Don Diehl

I have spent my life as a working and sometimes skeptical journalist. From my own small town weekly newspaper to one of the largest daily newspapers in the Southwest (The Daily Oklahoman), I have “dutifully” written features, columns, editorials and “hard” news stories on every subject of which one can think. According to Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) who is one of my favorite writers, the duties of a journalist: “. . . is to keep the universe thoroughly posted concerning murders and street fights, balls, theaters, and park trains, and churches, and lectures, and school houses, and city military affairs, and highway robberies, and Bible Societies, and hay wagons, and a thousand other things, which it is in the province of local reporters to keep track of and magnify into undue importance for the instruction of the readers . . .” — Territorial enterprise, Virginia City, Nevada Territory.

Over the years I have been graciously awarded and recognized by my peers, and by the Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma Press Associations as well as the Associated Press. I won Arkansa’s “Best Editorial” award one year; Best Newspaper and Features in Oklahoma a few times, and in 1977, from Missouri the “National Farm Writer of the Year” award which netted me an all-expense paid [Ciba-Geigy Chemical Corp.] two-week tour of Europe.

But I also have given myself to a second calling in what seems a contradiction or enigma at times — that of a bi-vocational Baptist preacher. Much as with my journalism career, preaching [the preparation and delivery of sermons] was advanced with on-the-job training although I must also claim “gifting and calling” in both vocations.

My preaching grew out of “giving my testimony” of being converted to Christ and living out my life as a Christian in the “news” business. After sensing the call to preach, I began pastoring small Baptist churches [first was country church near Malta Bend, Mo.], and when a could get some seminary training at places like Courts Redford School of Theology in Boliver, Mo., Criswell Bible Institute and Oklahoma Baptist University. For a time I did evangelism and became an associate of the then popular “Prophecy In The News” television ministry in Oklahoma City. I have long been a student of Bible Prophecy and studied and/or preached through the Book of Revelation and Daniel numerous times. My favorite passages, however, as cited in this book, are from the Pauline epistles in the New Testament dealing with the Rapture of the Church and Revelation of Christ at His Second Coming.

I am including these things in this introduction because my publisher says it will help my credibility with you the reader as one who “knows what he is talking about.” So be assured as a journalist and a serious student of the Bible, I have checked my sources. I have consumed many writings on these subjects, but when it comes to theological subjects like “the rapture” [catching away] of believers, “eternal life” and “soul” -- the source, of course, is Holy Scripture — The Bible — the revealed Word of God.

Even though I am approaching this from a Biblical or Christian World View, it is hoped that those with other views will at least read and weigh this idea of pets in the afterlife. Everyone has a world view. Some are religious with other bibles and gods. Most are secular and informed by secular education, humanist thought and philosophy. Talk to three different people among the hedges and highways and you will likely hear three different and opposing views of the world. There are even different and debatable ideas among those who call themselves Christians, and yes even among those that would be identified as orthodox or fundamental — especially when it comes to subjects like “the rapture” and “the millennium” two of the heavies dealt with in this treatise on “Lost Paradise, Found” — a new heaven and a new earth populated by people (and animals).

So here we go. Whether you believe or don’t believe -- if you have ever wondered about what happens after this life, or about any kind of continuum if today there was a concluding event; if you are a dog lover; a student of eschatology; a curious seeker; or a died-in-the wool, can’t help yourself skeptic — this book is offered.