Do Pets Go to Heaven? | Faith Questions

Do dogs go to heaven? It's one of the most personal questions people ask about faith — and in this episode of Faith Questions, we dig into what the Bible actually says. We explore the difference between humans and animals in scripture, what Isaiah 11 tells us about the millennial kingdom, and whether your specific pet will be waiting for you in eternity. We give our honest take, even if it's not the answer everyone wants to hear. Got a faith question of your own? Send it our way — we tackle a new one every week.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Do you have questions about faith? Well, we're going to be talking about them weekly, uh, trying to answer some of the questions you might have. And so we'll be asking them, and you can ask them too, and we'll be talking through them.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

The question for this week is do dogs go to heaven?

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Do dogs go to heaven? You're more in particular, do my does my amazing wine runner Trevi Capri go to heaven?

SPEAKER_00 0:23

She's pretty good.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Um, this is a big question that people ask. Let me let me ask, let me answer this after I ask you. What do you what do you think, Mark? Mark, do you think dogs and cats go to heaven?

SPEAKER_02 0:34

I I don't know that I have enough information to know for sure. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

What do you want in your heart?

SPEAKER_02 0:40

I want I want to see my cats in heaven. I'm not sure if I will, though. I don't know. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

What do you think?

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Well, I kind of think because, you know, with the ark, God saved all saved animals, so I feel like their value to their creations. I don't necessarily know if our animals will go to heaven or if they'll just be animals in heaven. Right. That's kind of the thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Well, we go back to the beginning. God created animals and then God created man. So God has a love for mankind and animals. God gave both man and animals the breath of life. The difference is, though, in Genesis 1, 26 and 27, we know that as humans, we are made in the image and likeness of God. Animals are not made in the image and likeness of God. God never says that in Scripture. So when we look at like eternal things and an eternity with our creator, which we are made in the image and likeness of him, we're the only creation that is considered to be so. But as we go through like scripture, we know that all humanity, all creation, even animals, are affected with the fall of mankind and the original sin. So that's kind of marred all of creation. Like all creation is corrupted by original sin. That means the animal kingdom, that's why animals kill each other and eat each other. Like that's that's part of the fall of man and the original sin entering the world. But this so that's you know, we see there's a difference between how animals and mankind are treated, although on the ark, you're correct, no one has family went on the ark. They brought animals, so God saved animals, so they don't have animal animals, two of every kind.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Unless they were clean. The other hundred are had to be had to be gone.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

So, but like ultimately, when we look when we look to like scripture, the scriptures do give us some guidance. One of the things that is encouraging to me about the new heaven and new earth is there'll be a millennial kingdom of a thousand years where Christ will reign after Christ comes back to kind of uh collect the those that follow him and kind of re-establish and defeat, defeat Satan, Satan and be thrown in jail for a thousand years. During that time, in Isaiah, I'll pull this up in Isaiah 11, 6 through 8, it says this the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together, and the little child shall lead them, and the cow and the bear shall graze, and the young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat like eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the whole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. So what the Bible is saying is in the millennial kingdom, when Christ is ruling, the world will be as it should have been in the garden. All the animals, even the ones that we consider the violent, scary bears and wolves and and cobras, we will will be peaceful. Like we'll be able to interact with them. And so, although I don't know how comfortable I feel about curling up with the cobra, so that will be the reality of the new the new world. And then once the thousand years happens, there'll be a new Jerusalem and there'll be a new earth. And in that time, we do know that there'll be you know everything will be recreated, which we have to presuppose that because God will create the new earth, they'll there'll be new creation, new plants, new animals, us on that. And so the real question is will animals then are specific animals be part of that creation? Because the Bible is clear in the new millennial kingdom, in the new earth, it's most likely that this is going to be animals because they're stated as such. But I think the the real issue for people is probably the real question is will my specific animal, will my pet, be in heaven? So do you think your pet will be in heaven?

SPEAKER_02 4:21

Uh I hope my pet wasp makes it.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:24

Yeah. Okay. I mean, I hope so, but yeah, I always wondered if that was like hyperbolic or like like metaphorical.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

I mean, there's some people will say like that, you know, that well, this is just an you know, this is just an analogy of what what it's gonna be like, and that but the Bible's clear and it's like our best, you know, it's our best guess at this point. Like God doesn't clearly say one way or the other. But the but we can take the reference in Isaiah to the millennial kingdom that there will be animals there and everything will be restored as it should have been in the Garden of Eden. Since the Garden had animals, I tend to believe the new heaven, the new earth, uh, the millennial kingdom will have animals. Do I believe that my specific animal will be there? I do not. That's my personal thing, so that's sad. And then no, if you're listening to this, I mean I've told people this before and they've gotten really mad at me. My animal will be there. I it's a personal preference thing. The Bible doesn't give us clear guidance one way or the other. I mean, if you think about how many trillions and trillions and quintillions of animals that there are. I mean, think about the how fast animals reproduce and how many they have. I just don't think it's logical to look over the time in history that every animal is going to have be there and have a soul. I don't know that animals have specific souls. The only creation we know that have souls are humans, us, and thus so I believe that we will, our souls will carry on, but but not these souls. They don't have, you know, animals don't have souls, at least as far as I can tell from scripture, um, people may disagree. But there are probably scholars who disagree. But ultimately, as best as I've looked at this over my life, and I love animals, I love my dog, it doesn't seem as such our specific animal might will be there, but there will be animals there. Will be dogs, there will be cats, there'll be everything that we know we know and love there that you can have. And maybe you can have a pet giraffe, I don't know. We'll see. Definitely a pet cobra.

SPEAKER_02 6:19

If you got questions, ask 'em. Let us know.