DWDP - Gen 8: 18-19 What Happened to the Dinosaurs?

What if the real dinosaur debate isn’t about bones, but about the story we use to read them? We take you from ancient dragon legends and striking biblical descriptions to modern fossil labs that report soft tissue in dinosaur remains, then ask why two smart people can study the same evidence and land on timelines that are worlds apart. Rather than dodging the hard questions, we walk straight into them: Could Noah have housed dinosaur kinds on the Ark? Why do so many cultures remember great reptiles? And how do post-flood changes—shorter lifespans, harsher climates, and rising fear between man and beast—explain rapid extinctions?

Along the way, we contrast two starting points. One begins with deep time and unguided processes; the other trusts the authority of Scripture, a recent creation, and a global flood. Those foundations don’t just sort fossils; they shape ethics, purpose, and hope. If suffering and death ruled for ages before humanity, the biblical arc from Eden to the cross wobbles. But if death enters through Adam and the fossil record reflects catastrophe and judgment, then the atonement of Jesus Christ stands at the center of history, with the promise of a restored creation where death and predation end.

We keep the tone warm and thoughtful as we unpack Leviathan and Behemoth, the meaning of “kinds,” and why average dinosaur size matters for Ark logistics. We press into how worldview forms conclusions, encourage honest inquiry, and invite you to consider whether Scripture should frame consensus—or the other way around. Listen to be challenged, to think deeply about origins and meaning, and to strengthen a biblical worldview that makes sense of evidence and life. If this conversation stirred you, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can join the journey.

Transcript

Welcome And Scripture Setup

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to More Than Medicine, where Jesus is more than enough for the ills that plague our culture and our country. Hosted by author and physician, Dr. Robert Jackson.

Where Did Dinosaurs Go

Legends Of Dragons Worldwide

Biblical References To Great Creatures

Fossils, Soft Tissue, And Timelines

Could Dinosaurs Fit On The Ark

Why Dinosaurs Disappeared After The Flood

Two Worldviews, Same Evidence

Clarifying Worldview Foundations

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Papa, can you tell me a story? Do you really want me to tell you a story? Well, you go get your brother and your sisters, and I will tell you a story. Welcome to Devotions with Dr. Papa. Gather round, grab your Bibles, and let's look into the written word which reveals to us the living word who is our Lord Jesus Christ. Today we're at Genesis chapter eight, verse eighteen and nineteen. So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife, and his sons wives with him. Every beast, every creeping thing and every bird, everything that moves on the earth went out by their families from the ark. May the Lord add his blessing to the reading of his word. So what happened to the dinosaurs? How many times have you asked that question? Have your children asked you that question? It's obvious that the dinosaurs were real. Paleontologists continue to find fossilized evidence of dinosaur bones all over the earth. More than that, there are legends of dinosaurs throughout history, and here's a few of them. Now this is from the New Answers Book Number One. Let me give you a commercial here. I would encourage you to have all four of the New Answers book on your bookshelf for yourself and your children. These books contain lots of questions and answers, and each answer is an essay by a well known creation scientist. Let me just give you some of the questions as an example. Why shouldn't Christians accept millions of years? Good question. Because I was indoctrinated by that in college, from zoology one hundred one all the way through to the end that this earth is millions of years old. Doesn't I'm sorry, don't creationists deny the laws of nature? Couldn't God have used evolution? Could God really have created everything in six days? Was there really a Noah's Ark and flood? You see what I'm getting at? All of these are good questions that thinking Christian people ask periodically. And so I would encourage you to have these books on your bookshelf. So let's get back to our topic. There are lots of legends about dinosaurs. There's one about a Sumerian story dating back to 2000 BC or even earlier that tells of a hero named Gilgamesh, who, when he went to fell cedars in a remote forest, encountered a huge, vicious dragon that he killed, cutting off its head as a trophy. When Alexander the Great, around three hundred thirty BC and his soldiers marched into India, they found that the Indians worshipped huge hissing reptiles that they kept in caves. China is renowned for its dragon stories, and dragons are prominent on Chinese pottery, embroidered, embroidered and on carvings. England and several other cultures retain the story of Saint George, who slew a dragon that lived in a cave. There's a story of a tenth century Irishman who wrote of his encounter with what appears to have been a stegosaurus. In the fifteen hundreds a European scientific book Historia Animalium lived several listed several living animals that today we would call dinosaurs. So anyway, there are lots of legends of dinosaurs, and there are drawings of them on caves, there are pictures of them in lots of different places, and it's obvious that dinosaurs were a reality. In the Bible, in Genesis chapter one and verse twenty one, the scripture says that on that God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves with which the waters swarmed after their kind. The Hebrew word for sea monster is tanan, which is translated elsewhere as dragon. Perhaps in the very first chapter of the Bible God is describing the great sea dragons that he created. In Psalms seventy four verse thirteen, the Bible describes the dragon in the waters, and then in Isaiah twenty three and verse one, the Bible tells us that he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea. Although the word dinosaur strictly refers to land animals, the sea reptiles and flying reptiles are often grouped with dinosaurs. In Job forty one, the Bible describes a great animal that lived in the sea called Leviathan that even breathes fire. This dragon may have been the mighty forty foot sarcos imperator or the super croc, or it could have been the eighty two foot Leopleridon. It's difficult to say for sure. Did you know that there are also mentions of a piery flying serpent in the Bible? In Isaiah thirty and verse six, and this could have been a pterodactyl, which are thought to be a flying dinosaur. In Job chapter forty, verse fifteen to nineteen describes Behemoth that eats grass like an ox, his tail is like a cedar, and his bones are like bones of bronze. This creature could easily have been none other than a brachiosaurus with the long neck and powerful long tail made popular in the recent movie Jurassic Park. No living creature comes close to this description. The evolutionist tells us that the dinosaurs went extinct sixty five million years ago. But not so fast, Skywalker. Scientists from the University of Montana found T Rex bones that were not totally fossilized. Sections of the long bones contained fresh bone and hemoglobin and blood cells, indicating a recent death. Unfossilized duckbilled dinosaur bones have been found on the north slope in Alaska, which poses a serious problem to paleontologists who propose an age of dinosaurs sixty five million years ago, but it fits perfectly with a biblical account of a planet that is six thousand years old and a four thousand year old worldwide cataclysmic flood that spelled the doom of most dinosaurs. So how did all the dinosaurs fit on the ark? Have you ever wondered that? Well I have, but here are some answers. The average dinosaur is the size of a sheep. Now we all think that all dinosaurs are giant dinosaurs, like the brachiosaurus or a T Rex, but that's not so. The average dinosaur was the size of a sheep. And number two, although there are six hundred species of dinosaurs, there are only fifty kinds of dinosaur. And remember, Noah was instructed to bring on the ark representative kinds of land animals. And then number three, Noah would have brought onto the ark young adolescent adult animals, not the full grown animals. And they would have been much smaller than full grown adults. Next question So why don't we see dinosaurs today? I know you've asked that question. So have I. At the end of the flood, Noah and his sons and the animals came out of the Ark, as Genesis chapter eight, verse fifteen, sixteen, seventeen informs us. Just like people and other animals, the dinosaurs bred and multiplied. However, the new world was distinctly different. The lush tropical paradise created by the water vapor canopy was gone. They're no longer protected them from the harmful radiation of the sun. The lifespan of both man and animals began to decrease immediately. There were now seasonal swings in the temperature, there were rainstorms, snowstorms, even an ice age followed. Another dramatic change was that animals would now fear man, as we learn in another chapter, and could be food for man. Instead of man and beast being strictly vegetarians, as was the case before the flood, suddenly both man and animals became meat eaters. Many dinosaurs became extinct due to competition with man and other species or the new harsh environment. Now here's another really big question. How can evolutionary scientists believe that dinosaurs emerged two hundred twenty million years ago, dominated the earth, then suddenly disappeared sixty five million years ago due to some cataclysmic event and never coexisted with man? And how can creation scientists believe so differently that man and dinosaurs appeared concurrently six thousand years ago, lived together, and then the dinosaurs disappeared, became extinct four thousand years ago after a cataclysmic event known as Noah's Flood. How can those two oppositional viewpoints coexist? If you've listened to my podcast, you know the answer. It's due to a totally different viewpoint. A two different worldviews is due to a difference in worldview. The two different groups have the same fossils, the same history, the same facts, the same evidence for dinosaurs, but come up with totally different conclusions. A paleontologist who looks at all of life through the lens of holy scripture will come to a different conclusion than a atheistic evolutionist paleontologist, who views life through the lens of secular history that rejects the notion of a creation god, a creator god, who not only created the heavens and the earth in six days, but also destroyed the planet with a cataclysmic flood. There are only two ways of thinking, starting with the revelation of God through Scripture as foundational to all thinking. We call that a biblical worldview. Versus starting with man's belief, what the Bible calls the elementary principles of this world, such as the evolution story as the foundation to all thinking, which results in a secular worldview. All of us are indoctrinated to a certain extent by the media, even children's cartoons and public education to accept the evolutionary slash secular worldview. Even Christians take the secular thinking to the Bible instead of using the Bible to inform their thinking. In Proverbs chapter nine and verse eleven, the Bible tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So which will you choose, dear listener? A secular perspective which has no witnesses or any kind of written record to explain the evidence of the present? Or will you choose a biblical perspective with a written record and an eyewitness? And who's that eyewitness? Well it's it's God Himself to all events of history to explain the very same evidence. So let me ask you a final question. Why is all this so important? Well, I want to give you the conclusion by Dr. Ken Ham in a essay that he wrote in the Answers Book Number one. It's a very interesting conclusion that I think you will find enlightening. If we accept the evolutionary teachings on dinosaurs, then we must accept that the Bible's account of history is false. If the Bible is wrong in this area, then it is not the Word of God, and we cannot and we can ignore everything else it says that we find inconvenient. In John chapter three and verse twelve, Jesus said, I have spoken to you of earthly things, and you do not believe. How then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? Very important question. And doctor Ham goes on to say If everything made itself through natural processes without God, then God does not own us and has no right to tell us how to live. In fact, God does not really exist in this way of thinking. So there's no absolute basis for morality. Without God anything goes. Concepts of right and wrong are just a matter of opinion. And without a basis for morality, there's no such thing as sin. And no sin means that there is no need to fear God's judgment, and there's no need for the Savior, Jesus Christ. The history in the Bible is vital for properly understanding why one needs to accept Jesus Christ. The teaching that dinosaurs lived and died millions of years before man directly attacks the foundations of the gospel in another way. The fossil record, of which dinosaurs form a part, documents death, disease, suffering, cruelty, and brutality. It is a very ugly record. Allowing for millions of years in the fossil layers means accepting death, bloodshed, disease, and suffering before Adam's sin. But the Bible makes it clear that death, bloodshed, disease, and suffering are a consequence of Adam's sin. As part of the curse, God told Adam in Genesis three verse nineteen that he would return to the dust from which he was made, showing that the sentence of death was not only spiritual, but physical as well. After Adam disobeyed God, the Lord clothed Adam and Eve with coats of skins. To do this he must have killed and shed the blood of at least one animal. The reason for this can be summed up by Hebrews nine and verse twenty two. And according to the law, almost all things are purified with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. God required the shedding of blood for the forgiveness of sins. What happened in the Garden of Eden was a picture of what was to come in Jesus Christ, who shed his blood on the cross as the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. If the shedding of blood occurred before sin, as would have happened if the garden was sitting on a fossil record of dead things millions of years old, then the foundation of the atonement would be destroyed. This big picture also fits with Romans eight, which says that the whole creation groans because of the effects of the fall of Adam. It was not groaning with death and suffering before Adam sinned. Jesus Christ suffered physical death and shed his blood because death was the penalty for sin. Revelation chapters twenty one and twenty two make it clear that there will be a new heaven and a new earth one day where there will be no more death and no more curse, just as it was before sin changed everything. Obviously, if there are going to be animals in the new earth, they will not die or eat each other, or eat the redeemed people. Thus the teaching of millions of years of death, disease, and suffering before Adam sinned is a direct attack on the foundation of the message of the cross. Now here's his conclusion. If we accept God's word beginning with Genesis as being true and authoritative, then we can explain dinosaurs and make sense of the evidence we observe in the world around us. In doing this we are helping people see that Genesis is absolutely trustworthy and logically defensible and is what it claims to be, the true account of the history of the universe and mankind. And what one believes concerning the book of Genesis will ultimately determine what one believes about the rest of the Bible. This in turn will affect how a person views himself or herself, fellow human beings, and what life is all about, including their need for salvation. Well, brothers and sisters, there's a lot of truth in that, and I pray that you will think about it very seriously. Because you see, you and I are confronted with that secular view of history every day, aren't we? And I challenge you to ponder very carefully the biblical view of history, the biblical worldview. And I challenge you to look at all of life through the lens of a biblical worldview. You're listening to devotions with Dr. Papa. If you like what you hear, I pray that you would follow, like, share, or download, share it with your friends. We'll be back again next week. Until then, remember that Jesus loves you and your doctor loves you. May the Lord bless you real good.

SPEAKER_02 21:28

Thank you for listening to this edition of Morton Medicine. For more information about the doctor. This podcast is produced by Bob Sloan Audio Productions.