Do animals have a spirit?
Certainly, evolutionists are not certain. They believe, for the most part, that all humans are mere descendants of primitive apes by the process of what they deem evolution – and what I have discovered is that online places such as Quora are but breeding grounds for ignorance when it comes to asking “the world” - Why haven't all primates evolved into humans?
But are they correct? Is man nothing more than an animal, that has an “immortal soul” in a mortal body (as the majority of religionists would have us believe)!? And, can we know for sure!?
Well, thank Almighty God, we can! The Bible plainly reveals to us the living truth of God.
Now, to get to the very heart of the matter, I want to take you back. As I’ve said before, it’s often good to be refreshed of what we have learned – as well as growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For some of you, this may be redundant, but for some of our brethren in countries like Kenya in Eastern Africa, all this may be certainly a great revelation from our Lord and Savior!
It began long ago, in what seems to so many of our peoples as but a story, in the garden of Eden; and it certainly has not been fully understood – not even in the Church of Jesus Christ’s. Certainly, this world’s science doesn’t rightly understand it. I certainly don’t hear my little niece who is 9-years old excitingly talking about it! I don’t hear our nephew who recently graduated from Eckerd College talking about it! Certainly, there is no church that completely comprehends it. Yet it is in black and white – right there in your Bible. And it's been there for some 3,400 years! – conservatively – But, most have never seen it before!
But I want to bring something to you that you might not have thought of before. And later I will mention something that Minister Michael C. Garrett stated in a sermon that certainly should bring great love, joy, and hope to all of our hearts – I know it does mine.
OPEN YOUR EARS AND LISTEN TO WHAT THE SPIRIT HAS TO SAY!
Again, it all gets right back to the garden of Eden. Sadly, so many of our peoples all they know of the garden of Eden is the famous painting of Michelangelo's on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel! But it has to do with the forbidden fruit and the two trees that were in front of Adam and Eve.
When our great God – and in Genesis 1:1 the word God is Elohim, a noun or a name, plural in form, yet normally singular in usage – created Adam (and henceforth mankind) he actually needed TWO THINGS. He needed two kinds of knowledge. Certainly, one kind of knowledge was that he needed to deal with physical matter. And, God created man with the ability to do that. And, here we are 21 years into the 21st century and mankind certainly has done that! One can certainly look all around this world and see the great miraculous things mankind has accomplished so far from the late 1700s up to this century! At least, a great many of them seem miraculous to us.
But man also needed knowledge to have a relationship with his own CREATOR, as well as how to deal with his fellow man. And God did not create man with that knowledge! Do you find this shocking? Many will.
In a Personal I wrote back in September I reminded you that even if Adam had taken of the tree of Life he was going to die anyway – no matter if they were to choose the tree of Life or the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The first death is NOT the ultimate penalty of sin! Had they chosen the tree of Life, they would still have lived out their days and died. But, like what the apostle Paul wrote, “at the twinkling of an eye” they would have been resurrected as wholly spiritual beings. Have you ever thought of this before!? Now, what did his choice have to do with your life today!? After all, Adam lived nearly 6,000 years ago! Well, the answer is – it gets right back to creation.
Now, many will incorrectly quote Romans 5:12 claiming that there was no death before Adam sinned. The apostle Paul was speaking, however, of this second death which has passed on to us - because all have sinned - NOT because of Adam's sin.
Who and what is … God?
A few moments ago I freely gave an answer to a “matter-of-fact” statement someone left on Facebook in regards to the soon-coming Passover, the 14th beginning at sunset, “Shalom - Which God? The God of the Catholics or the God of the Hindus, etc.?” Now, the person who gave this statement is apparently Jewish and mentioned YaHVaHShooa ha MASHIYACH (which is Hebrew for Jesus the Messiah). And when I stated to him that I don’t want to be Jewish (as in Judaism or Judeo-Christian), I wish to be a true Christian – which means follower of Jesus Christ – he wrote back, “Shalom, all these anti-semite sentiment [sic] were inspired by the enemy to distract but haven't you read, ye worship ye know not what, we worship that which we know for salvation is of the Jews. Yachanan 4:22. And so they change and replace and make Xtianity [which I had to actually look up; it means Christianity] another Gospel with a other [sic] Savior Jesus Christ with God and Amen.”
Well, in a typical fashion they quote a partial Scripture, but not the full Scripture. He indeed quoted John 4:22 when our Lord Jesus Christ was speaking to a Samaritan woman, “’ You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.’” He did not, however, finish our Lord’s answer – verse 23 – “’ But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit [which answers – just what is the Holy Spirit? – it’s God – not a separate being], and those who worship Him MUST worship in spirit [or rather through the Spirit of God aided by the very mind of Jesus Christ] and truth [and what is truth? – the living Word of God].’”
It's interesting that we’ve been accused before of preaching another Jesus! And, a few days later he went on to call me Satan himself.
Anyway - yesterday, we had a friend over to the house, and she and my wife were talking about religion. And my wife speaks up and says, “It’s better for a person to go to any church than no church at all.” And I had to vehemently disagree with her. Now, you have all these different religions, but, you gotta understand, they can’t all be right! You know, a whole lot of them have to be wrong! I reminded her of the Catholic Inquisitions – of which I had to explain to her and our friend what they were. The Muslim idea and the Buddhist idea are NOT compatible! Either one of them is right, or one of them is wrong, or they’re both wrong! And so many, you can do that with any religion you can think of. Ask the question: Are some of them right or are some of them wrong!? Have some of them gone astray!? And we’re told there’s only ONE PLACE to find the Truth of God – and that is from the Bible, and that is to be our guide. And this I told them in no uncertain terms.
God is the ultimate Source of all life. He is the Source of everything! God is the CREATOR. And what He is creating in us is character. And a wise man once told us that God cannot create His holy and righteous character by fiat. His character has to have time to build in us. I’m speaking of righteous and perfect SPIRITUAL character in His own created entities.
But, who is… God?
What is… God?
I could have asked my wife and our friend these questions, and I’m sure they would have looked at me dumbfounded. There are a greater number of people jumping on the bandwagon of: “The question of a supernatural God’s existence is unprovable and un-disprovable simply because it’s outside of nature by definition. That no one really can know if a God exists. There’s no way to know.”
Do you know that of all the religions in this world – including this religion called traditional “Christianity” – not one of them knows who and what God is! Again, does that statement come as a shock to you!? Is God one being? Is God three beings in one? Well, the greater majority of this world’s Christianity thinks God is a Trinity – three beings in one God. They are wrong! They just do not understand.
The very first place in God’s living word where God is mentioned in time sequence is in the Book of John chapter 1 – we should all be familiar with it:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2) He was in the beginning with God. 3) All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made” – John 1:1-3.
Again, this revelation from Jesus Christ may seem redundant to some, yet this is knowledge that so few in this world truly grasp. The Word was a personal being; and He was called “the Word.” Originally written in the Greek language, the word was Logos – which translates to Spokesman, or the One who speaks. So, this Word was with God.
God is another being. So now we have two beings. Because then apostle John says, “and the Word was God.”
It’s been explained to us this way: you have a man named Johnson. And there is a man named Robert, and Robert is with Frank, and they are both named Johnson. In other words, Frank’s father is Johnson; and Frank is the son. They are both named Johnson as their surname. Yet, they are both two different people.
Verse 4 – “In Him was life [eternal life], and the life was the light of men.”
So, in “the Word” was life. And unlike what Stephen Hawking hawked and Carl Sagan avoided (he virtually countered any question relating to God by answering, “First of all, what do you mean when you use the word God?”) God is the SOURCE of all life! And life can only come from life! It cannot come from nothingness. And it cannot come from the not living. And in verses 3 & 4 we read that.
Verse 14 – “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”
What the apostle John is saying – and he received this awesome knowledge directly from the mouth of the living Son of God – is that the Word became Jesus Christ. And our Lord Jesus has been gone for some 1,992 years – conservatively. He has existed always. Notice in the Book of Hebrews chapter 7 –
Verse 3 – “without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, …”
Certainly, our minds cannot understand that. We just cannot understand someone having always existed. So, there never was a time when He didn’t exist. And that is true of the Word and the One who is called God the Father.
Again, in the Book of Ephesians chapter 3, the apostle Paul says –
Verse 9 – “ … from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God who created all things through Jesus Christ.”
“For He [the Word] spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast” – Psalm 33:9.
It was done by the Spirit that emanates from the very being of God the Father and from the being God the Son – the Word.
A Temporary Life Is Not Life
So, getting back to the title of this article – do animals have a spirit? There is a huge difference between animals and man. And there certainly is a vast difference between God and man. Yet, man was created in the very image of God. Both man and animals were created out of physical matter.
The very living word of God tells us that animals only have a temporary existence.
"For what happens to the sons of men [to humans] also happens to the animals; one thing befalls them: as one dies, so dies the other. Surely THEY ALL have one breath; man has no advantage over animals [speaking physically here], for all is vanity. 20) All go to one place: all are from the dust, and all return to dust. 21) Who knows the spirit of the sons of men, which goes upward, and the spirit of the animal, which goes down to the earth?" - Ecclesiastes 3:19-21, NKJV.
The Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible translates this verse -
Verse 21 - "Who knows that the ªbreath7307 of man ascends upward and the breath of the beast descends downward to the earth?776" - NAS.
The word spirit here is from the Hebrew word rûah, which is more akin to "breath." In my theological wordbook, it is written, "In living beings, the rûah is their breath, whether of animals (Gen. 7:15; Ps. 104:25, 29), men (Isa. 42:5; Ezk 37:5), or both (Gen. 7:22-23); whether inhaled (Jer. 2:24) or on the lips (Isa. 11:4; cf. Job 9:18." 2
God is wholly composed of Spirit. In other words, He does not have to get life from a breath of oxygen, the circulation of blood, or fueling Himself up with food and water. Man came from the ground. We only have a temporary existence, just like the animals.
Every breath we take we are closer to the process of dying. Man does not have life as our Lord Jesus Christ has. “In Him was life, …” JESUS CHRIST IS THE SOURCE OF ALL LIFE – but, He didn’t give man life. Again, man only has a temporary existence, just like the animals.
There Is A Spirit Within Man
I’d like to show you a huge difference between man and animals.
The prophet Job wrote – through the inspiration of God’s Spirit –
“But there is a spirit in man, And the breath of the Almighty gives him understanding” – Job 32:8.
Animals do not have a spirit. Man needed this spirit to empower his brain with mind power - see 1 Corinthians 2:11. This human spirit enters the human embryo at conception. The spirit is like the “hard drive on a computer” – it stores information. The spirit essence is NOT an immortal soul or an eternal spirit. The spirit in man is NOT the man. It is something in the man. It has no life of itself. At death, it has no consciousness of itself, for it sleeps (1 Corinthians 11:30; 1 Corinthians 15:51; 1 Thessalonians 4:14). Like a tape recorder, it forms a permanent record of the qualities of mind and character built by a man during his lifetime. And much like a used tape is stored lifelessly on a shelf till activated in a recorder, so also does the spirit of man “return to GOD who gave it” after death, until the resurrection when life is again given to a person (Ecclesiastes 12:7). This was the way that our Lord Jesus Christ – through His servant – explained it to me and I hold fast to this that is good. Furthermore: the spirit in man was transmitted from Adam. Spirit comes from the father from a sperm cell – from Adam all down through all humanity.
The FAMILY of God
In Genesis chapter 1, we see a little more about God and THE BEGINNING -
God – and the word here for “God” is Elohim, the Family of God which consists at this present time of God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ – is SUPREME RULER of the universe, HEAD of the GOVERNMENT OF GOD and over the finite universe.
I'd like to add: the other day I saw in the news that astronomers have discovered that there is a “bubble” around this solar system called a heliosphere – that all the planets in this solar system are encased in a magnetic bubble! I found that of most interest!
But, God is more than one being – but one God; and God is a Family. He created man to eventually be born into His Family and to become part of His Family – to literally become a God. Sadly, this world does not know this at all! They don’t know why they were born or for what purpose! They don’t even know the purpose of God!
So, what is to be said of the genetics of God?
This may come as a shock to you who are evolutionists, but when God created the animals on the earth, in the sky, and in the seas, He spoke them into existence! God said, "Let there be" - and there was. But, He did not do this with man.
In the 1st chapter of Genesis, we learn the genetics of animals and ‘everything that creeps on the earth” –
Verse 24 – “Then God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind’; and it was so. 25) And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.”
Animals were created by the Word of God, and when He spoke they were able to exist and to operate in their full capacity.
Verse 25 speaks of the very genetics of God – “Then God [plural in form] said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; …’”
So, notice it does not say, “My image,” it says, “’ Our image, according to Our likeness.’” And God did. Man is in the same form and shape as God. God has two hands, two feet, and five fingers. God has two arms and two legs. God has a mind. Yet, God did not make man of the same composition of which He is composed – Spirit.
“’ God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth’”
God created physical matter. Notice chapter 2 of the Book of Genesis, we know this well –
Verse 7 – “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living [soul].”
 |
| an atom |
I underlined the word life because recall what we just read – “In Him was life.” Minister Michael C. Garrett once spoke of something that is most relevant here. He said something to the effect wouldn’t it be fantastic to discover that every single atom has within it the Spirit of God!?
“DESIGN – throughout the whole of the universe, there’s design. From a snowflake to different mineral deposits. You look – the scientists tell you – at an atom, that you have a little nucleus and flying around it like little satellites are electrons. But it’s the same thing you see when you look at the Earth! You see the Earth (the nucleus) and flying around it is a satellite. Well, you look at the entire solar system. You see the Sun (the nucleus) and surrounding it are these little satellites. The design is consistent throughout nature. It’s consistent because it had ONE DESIGNER! The Almighty God!”
(Garrett, M.C., The Confusion About Death! 2019, pgs. 13-14).
I myself find it most fantastic that the Juno spacecraft discovered that the massive storm on Jupiter's south pole is in the shape of a hexagon! Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC wrote, "In living examples of hexagons ... A digital code made of DNA dictates the placement ... we know of one cause that can generate codes or instructions that lead to functional geometries - intelligence" 1
Now, I know that I'm getting off subject here, but I just have to quickly say - I have since my youth had an understanding that God had purposely created His universe to inexorably run down to a lower energy state - hence the Law of Entropy - see Psalm 102:25, 26. And, I had asked myself, why didn't God create a "perfect" universe where there was no decay, pain, suffering, evil, or death!? And it wasn't until I was twelve years old that I began learning God's answers to these and many more questions!
So, God formed man not out of spirit, but out of the ground – physical matter. Animals breathe too in and out of their nostrils the breath of life - cf. Genesis 7:22. In other words, what came from the dust of the earth became a soul. And in God’s living word He says “’ Behold, all souls are Mine; The soul of the father As well as the soul of the son is Mine; The soul who sins shall die’” – Ezekiel 18:4, 20. And to this very soul, He stated ‘if you partake of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “you shall surely die”’ – meaning, the second death spoken of in the Book of Revelation chapter 20, verses 14-15.
I’m sure you’ve read that many times before. But, do you believe what God said!? What God told Adam “You shall surely die’”!?
Now, in the garden of Eden Satan the devil was there – and he was not in the form of a serpent. The word serpent is but a symbol for evil – cf. Matthew 23:33. Be sure to read “Satan’s World” to discover just what Eve saw when she looked upon Satan the devil in the garden of Eden! Well, Satan the devil got to Adam through his wife, Eve. Saying, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” Twisting that question. So Eve said, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’” And the evil one said, “You’re not going to die! You’re an immortal soul.” And all of humanity has been believing this MOST HORRENDOUS LIE PERPETRATED UPON MANKIND ever since - period. The first known lie told by Satan the devil!
So, animals have never been given FAMILY relationships (as humans experience it). Even angels have not experienced FAMILY status. The family was built upon the GOD-PLAN. And our loving and glorious merciful God bestowed it on MAN! Because MAN is to be born into the GOD FAMILY!
Minister Michael C. Garrett once stated in a sermon – in which he was speaking of a very special cat that he once had called Squirrel. “I hope I get to see her again someday.” In that sermon, he lovingly said something to the effect that when (God willing) he becomes a born member of the FAMILY OF GOD, what keeps him from resurrecting his little fuzzy-faced friend!? – God willing of course. As I stated earlier – this certainly should bring great love, joy, and hope to all of our hearts – I know it does mine.
So, of all life forms – be it amoebas, humpback whales, or spiritual angels – in all of God’s creation, MAN ALONE was created to eventually be born into the FAMILY OF GOD!
Humans, by repentance of their sins, their surrender unto God, and acceptance of Jesus Christ, may be in mind and in attitude – converted. May receive God’s Holy Spirit. Thus, being begotten as God’s children. Being reconciled to God through Jesus – calling Him FATHER!
Humans are, if converted through our Lord Jesus Christ, heirs of the GOD FAMILY. They are to enter His divine FAMILY! They are, even now, the begotten children of God. □
Bibliography:
1) Evolution News & Science Today, "Are Hexagons Natural?" 27 Oct. 2015, Retrieved 14 April 2022.
2) Harris L. R., Archer, L. Gleason, Jr., and Waltke K. Bruce. Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, 1980, # 2131a, pg. 836.
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