All my life growing upwardly we had pets in our house. Most of the time it was just i, but there were times when we had as many as iii. The hardest role of being a pet possessor is when yous reach that moment when your honey fellow member of the family unit – considering that's what pets are – passes away. When our last pet died, we decided not to get anymore pets.

When a pet dies questions often come up like practise dogs go to sky? If y'all believe Hollywood, all dogs become to heaven, which was a picture that came out in 1989. On a more serious note, the decease of your pet or whatever animate being for that affair may cause you lot to wonder if animals have souls. It's an interesting question. Let's come across if we tin can find an reply.

What Is a Soul?

To ascertain what is a soul, I will use a man perspective. As humans we are comprised of three parts, trunk, soul, and spirit. Here is an instance of this from Scripture.

"May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (ane Thessalonians v:23).

Your body is your physical shell, and your spirit is the part of you that allows yous to connect and commune with God. Your soul is where your mind, will, and emotions alive. I constitute a wonderful description of the soul from a Bibles for America mail service, that I desire to share with you.

"Our soul is our personality, who nosotros are. With our soul we call back, reason, consider, call back, and wonder. We experience emotions similar happiness, honey, sorrow, anger, relief, and compassion. And we're able to resolve, choose, and make decisions."

Using this equally a backdrop, let's now apply this to animals.

Do Animals Have Souls?

People will often use the term soul and spirit interchangeably, and how you use the word will decide how you lot reply the question exercise animals take souls. If you are equating the soul with the spirit, so I would say that animals don't have souls. If you are defining the soul as we did above every bit the place where your emotions menstruation out of, where you call up, reason, and make decisions, and so absolutely animals take souls. Animals can think, reason, sense danger, experience happiness, sadness, and all of the things we mentioned in our definition of the soul.

If you are or have ever been a pet owner, yous know the joy that comes over your pet when y'all come home and they haven't seen you all twenty-four hour period. You also know that look on their face when they accept done something they know they should not have. These are intentional emotions which flow out of the soul. If y'all have seen an beast hunt for food, protect their young ones in the wild, fifty-fifty mourn loss – these are all emotions that come up out of the soul. I would argue that these are clear bear witness that animals have souls.

Little girl holding a pet guinea pig

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What Does the Bible Say about Animals?

Co-ordinate to Hillel, Natural History, the Bible records over 150 species of animals. One of the chapters that has an exhaustive list of animals is Leviticus 11 which I encourage you to read. In add-on, God often would utilize the imagery of an animal in how he would depict other things.

"We all, like sheep, take gone astray,
each of united states has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:6).

"Be warning and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls effectually similar a roaring lion looking for someone to devour" (1 Peter 5:8).

All throughout Scripture you volition find this type of imagery and there will be various times where God will use animals as role of his program for sacrifice, for service, even for deliverance.

Do Animals Go to Sky?

When I was younger, this was a question I often wondered about. I used to say my dog was a Christian domestic dog and equally I stated earlier all dogs go to heaven. Withal, to answer this question properly, I call back yous have to make the distinction between human life and fauna life. This stardom is seen in cosmos.

When y'all read Genesis, there are two dandy differences between the fashion God created animals and the way God created humans. Permit me give you an example.

"And God said, 'Let the country produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that motility along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.' And it was so" (Genesis i:24).

When God created the animals on the earth, the heaven, and the sea, he spoke them into being. He said let there be and at that place was. Still, notice the difference when he made man.

"And then the Lord God formed a manfrom the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living beingness" (Genesis two:7).

Hopefully you see the difference. Animals were formed by the word of God, and when he spoke they were able to exist and operate in their total capacity. Man was formed by the hand of God, but information technology wasn't until God breathed life or a spirit into human that he became a living existence. This is the identifying marking between animals and humans. The true life in a human is their spirit. That is why when a person dies, their spirit departs, and their body returns to the class it was in before God breathed life into them. Considering animals practise not have spirits, I don't believe animals go to heaven when they dice.

dog kissing senior mature woman

Photo credit: ©Getty Images/RUBEN RAMOS

Will There Exist Whatsoever Animals in Heaven?

While I don't believe animals that die on earth go to heaven (feel costless to disagree with my opinion if you see it differently, I won't be offended), there is reason to believe that in that location will be animals in sky. Let me give you my reason why.

In Genesis 2 nosotros see that God took Adam and put him in the Garden of Eden to work the garden. Non only were at that place trees in the garden that were practiced for food, there were also animals in the garden.

"Now the Lord God had formed out of the basis all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the human to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its proper name" (Genesis 1:19).

Since Adam existed in the garden information technology is rubber to say that the animals existed in that location with him.

When you get to Revelation 22, John sees a picture of God restoring Eden where we at present have access to the tree of life, which existed in the original Garden of Eden. If God is restoring Eden, then I would say that there is a expert possibility that animals will exist in heaven considering God is restoring things back to perfection, like when he first created them. If animals existed in the sometime Eden, then I believe they will exist in sky too. To be clear this is my best educated deduction from Scripture, and you may encounter things differently and that is ok if you practise.

Conversations like these are fun to take as long equally y'all keep information technology that way. From my analysis of Scripture, while animals have souls, I don't believe they go to sky when they die. However, if they do and we can be reunited with our former pets, and then that would be a wonderful surprise. The only thing left to say is make sure you brand information technology into heaven so we can find out together.

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Clarence Fifty. Haynes Jr.is a speaker, Bible instructor, and co-founder of The Bible Study Club.  He is the author of The Pursuit of Purpose which will help you sympathise how God leads you lot into his will. He has also just released his new volume The Pursuit of Victory: How To Conquer Your Greatest Challenges and Win In Your Christian Life. Do y'all want to go deeper in your walk with the Lord merely can't seem to overcome the stuff that keeps getting in the way? This book will teach you how to put the pieces together so you can live a victorious Christian life and finally become the man or woman of God that you truly desire to be. To learn more about his ministry delight visit clarencehaynes.com.