Animals Going To Heaven & Hell

[zoegirl]

Well, considering that many scents are/were derived from musk from many animals, I suppose one could say they have been doing that for years.

[Harry12345]

Have you ever looked at the world around you? You know that God exists, it's self-evident. Ever looked at a domesticated Cat sitting on a roof? You know that that cat is thinking, it has a soul, a spirit, a personality. Every animal is unique and special (especially domesticated ones.) It's self-evident. I belive that although their afterlife is nowhere near as great as ours, I think that since God values every living thing, animals will go somewhere special, and I can only speculate, but I'm going to say it's a place of maximum earthly happiness (as opposed to maximum spiritual happiness that we will recieve.)

Well, if skunks make it to heaven I hope they spray Es de Lauder

Could not resist the Joke!
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[jenna]

Thats funny I thought the ten commandments were 'Though shall not kill.' does that not extend to animals?

Pretty ambiguous for commandments we are supposed to live our lives by.

Ok, this one is a no-brainer. Jesus himself ate meat. Did that make Him a murderer? I think not. Yes, the bible says not to commit murder. There is a difference between killing an animal for food and beating an animal to death. One is to survive, the other is plain cold-blooded murder.

[johnt]

It is shown in the Book of Jobe that animals don't have souls. G-d replaced Jobe's flocks by three after Satan had taken them (killed) but replaced his children one for one for the ten that were slain by Satan were with G-d. For souls there is an after life one way or another.

[jenna]

Hey John, out of curiousity, why do you say G-d instead of God? Is this a personal decision or do you feel this is the only proper way to address Him? Yeah, I'm being nosy.

[johnt]

Jen, Just the way I was taught. I pasted the reference below. It is more out of respect then anything else.


As a general rule of thumb, practicing Jews do not write the name God because of the laws delivered by Moses which are found in Deuteronomy 12:3-12:4. In this passage, the Jews are instructed to destroy anything and everything associated with their rival's gods, and they are not to let this happen to their own God. Writing G-d instead of God is one way to prevent others from destroying the name of God.

Jews interpret the law given by Moses as a prohibition against transcribing the name of God, because they feel that if God is recorded onto a piece of paper, there is the possibility that the name will be disrespected or destroyed in some way. The general concern with writing G-d in its true form is that it might be erased, defaced by being crossed out or scribbled upon, torn, thrown in the trash, or ravaged in some other way. Writing G-d instead of God communicates the writer's idea effectively, but since G-d is incomplete, there is no risk of defacement. The Jews have other names for their creator besides G-d, including Hashem, YHVH, Elohim, and El Shaddai, which are also not written in their complete form.

There are, however, exceptions to the prohibition of writing God rather than G-d. The Jews believe that on occasion, it is acceptable to write God when there is no likelihood that the written word will be defaced. This includes the written form of God in the Torah, which is the Hebrew Bible, also found in the first five books of the Christian Bible. Writing the name of God is not prohibited when it is done carefully, with foresight and respect.

Due to the advent of technology, namely computers, which were obviously not around when this law was written, The Jewish community under careful deliberation has decided that it is acceptable to write the name of G-d on a computer as long as it is not printed to a permanent form. Rabbis have decided that deleting the name G-d on a computer, though not encouraged, is not in violation of the commandment not to write the name of G-d.

[jenna]

Thank you for this. I never knew about this. So now I know. Again, I hope you forgive me, I was just curious.

[Anonymiss]

Plus, you should also realize that Christians believe that what really sets us apart is our spirit, which is created in the image of God. We have a divine nature that animals don't have.

Exactly. Until I learned more here - I had a similar attitude (to the banned person who participated earlier in this thread) that all "higher" animals were created on equal grounds as humans. I now view animals, in particular those that have levels of intelligence closer to our's such as cetations (whales, dolphins, porpoises), great apes, elephants, etc., as being more or less the essence of ourselves before the divine spirit was breathed into us from God.

Nonetheless I still regard intelligent animals very highly, and have a respect for all living things - including creatures that give me the creeps such as spiders.

[dayage]

In the New Heaven and New Earth God will probably create new animals. This is not what Isaiah 11 or 65 are talking about. In fact those animals are symbolic of nations and people.

Gen. 9:5-6 and Lev. 24:17-18, 21 show a big difference between killing an animal and murdering a human. It is the human's spirit that is eternal. Animals are not said to possess a spirit.

If you consider animals to possess an eternal spirit, then do they go to hell if they kill a human? God has given a strict prohibition against animals killing humans which would constitute sin if committed by a spirit being with free moral agency. If animals do not have a spirit then they are not eternal and do not face eternal punishment. They just return to the dust and cease to exist.

This is why murdering a human is such a crime. We are locked into our spiritual condition upon death.