Televangelist: Humans and Dinosaurs Co-Existed
Televangelist Brad Shockley told viewers during a televised sermon on Sunday that dinosaurs and humans co-existed 6,000 years ago and claims that God created dinosaurs on the sixth day of creation.
Shockley, an evangelist who preaches at two Church of Christ congregations in Southwest Missouri and speaks at various gospel revivals across the United States, spoke on an episode of Let the Bible Speak, paid programming that airs on over 30 television stations across the U.S., as a fill-in for the show's regular host Brett Hickey.
Shockley used the airtime to decry the theory of evolution that is being taught to children in schools, colleges and on their television sets. He asserts that dinosaurs are being used by evolutionists to indoctrinate children with an evolutionary theory that is "dangerous" for Christianity.
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Although most scientists accept that dinosaurs lived on the Earth hundreds of millions of years ago, Shockley asserts that when you take a closer look at some of the language used to describe certain creatures mentioned in the Bible, it suggests that dinosaurs and humans lived together 6,000 years ago.
"Science generally uses dinosaurs to promote evolution but the reality is, from a Christian perspective as we understand dinosaurs properly in the role that they play in the Bible, they can be used to champion creationism," Shockley told The Christian Post in a Tuesday interview.
Although the word "dinosaur" is not used in the Bible, Shockley explained that is because "dinosaur" didn't become a word until the 1840s, after many of the English Bible translations — such as Shockley's preferred King James Version — were already completed.
Shockley believes there are two specific examples in the Bible where it can be inferred that the language is referring to a dinosaur or dinosaur-like creature.
In Job chapter 40, a creature called Behemoth is described.
"When the translators came to Job Chapter 40 and they reached Behemoth and they began to read in the original Hebrew language about this creature, they understood that he was extremely large and that they did not have an understanding for a creature or an animal like this," Shockley said.
"For example, verse 17 tells us, 'He lifts his tail like a cedar.' Verse 18 tells us 'his bones are like tubes of bronze of bars of iron.' Verse 19, 'he is chief in the ways of God.' That word chief in the Hebrew means first or foremost, he is really talking about the size and strength of the animal," Shockley added. "What we have is a picture of an animal so large that only the creator can control it."
Shockley stated that the description of Behemoth matches the description of the Sauropod dinosaur.
"From the original Hebrew language, this is the largest land animal that God ever created," Shockley told CP. "That is the largest land animal we know to be in existence so far today, which seems to fit the description that is found in Job Chapter 40. They didn't know what to call it so they called it Behemoth."
Shockley also talked about the creature named Leviathan that was mentioned in Job Chapter 41. Although Shockley stressed that Leviathan was technically a marine animal that would not fit the description of a dinosaur, Leviathan was also described by the Bible to be a terrifying dinosaur-like creature.
Shockley also contends that dinosaurs were explained in Genesis when they were referred to as "beasts of the Earth." He explained that in Genesis Chapter 1, it states that God created the "beasts of the Earth" and humanity on the sixth day of creation.
"We often have a difficult time convincing others this is the proper explanation," the pastor acknowledged during the sermon. "The creationist accepts the teaching of Genesis and teaches that dinosaurs were created on day 5 [and] day 6."
Although Shockley insists that evolutionists are using dinosaurs to "indoctrinate" kids with an evolutionary theory that is "dangerous for Christianity," other devout Christians hold a different view.
For instance, Christian astronomer and Pastor Hugh Ross, stressed in his book A Matter of Days that science can be reconciled with biblical faith.
Ross told The Christian Post earlier this year that it is plausible to believe the Earth is millions of years old and still believe that everything in the Bible is true, even though Genesis states that God created the Earth and everything on it in a matter of days. He stressed that the days mentioned in Genesis could be referring to an unspecified amount of time, rather than the typical 24-hour day.
"When I first studied the Bible in depth, I observed that Genesis 1 placed God's creation of the first male and female humans on the same day, the sixth day, and yet Genesis 2 describes a considerable passage of time between creation of Adam and creation of Eve," Ross said. "Adam tended the garden, named various animal species, recognized his lack of a partner, and then responded to the partner God made for him with the exclamation recorded in Hebrew as happa'am, an expression that means 'at long last.'"
"I describe more than a dozen additional biblical reasons for an old Earth perspective in my book," Ross added. "Most readers would agree that it's not enough to take the Bible literally. We must interpret it both literally (in context) and consistently."
