Are There Animals In Heaven?

Among the list of common questions people ask this one hasrisen higher and higher on the list.  As many in our culture move farther and farther away from the agrarian life, so too they are moving farther away from typical notions of animal life.  What were once work animals or even simply pets are now considered “kids” and furry babies.  The growing list of what qualifies as therapy pets would be comical if it wasn’t so common.  

Since so many people consider their pets like little people, more and more want to know what happens to them when they die.  Will they see them in heaven?  There are many problems with this understanding and we will go over a few of them.  

First and foremost, animals are not people.  They are not even similar to people, not really.  I realize that such a statement is fighting against years and years of countless movies and TV that depict animals as funnier and wittier than most people you know.  I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but that is movie magic.  Animals are not made in the image of God, and people are not just another form of animal.  While God called forth all the animals from the ground and gave them the breath of life, God handmade Adam and Eve personally.  Are there any similarities?  The Bible does say animals have the breath of life as people do (Genesis 7:22), they have a material makeup that can be similar, and lastly, they have a display of emotions.  Those emotions are probably what make us feel the closest connection to them.  Animals have excitement over food, sex and a new toy like we do, and they fear loud noise and threating animals like we do.  But these similarities are purely on a physical level of shared physical reactions in a shared physical world.  People are still categorically different.  Humans are not only or mainly physical.  We view everything from a transcendent perspective.  We view it all in light of God and in light of the eternity set in our heart (Ecclesiastes 3:11).  Concerning all the things that cause the above emotions that we share with animals, we are always asking why and for what purpose.  We ask whether it is right or wrong.  People who stop asking this because they have hardened their heart and seared their conscience do begin to behave like animals.  In fact, this is the very thing said of false teachers.

2 Peter 2:12 But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, reviling where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed,

Having said all of that, because animals are not people, they do not need God at the relational level the way we do being made in his image.  They do not possess eternal souls, they do not know right or wrong, they do not need forgiveness, they are not reasoning about these things, and they do not need to be with God forever.  Eternity is not set in the instincts of animals and they have no need to live forever.  

Ok, so animals do not need God on a relational level, but what about your needs.  What if you need your pets to be happy, and heaven won’t be heaven without them?  All this means is that your needs are bordering on idolatry, and your understanding of God is immensely shallow.  Good for you though, if you a Christian God will change you at the moment of your death.  You will shed your fallen nature with all of its worldly notions and idolatrous loves.  You will see God as he is and be so satisfied in him that nothing will ever compete with him again.  Just as you will be able to understand and fully embrace God’s justice for people you love who are in Hell, so you will be able to not have your pets or other loved things and still be satisfied in God.  

If animals were in heaven, that would introduce another problematic issue.  Nowhere in the Bible does it speak of animals being resurrected.  Everyone in heaven right now, and Hades for that matter, will be resurrected.  If there were bodiless pets in heaven, we would then be asking, “will these animals be resurrected and united to their bodies?”  Nothing in Scripture even hints to this.  

This does, however, bring up the issue of heaven.  While there are not animals in heaven, you have to remember that right now heaven is not the finish line.  Right now heaven is just a pit stop.  Just because there are no animals currently in heaven doesn’t mean there won’t be animals in the age to come.  I don’t see any reason to think that when the heavens and the earth will be remade, and the current celestial heaven is brought down to earth, that there will not be animals.  A kind of second Eden will be on earth and what we had in the original Eden will be ours again plus far more.  And since Eden was filled with animals, I think the new earth will be filled with animals as well, and possibly animals on planets spread throughout the universe.  God is glorified in the diversity of his creative power and so our worship will be increased by the animals he recreates.