Fido in Purgatory?
(Posted from Florida)
A question I hear every few months is whether I think animals will go to heaven. I usually try to smile magnaminously and say the wisest thing I know, “Only time will tell”.
So yesterday I’m reading in Genesis 9 and I realize God made his covenant, not only with Noah, but also with “every living creature.”(9:10 and 12). God wrote a contract with Fido to be faithful (there’s very small smile hidden there because I think that’s what fido means).
But it gets better. Not only did God make a promise to the animals, Doolittle style, but he also warned them that they’ll be judged! In verse 5, “I will demand an accounting from every animal.” If that doesn’t open up all sorts of imaginative scenarios to you, you don’t have an imagination.
So the crows are going to gather on the telephone line in front of the great throne and have to give an explanation for all that needless cawing that woke me up yesterday.
And cats? Don’t even get me started on how much I don’t want to be a cat on the judgment day. We’ll be there forever just listening to the charges of arrogance, pride and insubordination brought against the cats. They are sooo toast.
I think the animal I’d most like to be in front of God would be a dog (not the one that bit me on the chest in Mexico. That one’s going straight to you-know-where). But, I mean, a dog is so cheerful and optimistic and always believing the best. I’d definitely want to be a dog.
Now I’m not saying that animals and people have the same value to God so you shouldn’t smack that mosquito (it’s probably carrying west-nile virus anyway, which is also kind of an animal). It’s clear in early-Genesis that humans are distinctly “in the image of God” in a way animals aren’t. But isn’t it cool that God treats them with such dignity that he makes a covenant with them and will hold them accountable?
Which brings us back to people; His covenant with people and his demand that we, too, be accountable. He’s doing His part: His covenant protects us right now. A day is coming when we’ll stand in front of Him too, and claim, “nothing but the blood of Jesus” as our accounting. Otherwise we wind up with Fluffy.
David Roller
Sent from my BlackBerry®
