Dear Hearth,
I thought that I would simply continue an aspect of the conversation on Heaven we have been having on email before I got this crazy idea that it might be interesting for others to read our discussions, coming as we do from different, yet similar theologies.
We were discussing Heaven, and whether animals have souls and whether they would all be there or just some specially loved pets, and whether pigs have wings, to quote Lewis Carroll. I suppose one of the reasons we wonder about that is because we just can't envision mosquitoes in Heaven, even if they don't suck blood. I can't envision all those mosquitoes, all the mosquitoes that have ever lived, in Heaven. Or flies. If it isn't too blasphemous of me to say so, I have wondered if maybe they just go to Hell. Maybe Hell is a mosquito or a fly's idea of Heaven anyway, so it wouldn't be like they were being tormented, but rather that they are part of the torment.
But I can't imagine that God would have gone to all the trouble of making animals, only to discard them, their life essence, their spirit. He could have made the world without animals, if the only point of the world was man. Or, if the argument is that God knew, being God, that man would eventually fall from grace, and so He prepared animals in anticipation of the Fall so that we would have another form of companionship after He no longer walked in the Garden with us, or so that we would have clothing and food, He could also have made animals after the Fall - I mean, if that was their only purpose.
He made the rainbow appear in the sky after Noah's Flood, and we are meant to see it as a sign to this day. It seems to me that if animals have no real purpose beyond this world, then He would have made them afterwards, and they too would serve as a sort of sign, a sign of our Fall.
God has also used animals to reprove us, as when Balaam's ass remonstrated with Balaam as to why, after years of service, he was being beaten. I wonder if the point of the story - or one of the points - was to make us see what animals would say, if they did speak, and to impress on us that animals do feel, that they are not simply soulless creatures for us to abuse as we will. Balaam's ass speaks the way any person would, if they felt they were unjustly abused.
God also says, somewhere in the Bible, "a righteous man regards the life of his beast" and tells us not to "muzzle the ox that treads out the corn."
Now with regards to one thing you said in your last email, about Heaven having seasons - you quoted Revelations 22: Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life. It was as clear as crystal. It flowed from the throne of God and of the Lamb. It flowed down the middle of the city's main street. (v2) On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit. It's fruit was ripe every month. The leaves of the tree bring healing to the nations (NIRV) for your thoughts that Heaven has seasons.
It seems to me that this chapter in Revelations is talking about the new earth, since in the chapter preceding chapter 22, John writes, I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem. It was coming down out of heaven from God.
I understand Heaven to be up and we are shown the Holy City coming down. Do you think that the new Heavens and the New Earth are one and the same thing?
Ezekiel 47 references the same vision, and I always understood it to mean the earth, not Heaven, although Ezekiel's vision, makes no specific mention of a particularly new Heaven and a new Earth. But he does write in verse 12, Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not dry up. The trees will always have fruit on them. Every month they will bear fruit. The water from the temple will flow to them. Their fruit will be good for food. And their leaves will be used for healing.
I wonder if the word new in association with the redeemed earth is meant as a descriptor of a world that is so unlike the world we live in that it might as well be new. We are also back to the subject of animals and their place in creation and redemption since we have lions lying down with lambs and children playing on the holes of vipers, and the Lamb of God living among us, and we are told, there will be no more night, and we will not need the light of the sun.
All of that sounds so mysterious to me, that mixture of animals and relations that we do understand, with the idea of no more sun. Is this new earth even a planet anymore?
What do you think?
love, Layla
