A Real-life Journey through the Frozen Past: With Mike Liston and John Whitmore

I love a good adventure story, particularly when it’s true. If it comes from a Christian perspective, well all the better.

Before picking up this book from a bag of library discards, I’d never heard of Buddy Davis (or any of the others on the cover) though was somewhat familiar with the Institute of Creation Research and with Cedarville College. I’m more familiar with Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum, and I’m sure that if I did any moderate digging, I’d find some overlap.

I came to this book for the adventure, though, not so much the Creationism, which is good, because it’s heavy on the former and pretty sparse on the latter. This book is essentially a prosaic rehashing of Davis’ own journal entries from their trip into northern Alaska in search of a dinosaur bone bed accessible only by raft up 100 or so miles of the fairly dangerous and sporadic Colville River. This adventure, which covers just under 2 weeks of summertime in Alaska, sees the men fighting mosquitoes, quicksand, intense wind, 24-hour daylight, and hypothermia—to name just a few of their scrapes!

While David and his pals do search for bones in the gravel banks and bluffs as they go, and while they’re able to acquire a few interesting specimens of scientific value, the focus of the journal seems to be more on the difficulties of getting to their destination and back than on the paleontology (or whatever their field is) itself. So if some student of Creationism is hoping to learn more from this book about the age of the earth or the process of digging up dinosaur bones, they might be a bit disappointed. If they’d like to see the dedication of Christian scientists to uncovering the truths of earth’s past for themselves, then maybe this will be a good fit.

I really enjoyed the drawings, maps, and photographs that go along with these entries. They enhanced the tale a great deal, especially when we readers were able to get a glimpse of dinosaurs themselves from which the men’s discoveries came.

Again, this book does literally nothing to dispel the myths of Evolution or promote Creationism factually, but it at least has the Christian worldview is peppered with verses, prayers, and praise to God for his safekeeping. It’s a unique book, and for what it was, I enjoyed it.

©2023 E.T.