Welcome to Gaia! ::

I've been bothered by this queston all my life, my friends say I hope so, but I've still wondered if they. I mean pets I feel are like family and for them to die and not go anywhere....well that sucks it's sad, I was hoping they go to heaven but IDK... confused

I believe they do

I don't consider heaven to be as clear cut as we think it is.

I don't think we will retain our physical appearance, I don't think it would be like Earth at all.

I may be wrong, but I always considered heaven just to be an infiniteness. Where all souls are joined into God's infinite equality. I don't consider to really be an afterlife, I don't think there is life after life. I think it's hugely more of a paradigm shift than we make it out to be. I do believe it's more like the big sleep, with both relief from this tiring world and dreams.

I don't really know. The concept of hell confuses me, if God is all forgiving and all powerful then why do people go to hell for eterntiy, since it is obviously within God's power that they not.

I read somewhere that it's possible 'eternity' was a mistranslation, and hell is not really forever. It makes more sense to me, but I'm not sure what I think of hell.

Hell will always be a doubtful subject to me, but what hell exactly is is not an integral part of my faith.

I don't think it's literally fire and brimstone, I think fire is a metaphor for purging. It runs through many cultures that something that goes through fire and does not burn up comes out clean. Fire would serve to purge sins away. If heaven is like a vast body of water, then souls are tiny drops. We are separate and then we become one.

I heard somewhere that life is like a waterfall. It is one river, then when it hits the waterfall it becomes millions of tiny drops falling through the air. The drops are separate, but then they join into one once more.

A person who was not cleansed in life by God would be a dirty drop of water. When you drop a drop of red food coloring into a cup of water, all the water turns just barely pinker than it was before. One drop taints the whole cup.

I can see hell like this, a place to be purged of sin. When you clean a wound, it can burn like hell but you're ultimately better off for it. That's why the mistranslation makes sense to me, to be purged would not be forever. It might be a long time but it would not be forever.

It could be that the sins of your soul do burn in hell forever, they become separate from your pure soul and they do remain in hell for eternity because sins themselves all what must be purged from you, they cannot be purged themselves.

Sorry about rambling on and on, that's just what I think.

animals dont. cuz God didnt breathe his spirit into animals.

Alright, I have to quote Shaviv in this case. It was in a discussion about if animals have souls.



I though was a really good way to put it. Shaviv is a very smart person.

Well, there is the first time it comes up in Isaiah 65:17 "Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind." Then, Revelations 21:1 "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea."

So, it would make sense that animals live on the new earth. However, I doubt that the dead animals would be brought back from the dead just to live on the new earth. Simply put, there wouldn't be enough room for them all. And where would you make the cut off? Would you allow only people's pets? Would you allow only mamals? Would you allow every last animal that has ever lived? Sure, some people like to think that their childhood pet is waiting for them on the other side, but think about it. What is heaven?

Heaven is eternal nearness to God. Heaven is eternally praising God and all his wonder. Where in that do animals fit in? Are they capable of praising God? They do not have the breath of God in them, as Koreanusher so simply put. They do not have eternal souls. Whenever you think they are exibiting emotion, they are mostly exibiting instinct.

You might think that idea of Heaven sounds "dull" but that's what we were made for. We were made for worship, for praising God, to love Him and to be loved by Him. Heaven is doing just that for the rest of eternity, whereas Hell is simply eternal separation from God. Which might sound great to you, but if you think about it, it's not. For the rest of eternity we would be kept from doing the thing we were made for. How could that possibly make a person happy? It's like saying a writer can no longer write, or a singer can no longer sing (this analogy only works if you think of authors whose entire existence seems to revolve around writing, and singers whose existence revolves around singing). That is Hell. Being kept from doing the thing you were originally created for in the first place.

Now, back on the original topic. I don't believe animals go to Heaven, because I don't believe animals have souls. Yes, it would be great if animals went to Heaven, because my only pet, my cat that I'd had for 16 years, seemed to have a personality, and it saddens me to think that when we put her down, that was it for her. And the same for the cat I own now. I love her as if she were my baby (because she kinda is sweatdrop ), but I don't think that, Biblically speaking, she has a soul. Humans were created in God's image, not animals. Does that mean we have God's physical image or His spiritual image? I think it's more the latter than the former, in which case, animals don't have souls, because they were not created for worship. They were created for man. Secondly, one gets to Heaven only through salvation in Christ Jesus. Since animals don't have the mental propensity to make the decision for salvation (and therefore cannot be saved) they can't go to Heaven. God would not create something with a soul that He did not intend to have potential salvation. Which isn't to say that people with less than average brain capacity (those who are mentally retarded; in a coma; etc.) cannot be saved. I think that as humans, there is a point in our life when we have to make the decision ourselves. Children don't because they can't, because they don't have an understanding of Jesus' sacrifice. The same for those who are mentally retarded. They can't understand salvation and they can't understand sin.

Animals, however, are intelligent by their respective species and kinds. People claim to have "stupid pets" but really, in comparison with animals of the same kind, they aren't stupid. They are smart. It's the species as a whole that can't make the decision for salvation.

Um ... I think that's all I really wanted to say. Hope that made sense. confused