasis

It’s very ordinary to encounter a young man who thinks he’s super smart and far too sophisticated for the Bible. His answer will almost always be the same: I’m a Darwinist! He refuses to listen to the Bible because he’s “a Darwinist.” I’ve never understood how someone with a half-baked theory about how large animals morph into other large animals over time is supposed to possess the power to explain the rest of physical scientific phenomena, which percentage-wise is bound to make up about 99.999 percent of observable processes. What does being a “Darwinist” have to do with the question of where a universe-worth of stuff came from? How did this universe-worth of stuff achieve such symmetry and fine-tuning? How are galaxies and solar systems and planets and stars formed? How did molecular life begin? Why did molecular life grow into something bigger/more complex and exactly how did it grow into something bigger/more complex (if the modern ideas were true)? Up until the point where true natural selection takes place Darwin can’t help you. So what does it mean to be a Darwinist?! Not much!

I suppose “being a Darwinist” means a belief that the helter skelter, if slowed down to a crawl (i.e., viewed from the vantage point of one human life-time), appears “designed” to uneducated man. If Darwinism was truly a theory of everything, the driving force behind all testable laws, then why is it completely negligible in everyday life? All engineers and even school children playing with toys must abide by the laws of gravity and inertia and cause/effect, etc. Who takes evolution into consideration? You never buy an old car from a lot or adopt an elderly dog from the pound and think: it’s not much now, but just wait a few years, and then she’ll be a beaut!

You never use evolution in day-to-day life because neither does nature. Now this lack of evolutionary usage is bore out via dinosaurs in the fossil record that is supposed to represent their times. Since all things are prone to dramatic changes then all things should change over vast stretches of time. Why wouldn’t they? How could the process of evolutionary change be so powerful as to morph amoebas into men yet fail to touch life at every level somewhat consistently? If “being a Darwinist” means a belief that all physical realities are floating through a process of perpetual change, then how would this not affect all life? Yet many creatures you see today are represented somewhere in the “ancient” fossil record, and they look like they do now. Yes, the dinosaurs may be extinct, but many of the smaller animals from “their time” are not…

Scientists discovered a tiny moth on Australia’s Kangaroo Island and gave it the name Enigmatinea glatzella. The name is quite descriptive, as Enigmatinea means “enigma moth” in Latin. But why is this moth an enigma to evolutionary scientists?

Today’s living representatives of this moth have “basically the same features” as their ancestors, which evolutionists claim lived forty to fifty million years ago. Hence, virtually no evolution has occurred in all that supposed time! Ted Edwards, one of the scientists tasked with describing the new moth family said, “It’s really quite remarkable because it means that the ancestral line has continued right through without changing a lot of its basic structures”.

For this reason, scientists are calling Enigmatinea glatzella a “dinosaur moth.” Since, in evolutionary thinking, dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago, the discovery of living representatives of a creature that is at least forty million years old is as remarkable as discovering a living dinosaur.

The lack of evolution is even more surprising when one realizes that the moth has an extremely short lifespan: These dinosaur moths emerge from their cocoons, mate, lay eggs, and die within a single day. Although the total lifespan (egg to adult) of the dinosaur moth is apparently not well-known, other short-lived moths have total lifespans of about a month. This means that hundreds of millions of generations of dinosaur moths could easily have lived and died in this supposed forty-million-year interval. Even though death is the engine that supposedly drives evolution, essentially no evolution has occurred in all that alleged time.⁹

(3) Counter-intuitive evolutionists

Evolutionary constructs don’t hold much water. Darwinists chide creationists for jumping to conclusions because DNA is so complex—and therefore looks designed—but then come up with all sorts of bizarre theories based on “looks.” Ironically, their theories are always MUCH simpler than DNA! One popular, persistent idea is the theory that dinosaurs evolved into birds. Never mind the one in a trillion to the trillionth power odds that the first living cell could have ever arisen through the helter skelter; that’s not important. Rather, how do creationists explain how some dinosaurs and some birds have similar hips?!

But just to answer this popular myth more directly, let’s look at some facts from John Morris that disparage the idea of dinosaur to birds…

What structural and physiological transformations must occur to change one into the other? The following abridged list of evolutionary obstacles might be helpful.

Wings: The proposed ancestors of birds are thought to have walked on their hind legs. Their diminutive forelimbs had digits similar to a hand, but consisting only of digits one, two, and three. Bird forelimbs consist of digits two, three, and four. Today, most hold that ground-dwelling theropods learned to run fast and jump to catch insects and eventually used arms with frayed scales to fly. But flight requires fully formed, interlocking feathers and hollow bones, not to mention the fl