Genesis 1:26-30; Revelation 4:1-8

Do All Good Dogs Go to Heaven?

Sermon preached January 25, 2015
Opening
A few years back, there was a great story in a Charleston, S.C. newspaper about a
runaway cow. North Charleston police received a 911 call on Tuesday about 5:30 PM
about a cow running loose on a main road - in rush-hour traffic. It seems that the cows
owner, Lester Bivens, had loaded the cow onto a trailer on the family farm in Jedburg,
planning to take it to a slaughterhouse in North Charleston where said cow would meet its
demise. They stopped on the way to give the cow a bucket of water to drink, but the
beast, agitated by its impending doom, pushed open the door and headed out for freedom.
Bivens fired at it with a shotgun - apparently legally - but only lightly wounded the cow
which understandably kept on going. Alert citizen Jacob Powell saw the strange sight of
the cow galloping (I guess cows do gallop) down the road, called 911 and followed the
bovine escapee, finally cornering it behind a motel with his truck.
Then the owner showed up, still brandishing his shotgun and yelling. The cow took off
again, damaging several parked cars during its next flight to freedom, heading towards a
nearby Lowes.
Finally, police officers arrived and managed to herd the cow into a temporary corral
hastily improvised by Lowes employees. But unimpressed by the animals ferocious will
to live, Bivens was quoted as saying he was taking his heifer to the slaughterhouse the
next day.1
Listening to that story, dont you naturally root for the cow? Even though we love our
bacon cheeseburgers and ribeye steaks, most of us feel deep down a respect, an
admiration, an affection, even a love for the creatures of the earth. And were going to
look together at what Gods word says about Gods love and concern for his creatures,
and what he expects us to do for them as we help build the Kingdom of God.
A God who creates in love
Our first scripture reading was from the beginning of Genesis. Genesis is less about how
God created what the universe, and more about why God created the universe.
Genesis tells the story of a good and loving God who purposefully created the universe
and filled this world with plants and animals and then as the grand finale, creates human
beings. Its the account of a good God who created a good world - and put us here to be
his representatives of earth and to take care of, and enjoy, the world God made.
1

Gods delight in creation.

Every time God makes something, what does God do? He steps back, checks out what he
has made and says, Hey, thats good! Like God is taking joy in the act of creating, in
seeing what springs to life through his creative will. And the first thing I want us to think
about is that God takes pleasure in the wonder and beauty of his creatures.
The writer Annie Dillard, thinking of the incredible variety, beauty, and wonder of the
creatures of the earth, said, The creator loves pizzaz! And you can see that pizzaz
everywhere you look.
An example: In Raleigh, NC there is a wonderful nature museum with a butterfly garden.
Its warm and humid inside and filled with a variety of nectar-bearing plants, has benches
so you can sit and watch over 100 species of butterflies flutter about. Purple and yellow
and black and multi-colored, some as small as a postage stamp and others as big as your
hand. I could spend hours in there. Why so many different butterflies? Why such a wild
palette of colors? Why are they so beautiful to watch? I guess the creator loves pizzaz.
An example: A creature youve never heard of or seen. The Mantis Shrimp. A few fun
facts: you and I can see in color, if youre not color-blind. Youre able to do that because
you have three different types of color-receptive cones in your retinas. The Mantis
Shrimp has 16 different types of color-receptive cones. If we can see the array of colors
we do with only three types of color-receptive cones, imagine the colors that the Mantis
Shrimp can see. Maybe thats why it looks like this:

But that is not what is most impressive about this creature. It has two claw-like
appendages on the front of its body. They are called raptorial appendages. They can
accelerate towards prey at the same speed as a 22 caliber bullet fired from a rifle and hit
2

with enormous force - if we could accelerate our arms with that kind of speed, we could
throw a baseball into orbit around the earth. But, thats not all - those raptorial
appendages are so light and strong that the Pentagon is researching them to figure out if
we can make the same material for body armor for soldiers. Why does God make
creatures like this? I think God gets a kick out of it - and he sure seems to love pizzaz.
You could spend a hundred lifetimes finding and studying new and bizarre and wonderful
creatures in Gods good world and you wouldnt get to a thousandth of them.
The praise of all creation
But theres another reason God made all these creatures. In first service we sang, All
Creatures of our God and King/Lift up your voice and with us sing... That great hymn is
based on, among others, Psalm 150 where the last verse says, Let everything that has
breath praise the Lord. The idea is that every breathing creature that walks, flies, crawls,
swims or slithers on the earth, is to voice a song of praise to their creator. We, along with
all creatures of our God and King, form the great choir of creation to praise our glorious
God.
Once you know this is going on, you can see it everywhere:
The songs of humpback whales - long, complex, insistent melodies that travel
hundreds of miles through the ocean - the writer Lewis Thomas says, Sometimes,
in the intervals between songs, they have been seen to breach and leap clear of
the water, landing on their backs, awash in the turbulence of their beating
flippers. It is as if they are showing pleasure in how their songs came out, and
even perhaps their praise for the joy of life.
The missionary Lesslie Newbigin writes of the nights he spent in the jungles of
India - said the dark was full of sounds - the roar of lions and the shrieks of
jackals and the jabberings of monkeys. And, said Newbigin, who hears all
these things - there in the depths of the jungle...night after night? Well, God
hears them, his creatures sing him songs in the night and God loves the music
Lewis Thomas says that even termites make percussive sounds to each other by
beating their heads against the floor in the dark, resonating corridors of their
nests, and that analysis of the sound has revealed that the beats occurs in regular,
rhythmic phrases, like notes for a tympani section. Fish, says Thomas, make
sounds by clicking their teeth, blowing air, and drumming with special muscles
against tuned inflated air bladders.
Thomas suggests that if we could hear the combined sound that rises from all
Gods creatures, it would lift us off our feet. But God hears it and he is pleased.
3

Gods concern for animals

Some people think God cares only about humans, but thats just not biblical.
Consider this - the Bible contains a number of commands to respect animals - not to
abuse them.
In fact, the Sabbath command, in Exodus, includes not only Israelites, not only
human beings, but also the animals. God thought enough of them that the
animals, too, were to have a day of rest.
Consider the end of the book of Jonah:
The pouting prophet wants God to wipe it out city of Nineveh, because he is
perversely peeved that they repented at his preaching and that God forgave them and this is what God says to Jonah:
And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are
more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right
hand from their left, and also many animals?"
And then theres our reading from Revelation. Its a scene from the throne room of the
Almighty. It gets to the question some children scribbled on the What Would You Ask
God board - is my dog, or cat, in heaven?
The presence of animals in heaven - thats whats hinted at in our reading from
Revelation. Around Gods throne are twenty-four elders, who are representative
of human beings from every time and place. They praise God. And also around
the throne are four creatures - weird creatures, to us. They are described in highly
symbolic language - faces like a lion, an ox...six wings, eyes all around. These
strange beasts are also representative - they represent all Gods creatures - the
animals - and suggests that the animals will have a place in Gods new heavens
and new earth, glorifying God right along with us.2
Is your dog or cat in heaven? I dont know - but I hope our old Golden Retriever
Boone is there - and I know for sure, animals are part of the new heavens and new
earth.
The gospel is for all creatures
The gospel of Jesus Christ is for us - but not just for us. Jesus Christ died for our sins to
bring us back into relationship with God - but thats only part of the story. Jesus taught
and preached incessantly about the Kingdom of God - Gods reign over all the earth - and
4

said in him Gods reign was breaking into the world. And when the resurrected Jesus
ascended into heaven, an angel standing there said to the apostles, hes coming back.
And so he is - to bring a new heavens and a new earth, a new creation where there is no
more crying or death or pain or suffering - and no more suffering for animals, either.
You see, the world is fallen. Death, decay, suffering. And thats affected all of nature.
We have this little 8 pound dog Raleigh. Half Bichon, half Poodle. He lives with our
daughter Emily now. Sweet, affectionate, fluffly little lap dog.

And yet. One day when were living in South Carolina Raleigh was out in the backyard
and came to the back door with one of his squeaky toys in his mouth, he was having a
grand time with it. Until we looked closer and realized what we thought was a squeaky
toy was a little baby rabbit. That squeaked in terror just like his squeaky toys. He had
badly wounded the bunny and we took it an animal rescue place and they said, its a
goner. Our fluffy little dog was a savage killer.
Nature is red in tooth and claw, one poet said. The Bible says this isnt the way God
meant it to be. Jesus Christ came to begin the beginning of a new world, and calls us to
be part of what hes doing. And part of that, is to recover our original calling to care for
5

Gods creatures.
Our abuse of creation
In Genesis God gives humankind dominion over creation. Very often, weve
misunderstood what that means, and used and abused Gods creatures and creation. But
dominion meant to act as Gods caretaker of creation, which goes along with being
created in the image of God - one meaning of that is that we bear Gods seal of authority we act in Gods stead - we are given responsibility to care for the world.
Obviously, weve messed that up. Thats one result of our fall into sin and alienation
from God. And in chapter 9 of Genesis God says that the creatures of the earth now live
in dread of us. They sure do.
An example: A newspaper article that appeared shortly after the Berlin Wall came down
in 1989 that reported that the thousands of dogs that had been trained to guard the border
had to be put to death because they could no longer be trained to be peaceful pets - our sin
corrupted their nature and made them so vicious they could not live in peace.
An example: Factory farms. As Matthew Scully writes in his book Dominion When a
quarter million birds are stuffed into a single shed, unable even to flap their wings, when
more than a million pigs inhabit a single farm, never once stepping into the light of day,
when every year tens of millions of creatures go to their death without knowing the least
measure of human kindness, it is time...to ask what we are doing and what spirit drives us
on.
Our inhumane treatment of livestock, the late Senator Robert Byrd warned in 2001, is
becoming more widespread and more and more barbaric...Such insensitivity is insidious
and can spread and be dangerous. Life must be respected and dealt with humanely in a
civilized world.
And the examples of our neglect and cruelty are everywhere - elephants - majestic,
intelligent creatures - are slaughtered for their tusks. Sharks are hauled onto boats, their
fins cut off to make shark fin soup - and dumped back into the ocean to suffer and die.
You read and see so many examples, it makes you just want to shut it out.
Anticipating the new creation
But like I said, God sent Jesus to begin the beginning of a new world. Christians are
people who live leaning forward towards the new creation - and who by our actions now
give the world a preview of a better world that is emerging in our midst.
Here are some basic things we can do as followers of the Lord Jesus Christ:

1. Support the protection and conservation of wildlife. There are lots of great
organizations that do this, there is a chapter of one right here - the Izaak Walton Society.
2. Be discerning about what you eat. Our demand for the cheapest food possible has
created factory farming. Animals are being made to suffer by the untold millions because
of human greed. But we dont have to be part of that system. We have options here,
especially living in Franklin County.

Get some of your meat from hunters. Hunted meat is ethically sourced
meat, when you get it from a hunter who respects the animal and only
takes a clean shot. In South Carolina, where I learned to hunt, there is a
ritual when you kill your first deer. First thing you have to do, is clean it,
and then the other hunters will take some of the deers blood and smear it
on you. What that does is shock you into understanding that you have
taken another creaturess life and that is a morally significant act. Hunted
meat, is ethically sourced meat.

Get your eggs from someone local who has free-range chickens. I get
mine from Ron George, our custodian, or from Jims Farmers Market.

Get your meat from suppliers who raise animals humanely. This is
especially important with pork - pigs are intelligent creatures who deserve
far better than what happens to them in factory farms. Again, there are
farmers around here where you can pick out your own steer and have it
killed, dressed and packaged for you. There are websites that will help
you find suppliers who sell meat that was raised humanely.

Closing
Lawrence Anthony, a legend in South Africa and author of 3 books including the
bestseller The Elephant Whisperer, bravely rescued wildlife and rehabilitated elephants
all over the globe from human atrocities, including the courageous rescue of Baghdad
Zoo animals during US invasion in 2003.
On March 7, 2012 Lawrence Anthony died. Two days after his passing, the wild
elephants showed up at his home led by two large matriarchs. Separate wild herds arrived
in droves to say goodbye to their beloved man-friend. A total of 31 elephants had
patiently walked over 12 miles to get to his South African House.
Witnessing this spectacle, humans were obviously in awe not only because of the
supreme intelligence and precise timing that these elephants sensed about Lawrence 's
passing, but also because of the profound memory and emotion the beloved animals
evoked in such an organized way: Walking slowly - for days - Making their way in a
7

solemn one-by-one queue from their habitat to his house. Lawrence's wife, Francoise, was
especially touched, knowing that the elephants had not been to his house prior to that day
for well over 3 years.
Yet they knew where they were going. The elephants obviously wanted to pay their
respects, honoring their friend who'd saved their lives - so much respect that they stayed
for 2 days 2 nights without eating anything. Then one morning, they left, making their
long journey back home.
God made and loves the creatures of the earth. They are wonderful, mysterious,
beautiful. Lets recover our calling to love them too. Amen.
Endnotes
1. Cow Gets Loose In North Charleston, in The Post and Courier, April 26, 2012.
2. Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination, p.
62. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1988.