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Do dogs go to heaven when they die?

In the light of the teaching of Scripture, heaven is the place of God’s abode where we also find the good angels and human beings because they were created in the image of God with a soul and spirit. Animals were not created in God’s image and are never portrayed in Scripture as going to heaven or paradise.

It is important to note that the Bible also teaches us, that only those who have a personal relationship with God through faith in Christ either as Old Testament saints who looked forward to the coming of Christ as promised in the Old Testament or as New Testament believers (see Jn 3:3-18) will go to heaven. You might want to compare Ecclesiastes 3:21 and note the following comment from The Expositors Bible Commentary.

3:18-22 Meanwhile, the Teacher centered his thoughts on the inevitability of death. In their context these verses say that God makes all sensible people realize that they are as much subject to death as is the animal world. Both are animated by a similar breath of life that sustains them while living and is withdrawn at death (vv. 19-21). The same word for “spirit” or “breath” (ruah) is used in v. 19 and v. 21. People and animals also resemble each other in having bodies made of vegetable and mineral substances that revert to dust at death (v. 20). The Teacher is speaking phenomenologically, i.e., as things appear to the senses. There is no reference here to any personal spirit or soul, but the spirit or breath is the sustaining life that comes from God (Gen 6:17; Ps 104:29-30).

Related Topics: Eschatology (Things to Come)

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