We have looked at what we will look like in heaven, our appearance, and our age. Last time we talked about marriage and family relationships in heaven. Today we are going to look in Isaiah 11.
We want to move now to another subject on the minds of a lot of people. That is animals. I don’t know how many people I have talked to that believe or hope that their animal, Fido or Fluffy, or whoever they are attached to will be in heaven with them when they go there. They even talk about that when they die that maybe they are in heaven. Children, of course, are really interested in that as well.
So, the question is: Will there be animals in heaven for eternity? Isaiah 11:6 is the verse that some have turned to in Scripture and say this is what it will be like in heaven, “And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little boy will lead them. Also, the cow and the bear will graze, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child will put his head on the viper’s den. They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” Some have taught that this is a picture of heaven and the eternal state and that we are going to have animals there and that they no longer will be ferocious. They no longer eat meat. They will no longer be vicious to one another. Children can play with the most vicious of animals on earth now and so forth and it will be a very different world and animals will be there. So that is a possibility, but this is a passage that is dealing not with the eternal state, but the Millennial Kingdom. So, this is a time prior to the eternal state prior to the new heaven and the new earth. It is not a description of the eternal state or the heavenly state of the new heaven and the new earth. Some believe this is a prelude to the events in eternity and that what happens in the Millennial Kingdom will kind of bleed over into what is going to happen in the Eternal Kingdom, just more perfected. We find here that even though these animals and so forth are on the earth at this time that they are going to die and decay and that would not happen in eternity . . .
