Job suffered, and he was desperate to know why. His friends gave him answers; but “the answers” never answered anything. In the end it was only the grace of God, and God’s presence, that brought healing.
Requested by SlimJim–Remind Me You’re Here, by Jason Grey.
Having used up our hymn requests, I deciced to post the first hymn I found on Youtube; and this is what came up–a good old 18th-century hymn, I Know That My Redeemer Liveth, sung by a Mennonite choir.
This was what Job said when he was tried…
Job’s bold profession of faith inspired this hymn, I Know That My Redeemer Liveth (vintage 1893). Sung here by a Mennonite choir. Background sets by God the Father–the gorgeous work of His hands.
Job knew this, well over a thousand years before Our Lord Jesus Christ was born: I Know That My Redeemer Liveth, sung by “a Mennonite choir.” Background set design by God the Father: His handiwork on earth displays His glory and His love.
One of the readers here, Laura, mentioned this hymn a while back, before I’d learned how to post videos and pictures. I post it now because it goes to the heart of our faith.
The music is by Handel, part of The Messiah. The words were uttered by Job, when he had lost everything and was on the brink of death himself: “I know that my redeemer liveth… Yet in my flesh shall I see Him.”
Yes! Oh, yes!
It came up in the conversation: “We sent our son to a Christian camp, and they taught him there were no dinosaurs–that unbelievers just made them up. He was confused about it for years.”
I’m always surprised when I hear anyone deny that there was ever any such thing as a dinosaur. True, dinosaurs aren’t mentioned in the Holy Scriptures. Neither are ancient China, the polar regions of the earth, or volcanoes, and Spain is the westernmost country mentioned in the Bible (did you know that?). Furthermore, although dinosaur fossils have been found all over the world, the Middle East–the region where most of the action in the Bible takes place– is singularly impoverished in that respect.
It’s also true that a lot of the things we used to “know” about dinosaurs have turned out to be wrong. When all you’ve got to go on is bones and tracks, it leaves a lot of room for error. Compared to what I was brought up on, some of these feathered monstrosities that are today’s representations of dinosaurs look altogether screwy.
And then we’ve got “behemoth,” in Job 40:15-24–a big, fearsome, awe-inspiring animal described as eating grass and having a tail like a cedar, as in a cedar tree. Whatever it was, behemoth was a herbivore–and can you think of any herbivorous land animal today whose tail would remind you of a cedar tree?
What do you suppose God was talking about, when He spoke to Job and used behemoth as an example to teach Job about His divine sovereignty?
Whether behemoth was a dinosaur or not, one thing we do know is that its like is on the earth no more.
Believing that dinosaurs existed should not threaten anyone’s Christian faith. We don’t want to put ourselves into the position of claiming that the bones–say, a Tyrannosaurus skull, or a brontosaur skeleton–were manufactured by the thousands and thousands and seeded all over the earth by some powerful and fiendishly clever conspiracy formed by persons who otherwise can hardly find their way out of a rest room. [Note: It turns out there really is a conspiracy theory that says the government, or “corporations,” or even God just made up dinosaurs as means of either spreading disbelief or, in God’s case, testing our faith.]
Yes, they are not discussed in the Bible. So what? Does anyone know all there is to know about God and His ways? Like, isn’t that what they were trying to teach poor Job?
Christians are at liberty to enjoy dinosaurs as the work of God’s hands, and to be richly amused by the endless revisions necessary to the scientific study of dinosaurs–and even, if so moved, to jump into that study themselves and lend a hand.