Dear Triscia,

Answer: I do believe, personally, that dinosaurs are real. However, I don’t believe they lived millions or billions of years ago. I believe that there were dinosaurs that lived before the flood, and that they were destroyed in the flood, but there are other Christians who have different ideas. There also may have been some that lived after the flood. The Bible tells of certain creatures like the “Behemoth” in the book of Job. Most of the Old Testament was written in the Hebrew language (including Job), and the Hebrew word translated “behemoth” is the word “behemah,” which simply means “beast”. In the way the word is used in Job 40-41, it refers to a very big beast. That’s all we know from the Bible, and many people have come up with different ideas about this giant beast. Some have thought it was a hippopotamus, others an elephant, and still others believe it refers to some extinct beast, likely of the dinosaur variety.

I’m also not sure (and neither is anyone else) what they looked like, because no one has seen them. Scientists have tried to reconstruct bones and try to imagine what they looked like, and there have been movies that try to show what they looked like, but nobody knows for sure. And we would assume that if they existed before the flood, Adam and Eve were there. One thing I do know for sure – when we get to heaven, we will learn the truth about the dinosaurs (and we may even see some!).

Thanks for writing, and remember, there's never been a better time to share Jesus!

Your friend, Pastor Howard

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*Note: All Scripture references are from the English Standard Version unless otherwise indicated. _