In a Q&A I did on the subject of rewards, the audience asked several great questions related to generosity, rewards, and the New Earth. Someone also asked me a question which is not directly related to the subject of rewards, but is still connected to our future resurrected life: will there be animals and even our pets on the New Earth?
Did you catch that comment that was said at the end about cats not going to Heaven? I have to shake my head at this often-repeated joke, because I’ve been in three different churches where the pastor said from the pulpit that he thinks all dogs go to Heaven, but not cats. It’s good for laughs, but not funny to people who love their cats and experience their God-given affection and friendship.
Sure, some people have had bad experiences with cats, but in this world under the Curse, people have also had bad experiences being attacked by dogs and thrown by horses (as well as bitten or harmed by many species of animals). Yet I don’t hear anyone joking that dogs and horses can’t possibly be in the eternal Heaven!
In Isaiah 11:6-7, a New Earth passage, we’re promised that:
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 a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
Living in peace and harmony alongside those they once devoured are the four greatest animal predators known to the Jewish people: the wolf, leopard, lion, and bear. And since dogs are the descendants of wolves, and cats are the relatives of leopards and lions, that’s great news for dog and cat lovers!
Check out this viral video of a 93-year-old grandfather who takes his 15-year-old cat Angus on a daily scroll around his retirement village. The love between them is evident:
I fondly remember each of the cats we had when I was a child and again the two Nanci and I had, Rainbow and Cassie, when our girls were little. (But once Nanci had a dog it was no turning back!) I loved our cats, but they were a different kind of creature—which gives us another reason to love them—far more sophisticated and independent than the dogs I’ve owned. (Dogs are rarely sophisticated.) The saying goes, "Dogs have owners, cats have staff.” And as Robert Heinlein humorously noted, “As anyone who has ever been around a cat for any length of time well knows, cats have enormous patience with the limitations of the human mind.”
Cats certainly have their own distinctive charms, as those who love them know. So too do horses, gerbils, parakeets, hamsters, cows, guinea pigs, rabbits, mice, chickens, pot-bellied pigs, pygmy goats, and chinchillas, all of which are part of God’s creation and will be on the New Earth. God made different people to love and enjoy different kinds of animals, so perhaps on the New Earth we’ll still have our preferences (as well as develop new favorites as we get to know species we never could interact with on this present earth!).
Perhaps you don’t like a certain type of animal because you were harmed by one. Do not project perspectives from this fallen world onto the New Earth! We won’t dread or fear or dislike animals because there will be no reason to, and we won’t love or exalt them too much either. One day, the earth will be “filled with the knowledge of Yahweh” so you’ll know how silly it would be to love any animal, person, or thing more than you love God.
That will be the world we’ve always wanted to live in!
