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Will the Earth Survive 2012?

▪ “French village faces influx of apocalypse believers . . . They believe the world will end on 21 December 2012, the end of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the ancient Maya calendar.”​—BBC News.

Despite predictions from calamity-howling religious leaders, pseudoscientists, and any other 21st-century prognosticators, earth will be in existence for a very long time. Yes, the earth will survive 2012. As a matter of fact, planet Earth will survive not only that year but also every year thereafter.

The Bible tells us: “Generations come and generations go, while the earth endures for ever.” (Ecclesiastes 1:4, The New English Bible) Also, consider the implications of what is said at Isaiah 45:18: “This is what Jehovah has said, . . . the Former of the earth and the Maker of it, He the One who firmly established it, who did not create it simply for nothing, who formed it even to be inhabited: ‘I am Jehovah, and there is no one else.’”

Would a loving father spend many hours designing and building a toy boat for his son’s delight or a dollhouse for his daughter’s joy, only to destroy it moments after giving it to him or her? That would be cruel! In the same way, God created the earth primarily for the delight of his human creation. To the first human couple, Adam and Eve, God said: “Be fruitful and become many and fill the earth and subdue it.” Thereafter, “God saw everything he had made and, look! it was very good.” (Genesis 1:27, 28, 31) God has not abandoned his purpose for the earth; he will not allow the earth to be destroyed. Regarding all that he has promised, Jehovah emphatically stated: “It will not return to me without results, but it will certainly do that in which I have delighted, and it will have certain success in that for which I have sent it.”​—Isaiah 55:11.

However, it is Jehovah’s will “to bring to ruin those ruining the earth.” (Revelation 11:18) In his Word, he makes this promise: “The upright are the ones that will reside in the earth, and the blameless are the ones that will be left over in it. As regards the wicked, they will be cut off from the very earth; and as for the treacherous, they will be torn away from it.”​—Proverbs 2:21, 22.

When will this occur? No human knows. “Concerning that day or the hour nobody knows,” said Jesus, “neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but the Father.” (Mark 13:32) Jehovah’s Witnesses do not try to predict when God will destroy the wicked. Though they are alert to “the sign” of the end and believe that humankind is living in the Biblical “last days,” they cannot know just when “the end” will occur. (Mark 13:4-8, 33; 2 Timothy 3:1) They leave that solely in the hands of their heavenly Father and his Son.

Meanwhile, Jehovah’s Witnesses occupy themselves with preaching the good news of God’s Kingdom, the heavenly government that will rule and transform planet Earth into a peaceful paradise, one that ‘the righteous themselves will possess and reside forever upon.’​—Psalm 37:29.

[Picture Credit Line on page 10]

Image Science and Analysis Laboratory, NASA-Johnson Space Center