Welcome to Living Water Baptist Church of Vinton
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The church is not a building, but a community of imperfect people who are being transformed by God's grace.
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Letter from the Pastor
Do animals/Pets go to Heaven when they die?
Martin Luther believed animals would be in heaven, basing his thought on the restoration texts of Acts 3:21 & Romans 8:18-22:1. C.S. Lewis & the late Rev. Billy Graham also came to the same conclusion based on these texts & the peaceful animals & New Earth texts of Isaiah 11:6–8, 65:17 & Revelation 21:1. Hebrews 4:12, 1 Thess 5:23, Genesis 2:7-8: Theses passage of scripture makes us aware that the spirit & the soul are not the same. So what’s the difference between the spirit & the soul? Let’s add one more component to the mix, the body or the house that we live in. My body just houses my soul & spirit. When we think of the body or the house we live in, we view it as touching the material world through the 5senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste & touch. Body can’t do anything but the soul uses the body to see, taste, hear, feel & smell. The soul makes the body alive. Repeatedly in the Bible, people are referred to as “souls” (Exodus 31:14; Proverbs 11:30). Read Genesis 35:18; So her soul or very life was departing from her. The Hebrew word Nephesh means Soul & is translated to English as; living being, life, creature, mind, desires, heart, appetite, persons. This understanding comes into focus when we examine Deuteronomy 6:5 which is the 1st & chief commandment given to the children of Israel: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart & with all your soul (nephesh) & with all your might” (Psalm 49: 7-8) “No one can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for them [the ransom for a nephesh is costly, no payment is ever enough] so that they should live on forever & not see decay” (Psalm 49: 15) “But God will redeem my soul (nephesh) from the power of the grave; for He shall receive me.” So we are not bodies with souls; we are souls that have bodies. Our souls are the personality centers of our beings from which our mind, will & emotions operate. Spirit: Our spirit was created by God so that we can contact & receive Him. Only our spirit has the ability to contact God. John 4:24: We know that human beings & the animal kingdom are souls aka breath of life. Animals have a soul in the sense that they possess life. But do Animals have a Spirit?? Eccl 3:18-21:So as one dies so dies the other. They all have one breath; man has no advantage over animals, for all is vanity. Who knows the spirit of the sons of men, which goes upward & the spirit of the animal, which goes down to the earth: What’s clear is that animals have a spirit & body which separates at death. The Biblical text offers relatively little information on what the next life looks like for animals but animals do have a spirit as stated here & the spirit & the soul does not cease to exist. Make no mistake; animals are Soul,s & do possess a Spirit so they along will live eternally with us. Those who say they cease to exist simply do not understand what the Bible teaches. Thank you for watching our services & may God continue to Bless.
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