All my life growing up we had pets in our house. Most of the time it was just one, but at that place were times when we had every bit many equally three. The hardest function of being a pet owner is when you lot reach that moment when your honey member of the family unit – because that's what pets are – passes away. When our concluding pet died, we decided not to get anymore pets.

When a pet dies questions oft come up like do dogs get to heaven? If you believe Hollywood, all dogs go to sky, which was a flick that came out in 1989. On a more serious note, the decease of your pet or any animal for that thing may cause you to wonder if animals have souls. Information technology'south an interesting question. Let'due south run across if we can find an answer.

What Is a Soul?

To define what is a soul, I will use a homo perspective. Equally humans we are comprised of three parts, trunk, soul, and spirit. Here is an case of this from Scripture.

"May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify y'all through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and torso be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

Your torso 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 heed, will, and emotions live. I found a wonderful description of the soul from a Bibles for America post, that I want to share with you.

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

Using this equally a properties, let'due south now employ this to animals.

Practise Animals Have Souls?

People will often use the term soul and spirit interchangeably, and how you use the word will make up one's mind how you answer the question practice animals have souls. If you are equating the soul with the spirit, then I would say that animals don't have souls. If you are defining the soul as we did above as the place where your emotions flow out of, where y'all think, reason, and make decisions, then absolutely animals have souls. Animals can call up, reason, sense danger, experience happiness, sadness, and all of the things we mentioned in our definition of the soul.

If you are or take ever been a pet owner, y'all know the joy that comes over your pet when you come habitation and they oasis't seen you all 24-hour interval. Yous also know that wait on their face when they have washed something they know they should not have. These are intentional emotions which flow out of the soul. If you have seen an fauna hunt for nutrient, protect their young ones in the wild, fifty-fifty mourn loss – these are all emotions that come out of the soul. I would argue that these are articulate evidence that animals have souls.

Little girl holding a pet guinea pig

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What Does the Bible Say most Animals?

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

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

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

All throughout Scripture you lot will find this type of imagery and in that location will be various times where God will use animals as part of his plan for sacrifice, for service, even for deliverance.

Exercise Animals Go to Heaven?

When I was younger, this was a question I ofttimes wondered about. I used to say my dog was a Christian domestic dog and as I stated earlier all dogs go to heaven. Notwithstanding, to answer this question properly, I think you have to make the stardom between human life and animate being life. This stardom is seen in creation.

When you read Genesis, at that place are two great differences betwixt the way God created animals and the way God created humans. Allow me requite yous an instance.

"And God said, 'Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild fauna, each according to its kind.' And it was so" (Genesis 1:24).

When God created the animals on the earth, the sky, and the ocean, he spoke them into being. He said let there be and there was. However, notice the difference when he made man.

"Then the Lord God formed a manfrom the grit of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being" (Genesis ii:7).

Hopefully you see the divergence. Animals were formed by the word of God, and when he spoke they were able to exist and operate in their full chapters. Human was formed by the hand of God, but it wasn't until God breathed life or a spirit into man that he became a living being. This is the identifying marker 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 torso returns to the class it was in before God breathed life into them. Because animals practise not have spirits, I don't believe animals get to sky when they die.

dog kissing senior mature woman

Photo credit: ©Getty Images/RUBEN RAMOS

Will At that place Be Whatsoever Animals in Heaven?

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

In Genesis 2 nosotros encounter that God took Adam and put him in the Garden of Eden to piece of work the garden. Not but were there copse in the garden that were skilful for food, there were also animals in the garden.

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

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

When yous go to Revelation 22, John sees a motion picture of God restoring Eden where we now have admission to the tree of life, which existed in the original Garden of Eden. If God is restoring Eden, then I would say that in that location is a adept possibility that animals will exist in heaven because God is restoring things back to perfection, similar when he first created them. If animals existed in the sometime Eden, then I believe they will exist in heaven as well. To be clear this is my best educated deduction from Scripture, and y'all may see things differently and that is ok if y'all practise.

Conversations like these are fun to take as long as you lot keep it 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 exercise and nosotros tin can be reunited with our former pets, and then that would be a wonderful surprise. The simply thing left to say is brand sure you make it into sky and so we tin can find out together.

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Clarence L. Haynes Jr.is a speaker, Bible instructor, and co-founder of The Bible Report Club.  He is the author of The Pursuit of Purpose which will help yous understand how God leads y'all into his will. He has as well just released his new volume The Pursuit of Victory: How To Conquer Your Greatest Challenges and Win In Your Christian Life. Do yous want to go deeper in your walk with the Lord but tin't seem to overcome the stuff that keeps getting in the style? This book volition teach you lot how to put the pieces together so yous tin can alive a victorious Christian life and finally get the man or woman of God that you truly want to be. To acquire more about his ministry please visit clarencehaynes.com.