Will animal products be available in Heaven and will our pets be with us?

I love eating meat and so do others. Will we have access to animal products in Heaven?





Additionally, will our pets be there with us? Would I be able to feed fish or poultry based wet-foods to my feline friends in Heaven? This is why I ask about both animal products and pets.|||I can't answer that question for sure, but I don't want you to think for a minute that it's a frivolous question. People do get very attached to their pets, particularly if the pet has been with them for a long time. In our present culture more and more pet cemeteries are appearing, and we see people going to great expense and ceremony, gravestones and all, to dispose of the bodies of their pets.


Within the Christian church there are different schools of thought on this issue. Some people believe that animals simply disintegrate; they pass into nothingness and are annihilated, which is based on the premises that animals don't have souls that can survive the grave. However, nowhere does Scripture explicitly state that animals do not have souls.





The Bible tells us that we have the image of God in a way that animals do not. Now is the 'image of God' what differentiates between soul and non-soul? Those who take a Greek view of soul, that it is this substance that continues indestructibly forever, may want to restrict that to human beings. But again, there's nothing in Scripture I know of that would preclude the possibility of animals' continued existence.





The Bible does give us some reason to hope that departed animals will be restored. We read in the Bible that redemption is a cosmic matter. The whole of creation is destined to be redeemed through the work of Christ, according to Romans 8:21 and we see the images of what heaven will be like; beautiful passages of Scripture tell us about the loin and the lamb and other animals being at peace with one another. Whenever heaven is described, though it may be highly imaginative language, it is a place where animals seem to be present. Whether these are animals newly created for the new heavens and the new earth, or they are redeemed souls for our pets that have perished, we can't know for sure.





All of this is sheer speculation, but I would like to think that we will see our beloved pets again someday as they participate in the benefits of the redemption that Christ has achieved for the human race.|||REALLY???