Lizards, dragons, and dinosaurs.

Without fail, every year in my Christian Life Studies at school, some student will ask me about dinosaurs. My answer is simple. I explain that the word dinosaur is a modern word, invented in 1841 by Richard Owen who coined the word from two Greek words, deinos (terrible, powerful, and wondrous) and sauros (Lizard). Before 1841 people called them dragons, which is the term you find in the Bible. Like your nose and your ears, lizards, snakes, amphibians, and coral all continue to grow until they die. If we place that fact alongside what the Bible describes before Noah’s flood, of people living extraordinary life spans of up to 1000years, then we would have to assume the rest of God’s creation were doing the same. Thus, you give a lizard a life span of 500- 900 years then how big will it get? There is no doubt the times before the flood were radically different to our own for many reasons. Noah did not have to take dinosaurs into the ark, just little lizards.

After a class discussion on this one day, a year 8 boy came up to me and said, “Thank you Mr. Chadwick, I can believe in dinosaurs again.” If you want more information, I suggest Creation Ministries International which you can google.

Consider for a moment the Bearded Dragon. It is a 60cm lizard with a large head, whiplike tail, and a body covered with spines. It certainly deserves the name “dragon.” It lives in the sparse forests, deserts, and even along the shore of Australia.

The body of the bearded dragon is bulkier than that of other lizards, but it can stand greater temperature extremes than other lizards. Actually, the daily pattern of the bearded dragon is determined by temperature changes from sunrise to sunset.

During the cool morning hours, the reptile turns its back to the sun and flattens its body to receive as much of the sun’s warmth as possible. As the day grows warmer, it begins to hunt. As the temperature increases, the animal may run along on its hind legs, exposing more of its body to cooling air. Eventually, however, it must find shade, where it will spend the hottest hours of the day. When the air begins to cool, the lizard emerges, raises its tail to keep it off the ground, which is still hot, and moves around on the toes of its forelegs and the heels of its hind legs. It faces the sun to reduce the heat striking its body.

Despite its large size and ferocious appearance, the bearded dragon prefers to hide from danger rather than fight. Even when cornered, it swells its neck pouch, opens its mouth to show the yellow inside, and hisses in a way that usually scares off predators and rivals. Its bite is used instead, on the insects, smaller lizards, and snakes that make up its diet.

How different in character is this dragon from the one described in Revelation 12:7-8 or Ephesians 6:10-11.  He is the enemy of the Godhead, the schemer against humanity and everything that is the truth. He is a bold, deadly enemy who uses every trick of the trade to bring about our eternal loss. How good it is that Jesus has defeated him, and so made it possible for us to defeat him also.

In his letters, Paul frequently employs military language and imagery, inviting believers to mimic exemplary, soldierly behavior.  Ephesians 6:10-20 represents his longest and most concentrated us of military language that exhibits one of his major ways of understanding the gospel story. Having conquered the “rulers and authorities” at the cross (Col. 2:15), the exalted Christ now works out the results of that victory from His position as exalted Lord over the powers (Phil. 2:9-11). Recruiting His followers as combatants in the cosmic war, Christ leads the armies of light toward a grand day of victory (1 Cor. 15:54-58, 2 Thess. 2:8, Rom. 16:20). Gathering up Paul’s uses of military symbolism, we can see that he understands the conflict between good and evil to be a long-running cosmic war: battles ebb and flow between two armies which face each other down through the ages until one wins the final confrontation.

Paul’s frequent theme of a cosmic war is part of the fabric of Ephesians. In his call to arms (Eph. 6:10-20), Paul draws together elements of the cosmic conflict, that he has already used: God’s empowering of believers with immense “power” (Eph. 1:18-20; Eph. 3:16, 20); Christ’s victory and exaltation over the powers (Eph. 1:20-23); believers as a resurrected army of the once-dead but now empowered by their identity with the exalted Christ and able to fight against their former, dark master (Eph. 2:1-10); the church’s role in revealing to the powers their coming doom (Eph. 3:10); the use of Psalm 68:18 to portray Christ as the conquering, divine Warrior (Eph. 4:7-11); and the call for believers to “put on” gospel clothing ( Eph. 4:20-24). When called to put on God’s “full armor,” we are well prepared to understand the central role of the cosmic conflict, but, also, we are to remain firm in the assurance that we have of participating in Christ’s ultimate victory. Understanding the final victory is fundamental to our hope and Christian experience. If the battle is raging around you – take heart, you are on the winning side!