An Ancient Picture of a Dinosaur

Suppose your teacher asked you to take out a pencil and paper and draw a Kabolib. What would you draw? You probably wouldn't draw anything because you don't know what a Kabolib is and you certainly don't know what one looks like. The truth is, there is no Kabolib; it is a made-up word that has no meaning. But we can learn from this word that in order to draw something a person must see it or have it described.

In the country of Cambodia, an ancient emperor named Jayavarman VIIbuilt a temple to honor his mother. He finished building the temple in A.D. 1186. Beautiful stone statues and carvings decorate the walls and columns of the temple. In the middle of all these beautiful carvings, there is a row of animals carved on a pillar. Most of the animals are not unusual—a monkey, a deer, some parrots. But one of the animals is very interesting because it looks like a stegosaurus!

Why is a carving of a stegosaurus so interesting? Evolutionary scientists say that dinosaurs died out about 60 million years ago. They say that humans could not have seen real, live dinosaurs. But the carving on the Cambodian temple proves that idea is false. How would the person carving the temple almost a thousand years ago have known what a stegosaurus looked like unless he had seen one, or someone had described it to him?

Today we know what dinosaurs looked like because people spend millions of dollars digging up their bones. But this digging did not start until about 1822, more than 600 years after the temple was built. The very best explanation is that whoever carved the temple had seen a stegosaurus. That idea might sound strange to a person who believes in evolution, but not to someone who has read the Bible. The Bible says that God made everything in six days. He made humans on day six, along with all land-living animals. Since dinosaurs were land-living animals, they were made on day six of Creation, along with humans. The fact that humans saw dinosaurs fits perfectly with what the Bible says.

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