Reading Church of God Facebook pages is never a dull moment. Conspiracy theories abound. There are flat earthers, dinosaur deniers, and all kinds of nuttiness.
The latest crackpot belief is that the dinosaurs were all killed by Noah's flood. Who knew!!!!
There was a posting the other day about the recent discovery of dinosaur eggs in China with embryos still inside. The eggs were covered by the bones of the oviraptor that had been guarding them, leading to speculation of instant death, i.e. the flood.
Jaw-Dropping Fossil Find Contains a Dinosaur Sitting on an Entire Clutch of Eggs
A COG member writes:
DINOSAUR EGG FOSSILS - FLOOD EVIDENCEThis recently discovered dinosaur fossil was found laying on a batch of over 2 dozen fossilized eggs with embryos still inside! It has been called extremely rare since scientists don't ever see dinosaur fossils with embryos still inside, with the parent on top. The oviraptor is believed to have been guarding the nest and died with it, protecting its young. There is very little sediment between the parent and the eggs indicating this is how they all died together. Notice that key word : sediment. This is no doubt an excellent flood fossil. Something dangerous was going down, and this dinosaur was doing its job, protecting its young. Clearly they had to be buried very, very quickly by sediment and water to be preserved this way. #Noahsflood
I thought the dinosaurs all fell off the edge of the flat earth.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Ken Ham, founder of the creation museum and the Ark Encounter, dinosaurs were on the ark and not destroyed during the flood.
ReplyDeleteI happen to believe that Noah's flood was a real event, as described in Scripture. However, to speculate this archeological find is tied to or direct evidence of the flood, is a stretch, to say the least. Is it possible? Yes, it's possible. But to posit anything beyond that is dangerous and reckless, IMHO.
ReplyDeleteGenuine believers do not need scientific facts or relics to believe. Is the Shroud of Turin the actual burial cloth of Jesus? Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. I don't need a scientist to verify why I believe what I believe. I am not sure what this person was attempting to prove. It sounds more like they need something beyond the Word of God to convince themself that God didn't make the whole thing up. Either you take Him by faith or not at all.
I have come to the conclusion that cults focus mainly on the prophet books of the Bible and the ones that least relate to our daily lives.. Since the fake ignorant pastors don't have a relationship with Jesus, don't read all 66 books giving them equal attention, and are not led by the Holy Spirit, they lead people down all these rabbit trails wasting everyone's time, brain, and twist scripture however they please to steal money and live unashamedly above the average church attendee.
ReplyDeleteIf dino was on the ark, where is he now?
ReplyDeleteI think the earth was created & then recreated. The dinosaurs were not on the earth as the same time as man because they needed a wet mist. Satan caused them to eat each other. They were frozen so Satan was the Prince of an ice ball for awhile until God thawed it out and then worked on Genesis 2 setting it up for man.
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ReplyDeleteI don't think the Shroud of Turin is the burial cloth of Jesus. Why? Because of John 20:6-7
The face cloth was not joined to the rest of the cloth, but the face imprint supposedly shows on the Shroud of Turin.
6 So Simon Peter also came, following him, and he entered the tomb; and he looked at the linen wrappings lying there, 7 and the face-cloth which had been on His head, not lying with the linen wrappings but folded up in a place by itself.
The Komodo Dragon is a dinosaur I think.
ReplyDeleteThe dinosaur era was destroyed by Satans rebellion. Perhaps the demons themselves did all the destroying since sadists despise all life, both creatures and vegetation. What's interesting is that there will be a near repetition on Christ's return. Billions will die, as will every creature in the ocean, as described in Revelation.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you Anon @ 12:16. I have noticed those same characteristics among the cults. Prophecy, which many a genuine Biblical scholar will attest, is highly symbolic and can be difficult to understand, but will ultimately make perfect sense if you do two things. Read the entire Bible, rightly dividing it and understand that Israel is Israel, no other nation is. The cults all use this to their advantage, to make it say whatever they want it to, in order to dupe and deceive members into believing they are extra special (but don't say that out loud, to outsiders!)
ReplyDeleteAs evidenced by the Acogs, Seventh Day Adventists and other heterodox cults, each has its' own private interpretation, each believe they are the "One true church", only they have the "key" to "unlock" Bible prophecy, they each believe they have a prophet in their midst and they alone have replaced Israel as God's chosen people. But, as you rightly stated, none of them have a true grasp on ALL 66 books, in their proper context using a consistent hermeneutic. They all relegate Jesus to something less than God Almighty, the Holy Spirit is either totally MIA or horribly blasphemed (like Dave Pack does, changing the divinity, eternality and co-equality of the Holy Spirit, instead referring to Him as "it"). They also rely on extra Biblical books/booklets and eisegete Scripture, rather than exegeting it to steer their theology. And perhaps, worst of all, they believe their own teachings are true Christianity as practiced by the Apostles. Heartbreaking and infuriating at the same time.
Ancient-Near Eastern hyperbole
ReplyDelete“... we are brought to the conclusion that Genesis 6-9 pertains to a local flood described rhetorically as a worldwide flood to make a theological point...
"We cannot derive the physical scope or range of the event from the literary-theological presentation chosen by the biblical author. If asked, Was the flood global? our answer would be, Yes it is global in is impact and significance, yet we have no reason to think that its physical scope and range was global. Since the Bible uses the rhetoric of hyperbole to describer the flood, it does not claim that the flood was universal in its physical scope and range; it rather portrays it in universalistic terms for rhetorical effect. If we turn to science, we find no evidence that suggests a global deluge. If science does not suggest a universal event, and the Bible (in our nuanced interpretation) does not claim a universal event, we have no reason to conclude that it was a universal event. Such a conclusion would diminish neither the authority of the text nor the significance of the event as unfolded in the interpretation of the author of Genesis...
"That the biblical authors are giving us a selective and interpretative accounting of the past to present their theological message is well confirmed by the following quote by the Gospel writer: "Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name" (Jn 20:30-31)" (Tremper Longman III & John H. Walton, The Lost World of the Flood, pp.93, 179, 22-23).
Rhetorical mathematics
1Ch 22:14 ... I have prepared for the house of the LORD an hundred thousand talents of gold, and a thousand thousand talents of silver; and of brass and iron without weight; for it is in abundance: timber also and stone have I prepared...
“David had been unstinting in his amassing of resources to give Solomon a head start in his personal assignment. His vision of the temple as a magnificent showpiece for God (1Ch 22:5) was no idle dream but an incentive to live up to. The colossal number of talents of gold and silver in verse 1Ch 22:14 takes the thoughtful reader aback. They are considerably larger than those of 1Ch 29:4 (and 1Ch 29:7), while Solomon's import of 420 talents of gold from Ophir in 1Ki 9:28 was obviously intended to be a breathtaking amount. These factors call into question the literal interpretation of the numbers. Such numbers as have been supplied hitherto in Chronicles all seem to have had a rational basis in relation to their literary source or context. Later in Chronicles, however, sometimes mammoth numbers are mentioned that set the mind reeling. These considerations suggest that the Chronicler at times resorted to his own branch of mathematics, rhetorical mathematics, which must be respected for its intention. Indeed, it is idiomatic in English to reuse precise mathematical language to convey hyperbole, as when we say "Thanks a million!" or "A thousand pardons!" Rhetoric is a valid use of language; the prosaically minded reader needs to be aware of linguistic dimensions beyond what he or she may personally be accustomed to. In this case the intent is to convey that no expense was spared in David's generous provision of raw materials. The huge numbers are meant to have the same rhetorical effect as the accompanying phrases "beyond measure" and "no limit" (1Ch 22:14, 1Ch 22:16), and the juxtaposition of these phrases is not insignificant. David's generosity was probably mentioned not simply for its own sake, but as a model for his own generation. David was generous - hint, hint! It behooved them in turn to be generous in financial support of the temple” (Leslie C. Allen, The Preacher's Commentary, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Vol. 10, on 1 Chr 22).
The dinosaurs were destroyed in a flood for sure, but it was the pre-Genesis flood. The whole earth was covered with water when God went about preparing it for mankind.
ReplyDeleteKen Ham, and others, have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. Their day will come.
Reading Church of God facebook pages with a false Facebook profile no doubt.
ReplyDeleteAre splinter members allowed to read any Zecharia Sitchin?
ReplyDeleteA couple years ago, the Painful Truth had some awesome artwork involving ACOG ministers' heads transplanted on to the bodies of dinosaurs. I particularly enjoyed the Packosaurus!
My own personal belief at present is that Noah’s flood was global and the dinosaurs died in it. One reason for the former is that God promised to Noah that He wouldn’t flood the earth in the same way He just did to destroy creatures and the earth again. But, since then there has been plenty of local floods killing life and destroying the earth. If Noah’s flood was local then there was no need for an ark as God could’ve told him to move elsewhere and His promise that He would never strike the earth with a flood again would be proven to be a lie. A second reason is that before Adam and Eve’s sin death didn’t exist. So dinosaurs dying pre-Adam is false. If death had existed in millennia pre-Adam with dinosaurs dying in such a world then Paul’s words in Romans are proven false too. So for these reasons at present I believe in a global flood and that the dinosaurs perished in that same flood.
ReplyDeleteIf a local tsunami was coming, I'd just head for higher ground. If the flood was local, I would do the same. If the goal was to kill all people, the flood would have to be global, wouldn't it?
ReplyDeleteWere there ever any actual dinosaurs? This fossil suggest something existed, but if dinosaurs existed, if anything like how scientists describe them, they must have existed prior to the flood before Adam, where we see the world covered in water in Genesis 1:2 onwards.
ReplyDeleteNoah's flood definitely occurred worldwide, but if any dinosaurs existed, they were long gone before that flood. Definitely no dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark.