Views on the Bible Change because of CITY OF A THOUSAND GODS

            One of my goals in writing City of a Thousand Gods was to encourage people to begin viewing the Bible as a book about real people. I hoped they would decide they might enjoy reading. So I was thrilled when a woman in Michigan told me the novel helped her see the Bible as more than the ho-hum collection of Sunday School stories that bored her for years. Before she even finished reading, she delved into the first verse in Genesis, has already made her way to Leviticus and plans to read all the way through.

And she’s loving every word.

What has my Michigan friend discovered now that she’s seeing the Bible through fresh eyes? A book packed with exciting stories of flesh and blood real people she can identify with.

But I have even cooler news for her. The Bible is one single continuously-unfolding narrative with fully-developed sub-plots and beautiful imagery. Written over a period of 1,600 years on three different continents by forty different authors, the story begins with God’s creation of the world and weaves through thousands of years to the end of time -- yet never contradicts itself. Not once.

Even better, the story ends with a twist. We find out that the Jesus, the protagonist who defeats the villain by giving his own life to save all of Mankind, was present in the very first verse of the book. Jesus was the Word who spoke Creation into existence!

The Bible gives me the I'm-thrilled shivers. 

And every bit is true!

Were there Dinosaurs on the Ark?

Okay.  Brace yourself.

Yes. I believe there were dinosaurs on the ark. And I’m not alone. Back in the

1700’s Matthew Henry said, “Notice the beasts going in each after his kind . . . to intimate just as many as were created at first were saved now, and no more” (see Gen. 1:21-25).  

  Google Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis Series: Dinosaurs in the Bible on the Internet. It’s free and convincing. He says there were only about fifty general types of dinosaurs that would have been on the ark. The average size: sheep-sized. Some were no bigger than chickens so there was plenty of room for all on the ark.

  However, he believes there are numerous references to large dinosaurs in God’s Word that indicate they lived after the Flood. The Bible refers to them as “dragons” or “leviathan” since the word “dinosaur” wasn’t coined until the 1800’s. If the concept of huge dinosaurs on the ark startles you, check out the references to them for yourself by looking up these scriptures:

• Job 41:1
• Psalm 74:14
• Psalm 104:26

If you still can’t picture them on the ark, think of them walking onto the ark as

youngsters.

So where are they now? What killed off the dinosaurs? Ham believes they died off just as numerous creatures of the past have disappeared and like the animals mysteriously facing extinction today may do.

The fossils we find were formed during the Flood.

How was life different before the Flood?

Stunning Details from the Bible

•  It had never rained; a mist came out of the ground to water the plants.
• Humans lived nearly 1,000 years. (The Bible doesn’t explain why, it may be that the ocean of water in the heavens somehow protected people.) After the Flood, rain and life expectancy declined within a few generations (see Gen. 11:10-25).We know the length of those pre-Floodyears was the same as our years because genealogies and time lines can be traced through the Old Testament. When Jacob (Israel) and his sons entered Egypt, he told the Pharaoh that he had lived for 130 years, but his fathers had lived much longer (see Gen 47:9) . If you do the math in Gen.11 you'll find that Shem was still alive at that time.
• Many years before the Flood, people already forged weapons and musical instruments from brass and iron (see Gen. 4:21,22).
• Only eight righteous persons were rescued on the ark. Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives. 
• Noah was 600 year old when his family entered the ark.
• His sons were all in their nineties yet still youthful. We know that because none fathered children until after the Flood. Shem’s first child was born when he was one hundred years old, two years after the Flood. (Since it seems only likely that the only surviving eight people on earth would have wanted to have as many children as quickly as possible to repopulate the earth, Shem and his wife likely suffered infertility as did others later in his direct line, i.e. Abraham and Sarah.)
• The Nephilim (singular Nephal), probably fallen angels, were on the earth in those days. They were supernatural giants who mated with human women and produced what the Bible refers to as “heroes of old”(see Gen 6:1-4) (There are those who hypothesize that stories of Roman and Greek gods and goddesses were based on these fallen creatures.)