Fire Breathing Dragons and Fiery Flying Serpents

All of man's wisdom is so minute when compared to the glorious wisdom of the God who created all things by Christ Jesus. To attempt to approach God through scholarship is a true exercise in futility. It cannot be done. Jesus Christ said that unless we become as little children, we cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.

I Corinthians 1:18-25:

18 For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.

19 For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.

20 Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

21 For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

22 For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:

23 But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness;

24 But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

The salvation miracle takes place when, in total surrender, one falls upon his face before God, repenting of his sins and surrendering unto the Lord Jesus Christ as the King and champion of all. Click onto "Further With Jesus" on this site for information. Remember: childlike faith. NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID: He created great dragons and fiery-flying serpents, that some of these fearsome creatures actually breathed fire and that these awesome creatures were contemporary to man. See "Dinosaurs Updated" on this website.

GOD SAID, Job 41:19-21:

19 Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out.

20 Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron.

21 His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth.

GOD SAID, Numbers 21:6:

And the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.

GOD SAID, Jeremiah 51:34:

Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon hath devoured me, he hath crushed me, he hath made me an empty vessel, he hath swallowed me up like a dragon, he hath filled his belly with my delicates, he hath cast me out.

GOD SAID, Isaiah 14:29:

Rejoice not thou, whole Palestina, because the rod of him that smote thee is broken: for out of the serpent's root shall come forth a cockatrice, and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent.

GOD SAID, Isaiah 30:6:

The burden of the beasts of the south: into the land of trouble and anguish, from whence come the young and old lion, the viper and fiery flying serpent, they will carry their riches upon the shoulders of young asses, and their treasures upon the bunches of camels, to a people that shall not profit them.

Some of the references of creatures in the scriptures have a spiritual connotation yet they refer to creatures that were well known to their readers.

MAN SAID: This concept of great dragons and fiery flying serpents—breathing fire—is just one of many examples of the fairy-tale nature of the Bible—simply old men writing old, fairy-tale fiction.

Now THE RECORD. What the Bible refers to as dragons would be commonly known in today's vernacular as dinosaurs, which by definition simply means "terrible lizard." Ancient civilizations around the world left testimonies of these great creatures, not as fairy tales, but more in the nature of historic accounts. Some reports would probably compare to today's daily police blotter.

In a research book titled After The Flood, author William Cooper cites some very interesting information. This first excerpt deals with flying reptiles, which science claims were not contemporary to man. It reads:

The last monster to be destroyed by Beowulf (and from which encounter Beowulf also died in the year AD 583) was a flying reptile which lived on a promontory overlooking the sea at Hronesness on the southern coast of Sweden. Now, the Saxons (and presumably the Danes) knew flying reptiles in general as lyftfloga (air-fliers), but this particular species of flying reptile, the specimen from Hronesness, was known to them as widfloga, literally a wide (or far-ranging) flyer, and the description that they have left us fits that of a giant Pteranodon. Interestingly, the Saxons also described this creature as ligdraca, or fire-dragon, and he is described as fifty feet in length (or perhaps wingspan?) and about 300 years of age. (Great age is a common feature even among today's non-giant reptiles.) Moreover, and of particular interest to us, the name widfloga would have distinguished this particular species of flying reptile from another similar species which was capable of making only short flights. Such a creature is portrayed in a shield-boss from the Sutton Hoo burial which shows a flying dragon with its wings folded along its sides. Its long tooth-filled jaws are readily seen, and the shield-boss can be seen to this day in its showcase at the British Museum. Modern paleontologists, working from fossilized remains, have named such a creature Pterodactyl.

In a 1793 statistical account of Scotland, a sober government report read:

In the end of November and beginning of December last, many of the country people observed...dragons...appearing in the north and flying rapidly towards the east; from which they concluded, and their conjectures were right, that...boisterous weather would follow.

Flying reptiles have been reported as recently as the early 1900s. [End of quote]

Again from William Cooper's book:

Likewise, the Voluspa tells us of a certain monster which the early Vikings called a Nithhoggr, its name ('corpse-tearer') revealing the fact that it lived off carrion. Saxo Grammaticus, in his Gesta Danorum, tells us of the Danish king Frotho's fight with a giant reptile, and it is in the advice given by a local to the king, and recorded by Saxo, that the monster is described in great detail. It was, he says, a serpent:

...wreathed in coils, doubled in many a fold, and with a tail drawn out in winding whorls, shaking his manifold spirals and shedding venom...his slaver [saliva] burns up what it bespatters...yet [he tells the king in words that were doubtless meant to encourage rather than dismay]...remember to keep the dauntless temper of thy mind; nor let the point of the jagged tooth trouble thee, nor the starkness of the beast, nor the venom...there is a place under his lowest belly whither thou mayst plunge the blade... [End of quote]

Note that this giant reptile spits saliva that burns up what it hits.

Author John Whitcomb in his book, The World That Perished, states:

Evolutionary scientists believe that dinosaurs became extinct many millions of years before men appeared on the earth. But the Bible indicates that men and dinosaurs have lived contemporaneously.

And then again, Whitcomb, referring to articles in National Geographic writes:

Scientific discovery confirms biblical revelation at this point. If we understand "dinosaur" in its original meaning of "terrifying lizard" then dinosaurs are not yet extinct. About 1,000 huge "dragon lizards" still survive on the small Indonesian island of Komodo.

Concerning the alligator, he writes:

Although they are now 99 percent extinct and seldom exceed twelve feet in length, the American alligator attained lengths of nearly twenty feet as recently as the turn of the [20th] century.

Only about 500 years ago, the aepyornis, a dinosaur bird nearly ten feet tall and weighing half a ton, still lived on the island of Madagascar. The time has come for a totally new perspective on dinosaurs in relation to Earth history and mankind.

In relatively recent history, scores of sightings throughout England alone testify of dinosaur activity in places such as Northumberland, North Yorkshire, Wales, Scotland, West Sussex, Durham, Suffolk, Dragonhoard, and many more locations.

To the surprise of many, indigenous people of some of the world's tropical rain forests still testify of dinosaur-like creatures and researchers have been looking into it.

If fire-breathing creatures seem far-fetched, consider the amazing bombardier beetle, which is very much alive today. The following is an excerpt from the book Amazing Creation authored by Dr. Duane Gish:

The bombardier beetle is found throughout the temperate zone of the world. He is approximately one-half inch long, and has a marvelously complex and highly effective defense mechanism. When an enemy or predator gets in just the right position, this little beetle shoots very hot, irritating gases out of twin combustion tubes in his tail.

When scientists first discovered the bombardier beetle (scientific name is Brachinus), they were curious to find out how he accomplished this amazing feat. A number of scientists, including Dr. Herman Schildknecht, worked on an understanding of the processes involved. It was necessary to perform microsurgery on the beetles, in order to investigate the type of apparatus employed, and chemicals were extracted from the apparatus to discover what kind of chemistry the bombardier beetles used.

It was discovered that the bombardier beetle has a double set of apparatus. He has twin chambers in which he stores two chemicals: hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide dissolved in water. If a chemist mixes these two chemicals, the hydrogen peroxide oxidizes the hydroquinone and the mixture looks like brown soup. The bombardier beetle adds a mysterious inhibitor which prevents the hydrogen peroxide from oxidizing the hydroquinone. In the beetle, this mixture of chemicals is combined with no reaction at all. The solution remains crystal clear.

When the bombardier beetle is threatened and needs to employ his miniature cannon, he squirts the solution of chemicals from the two storage chambers into the two combustion tubes. In the combustion tubes, the beetle provides two enzymes: catalase and peroxidase (a catalyst which makes a chemical reaction happen very rapidly, without any change in the catalyst.). Thus, a catalyst may be used over and over again; sometimes a billion times or more a minute. In all living creatures, from bacteria to humans, these catalysts are composed of proteins, and are called enzymes.

Catalase is an enzyme that causes the extremely rapid conversion of hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen. The peroxidase enzyme then causes the oxygen to very rapidly oxidize the hydroquinone into another chemical, called quinone, which is a noxious, or irritating chemical. All of this happens extremely fast in the bombardier beetle's combustion tubes, heating the liquid and gases up to 212 degrees Fahrenheit, and generating a lot of pressure. When the pressure gets high enough, the bombardier beetle opens the valves on the end of his combustion tubes, and the hot gases shoot out with great force. A "pop" can actually be heard as the gases shoot out! The bombardier beetle can repeat the explosion 15 or 20 times in just a few minutes. He can swivel his combustion tubes around 360 degrees, and he never misses!

Dr. Henry Morris, founder of the world renowned Institute For Creation Research weighs in with this statement from his book The Remarkable Record of Job:

Dragons of various kinds were capable of breathing out fire—at least according to traditions from all parts of the world. Certain insects can, in effect, give out light or fire (e.g., the bombardier beetle and the firefly), as can various luminescent fish. Perhaps more to the point, dinosaur fossils have been excavated that show a strange protuberance, with internal cavity, on top of the head. It is conceivable that this could have served as a sort of mixing chamber for combustible gases that would ignite when exhaled into the outside oxygen.

In any case, it seems unlikely that the ubiquitous tales of fire-breathing dragons in ancient times, coming as they do from all parts of the world, could have come into existence without a strong factual basis. Furthermore, the Bible often mentions dragons just as it mentions unicorns; always in such a way as to show that the writers believed they were real animals.

GOD SAID: He created great dragons and fiery-flying serpents, that some of these fearsome creatures actually breathed fire, and that these awesome creatures were contemporary to man.

MAN SAID: This concept of great dragons and fiery-flying serpents—breathing fire—is just one of many examples of the fairy-tale nature of the Bible—simply old men writing old, fairy-tale fiction.

Now you have THE RECORD.




References:

Authorized King James Version

Cooper, B., After The Flood, New Wine Press, pp141-142,152

Flying Dragons at Aberdeen, A Statistical Account Of Scotland, 1793, vol. VI, p467

Morris, H.M., The Remarkable Record of Job, Baker Publishing, p118

National Geographic, January 1967, p137

National Geographic, October, 1967, p493

National Geographic, December 1968, pp872-880

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