Do Animals Go To Heaven??

Do Animals Go to Heaven?

Will Rogers once said, “If there are no dogs in heaven, then when I die, I want to go where they went.” Isn’t that incredible? And I bet there’s some people watching this video that might feel the same way.

So the question though is: do animals actually go to heaven? Will your dog be there? Your cat? The bunny you had in the third grade? Is that even a real Christian question, or is that just sentimental nonsense?

I remember reading about a woman who came to the faith as a young girl, loved Jesus, and loved her dog. And then her dog died. She went to her pastor and asked if her dog was in heaven. And the pastor said, “No, animals don’t go to heaven, only people do.” She left the church. She walked away from God for 30 years. And when she finally came back decades later, the first thing she asked her new pastor was, “Do dogs go to heaven?” That question had been haunting her for 30 years.

For a lot of people, and I’m going to say for me also, it’s not a small question. It sits right up there with “is God actually good or not.”

To be fair, pastors who say no aren’t trying to be cruel. They’re passing down what they were taught. The traditional argument is that heaven is a spiritual place, animals don’t have souls, they weren’t made in the image of God, so they can’t be there. And that sounds reasonable, it even sounds maybe kind of spiritual, but I think the answer is wrong. And I want to give you three reasons why.

Reason One: The Bible Never Says Animals Don’t Go to Heaven

Not once. Not anywhere. You can read the whole Bible cover to cover and there is nothing in there that says animals aren’t a part of eternity. The “no” answer is not from the Bible.

So where does it come from? Most scholars trace it back to ancient Greek philosophy—this idea going all the way back to Plato that the physical world is lesser. Matter is like a prison. The body is a cage for the soul. And the real goal of religion, they would say, is to escape all of that and live as a pure spirit in the spiritual realm.

When Christianity spread through the Greek-speaking world, those beliefs got blended in. And for hundreds of years, lots of Christians have read the Bible through that lens without even realizing it. Theologians call this Christo-Platonism—Christianity filtered through Plato. But what the Bible actually says about animals is almost the exact opposite.

Reason Two: Every Animal Is Precious to God

This is throughout the Bible. Let me give you some examples.

In Genesis chapter 1, God makes the animals. He makes them on purpose. And after he makes them, he looks at what he made and says it is good. Not okay—good. They’re a part of the original very good creation.

Jesus, in Matthew chapter 10, says that not a single sparrow falls to the ground outside the Father’s care. God is tracking individual birds. Did you know this? Not a single bird falls outside of the Father’s care.

In Psalm 50, God says that every animal of the forest is his—the cattle on a thousand hills.

In the book of Jonah, which I love, God is deciding whether to spare the city of Nineveh or destroy it. And his words at the end of the book give his reasons:

“Should I not be concerned about that great city in which there are more than 120,000 people and also many animals?”

God factors the animals into his decision to show mercy or not. God’s mercy is not just shown to people, but to animals.

I find it very funny that in the flood in Genesis, God saves far more animals than humans. He saves precisely eight humans and hundreds of animals. That’s another time in Scripture where God includes the animals when he’s showing his mercy and his grace. Animals are recipients of God’s grace.

That is not a God who treats animals like props, like they’re just for this life. That’s a God who notices animals, counts animals, cares for animals, and shows his grace to animals. Every animal is precious to God.

Reason Three: Creation Will Be Resurrected

The Bible promises that creation will be resurrected, and your pet may be among the resurrected. And you might be thinking, “What hippie told you that?” Actually, it was this guy named Paul, in Romans chapter 8.

Randy Alcorn, a theologian and author of probably the most influential book on heaven in the 21st century, says that before he wrote his big book on heaven, he didn’t believe pets would be in heaven. He’s the guy who’s written more about heaven than anyone else, and he started out as a skeptic—he just didn’t see it in the Bible. Then he started researching, and he tells the story of sitting down with Romans 8 in the original Greek and being, in his own words, stunned by what it actually says.

Here’s the argument. I’m going to read a few verses for you.

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” (Romans 8:22)

So the whole creation is groaning. Let me ask you an obvious question: who else groans besides human beings? Not trees. Not rocks. Trees don’t groan. Animals do—higher animals especially. They feel pain. They feel loss. They feel grief. They groan. So when Paul says creation is groaning, he’s talking about animals.

Now go up three verses:

“For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.” (Romans 8:19)

Creation is waiting in eager anticipation for the children of God to be revealed. Waiting for what? Keep reading:

“That the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.” (Romans 8:21)

Creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the same freedom and glory of the children of God. That’s Paul in the New Testament saying that creation, which includes animals, is going to be set free from the bondage of decay. They’re brought into the same freedom and glory that we as God’s people are.

All of creation, which includes animals, fell into bondage—the bondage of decay—because of Adam. Wasn’t that his fault? It wasn’t the animals’ fault. But when Adam fell, the animal kingdom fell with him. The same creation, in the same way, is going to rise with mankind through Christ, says Paul.

Go read it for yourself. That’s exactly what it says, and the rest of the Bible reinforces it. Let me give you some more examples.

“The wolf will lie with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together, and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the cobra’s den, the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 11:6–9)

Listen to all these animals. It’s saying animals aren’t going to harm anymore. Why? Because the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord. The prophet Isaiah is describing God’s restored kingdom, and what I want you to notice is that it’s full of animals.

Well, I thought animals don’t have souls? Look, I don’t know about any of that, but I know that if you agree with Scripture, then you’ve got to agree that God’s coming kingdom is full of animals.

“I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse whose rider is called Faithful and True.” (Revelation 19:11)

So he saw the entrance to heaven, and you know what he saw? A horse. A horse that lives in heaven.

Which Animals?

This is where it gets personal. If we know from Romans 8 that some of the animals alive on the earth are going to be raised on the new earth, then the question is: which ones?

So the question I would like to pose to you is this: if God is choosing animals from this earth to bring with mankind into eternity, which animals do you think he would most naturally choose? As a loving God, as a loving father, wouldn’t his first choice be the animals that we loved and that ministered to us?

I remember years ago I went to visit a man who was dying in his home. It was a man that I loved, and he was in a lot of pain, and he had a dog that he really loved—and you could tell the dog really loved the man. I remember just sitting there on the sofa next to the man’s hospital bed, and the dog was sitting on the sofa with me. I started to pray for the man and I started to cry. And when that happened, the dog came up and licked my tears off of my face. Then I looked at the dog and the dog let out this groan. It was like the dog felt it too.

That’s Romans 8 in the flesh—a creature groaning with us, waiting with us, hoping with us.

So if you wonder whether your specific pet is going to be in heaven, I can’t promise you that. The Bible doesn’t have a verse with their name on it. But I can promise you this: Romans 8 says that creation will be raised, and your pet was a part of that creation. And if God is choosing which animals to bring with him into eternity, wouldn’t the ones that you love be the ones that he would choose?

Billy Graham was once asked by a little girl whose dog had just died if her dog was going to be in heaven. He said:

“God will prepare everything for our perfect happiness in heaven, and if it takes my dog being there, I believe he’ll be there.”

Even C.S. Lewis talks about how he believes that perhaps the love that we have for our pets causes them to come to heaven with us.

So if you ask me, “Pastor David, do you think your dogs will be in heaven?” Here’s my answer: “Of course mine will be.” Why wouldn’t they? Heaven is a place that God specifically created for me to enter into with the fullness of joy, perfect happiness. I can’t speak to your pet, but I can say that mine will definitely be there.

Closing Thoughts

Seriously though, heaven is better than you imagine—not worse. And so if you’re watching this and you recently lost a pet, I want you to hear me: your grief is not small to God. The love that you had for that animal was real, and it came from him in the first place. And the God who created those animals, who created you, is not careless with the things that matter to you.

So you might be wondering, “What is this new earth going to look like with all of those animals on it?” But that’s another question.