Hi all,
We will complete this fun series thinking about dinosaurs and lots more. I ended last week talking about 2 judgments by flood, and how anything that was alive (if there had been an earlier creation) in the waters in the first flood could have survived to Adam’s time, then survived Noah’s flood to our time. That would explain why the Coelacanth fish is found in fossils but is still alive in our oceans today. It would explain ancient types of fish like the alligator gar, hagfish, sturgeon, star fish, and sharks, today live side by side with higher forms of fish with fins and scales.
There are also ancient forms of insects found in fossils like roaches, dragonflies, silverfish and grasshoppers. Scientists say the ancient forms were generally larger due to a higher oxygen content on the earth at the time….and that is interesting for many reasons.
The ancient world
Remember when Adam and Eve were created the earth was covered by clouds but sunlight was visible: Genesis 2: 5-6 says it had not rained in those days, but a mist went up from the earth and watered everything. The atmosphere had enough water that it would later rain 40 days and nights without stop. Adam & Eve were naked yet comfortable, meaning the world-wide temperature would have been around 76-80 F (25-27C).
Ancient land life was created perfectly in a perfect environment, far more perfect than today’s earth, for the earth back then even gave its fruit and vegetables in abundance without work on man’s part. Sin had not yet been unleashed on the planet. It was a perfect environment with the greenhouse effect warming the whole planet, perfect food supply and Genesis 1: 29-30 says man and animal were vegetarians with no fear of each other.
What goes around comes around again
Josephus, the Jewish historian who wrote a history of the Jews for Rome, said in the days of Adam and Eve the animals could talk. I personally believe that was his understanding of what we today call ‘words of knowledge’ and ‘words of wisdom’. I believe Adam and Eve moved by the Spirit to know what the animals were thinking and ‘saying’ in their thoughts, and would have governed by God’s wisdom about all the plants and animals under their care.
Hebrews 6:5 also refers to the gifts of the Spirit as ‘the powers of the age to come’. When we rule with the Lord we will do so by the Spirit, able to rightly administer God’s ways on the earth – remember Zechariah 14 and Matthew 25 both reveal it will be an enforced righteousness and not everyone will want that. Though Satan will be bound, free will remains intact, and many will not want righteousness in all transactions to be enforced.
Big people, big animals, big plants
How big would Adam and Eve have been given perfect nutrition, no sin (at least for awhile), and God’s life saturating everything from His brand new creation? An example would be pre-WW2 and post-WW2 Japan. The average height of a Japanese man in WW2 was 5′ 3 1/2″ tall (1.6m), but subsequent generations, exposed to a variety of foods and health care, have grown 1-2cm (.75inch) per decade since. I wonder if Adam and Eve might have been huge people.
In the plant, insect, and fish world is it any wonder fossils record plants, insects and many ancient fish far larger than their modern relatives? Megalodon being a good example of a giant shark species. Most fish, amphibians and reptiles are what’s called, ‘indeterminate growers’, meaning they never stop growing, limited only by food and environment.
And that brings me to reptiles who as I just stated, never stop growing. If man lived 900+ years back then, and today Nile crocodiles and Australian salt water crocodiles grow in 50 years to over 20 feet (6m), how big in a near perfect environment with perfect food supply would a 500 or 750 year old crocodile grow to be? If a Komodo dragon now grows to 10 feet (3m) in less than 30 years, how big would it grow in 300, 600 or 900 years? What about that little lizard you see running around your garden that grows 6″ (15cm) long in a few months; how big would he get in 500 years? If that little garden snake startles you now, how big would it be in 500 years of hanging around your garden? It’s a good thing man and animals were vegetarians and not afraid on one another back then!
Dinosaurs?
In Genesis 1: 21 the King James Version says God created great whales. The Hebrew translated ‘whales’ is ‘tannin’. That word is translated every time in the Old Testament as ‘serpent’ or ‘dragon’. verse 21 actually says God created ‘large dragons’ or ‘large serpents’ (reptiles).
For instance, in Exodus 7: 7-12 ‘tannin’ is used to describe the staff of Moses being thrown down and turned into a ‘serpent’. The text tells us the Egyptian sorcerers did the same with their staffs, but Moses’ ‘serpent’ swallowed up their serpents. Moses’ staff did not become a Humpback whale, neither did the sorcerer’s staffs become whales swallowed by Moses’ whale. Serpent or dragon is the correct translation of Genesis 1:21, not ‘whales’.
Genesis 1: 21 indicates God made ‘large dragons’ in the time of man. Where did they go? Only the smaller reptiles would have been taken on Noah’s ark, and others could have survived floating on debris during the rather brief duration of Noah’s flood. But today with our heat/cold cycles and limited food, not to mention the spread of sin burdening the earth, they don’t live long enough for us to find out! But it explains why an intact dinosaur carcass was found in India in 2017 and soft tissue in a T-rex bone was found in 2015.
When Noah’s flood came the water envelope that had been keeping the earth’s temperature universally warm, collapsed. The polar regions would have experienced an immediate large drop in temperature, which may explain why wooly mammoths have been found in the permafrost with food still in their stomachs, their bodies flash frozen by a cataclysmic event. For the first time ever, Noah saw a rainbow as the modern blue sky with full sun appeared, and it was God’s sign of covenant never to flood the earth again.
Our modern world with polar ice caps, hurricanes and tornados and such all came about when the atmospheric envelope collapsed. Together with sin, perhaps direct solar radiation has shortened the life spans of every living creature from what it was in those perfect and near-perfect days. What fun to consider, what fun to learn about. And yet a new age and new world await believers, our best days are yet ahead!
Blessings, new subject next week, until then,
John Fenn
