and everyone that is living and exercises faith in me will never die at all.”​—JOHN 11:25, 26.

1. For a person never to die off our earth would mean what for that favored person?

FOR a person never to die at all would mean that such a favored individual would stay living as a mortal man or woman here on earth for all time! That is a reasonable conclusion to draw, is it not? And is it not in agreement with the above words of Jesus Christ spoken over 19 centuries ago? Yes!

2, 3. (a) What hope do the Hebrew Scriptures hold out? (b) What generally is the outlook of the religious systems of Christendom?

² The sacred Hebrew Scriptures, from Genesis to Malachi, hold out no heavenly hope, and so the Jews who held strictly to these Scriptures had no heavenly hope or desire. But the Hebrew Scriptures do hold out the hope of everlasting life. (Psalm 37:29; Job 14:13-15) To a natural circumcised Jew everlasting life on earth under the Kingdom of the promised Messiah was a normal hope and expectation.

³ Generally, however, that is not the outlook of the religious systems of Christendom. They believe and teach that we humans have an immortal soul inside our mortal body and that at our unavoidable death this soul is liberated and escapes into the invisible spirit realm. There it undergoes judgment and is assigned by God either to a heaven of bliss or to a place of punishment in endless torment if the person was not a faithful Christian. And the general view of Christendom is that the earth, the sun, the moon and the stars are to be burned up, destroyed, in a universal conflagration.

4. Why would never dying off our earth not seem like good news to many people who have in mind its present state?

⁴ According to such a religious view, it could never come true that “millions now alive will never die off our earth.” Yet, many people may ask us, Who would want to live on a planet plagued, as it now is, with famines, pestilences, earthquakes, wars, international and racial hatreds, along with the stockpiling of nuclear weapons of war that threaten all human existence on earth? If such horrendous things were to afflict our earth endlessly, most reasonable people would want to get away from it​—even by death!

Original Purpose for Earth

5. What was the state of the earth when God put mankind upon it, and how does God feel toward mankind?

⁵ However, at the very start of human existence, the Creator gave the earth to humankind as their eternal home. Then it was indeed a ‘good earth.’ The Bible’s account of creation tells us that, after the Creator had prepared earthly conditions for the first man and woman and placed them upon the earth, “God saw everything he had made and, look! it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31) If it had not appeared very good to the Creator, he would never have placed his human children here in the first place. The very writer of the creation account says of God the Creator: “The Rock, perfect is his activity, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness, with whom there is no injustice.” (Deuteronomy 32:4) Almighty God has no record of work, or activity, for which to apologize to anyone. As a good Father, he loved mankind at the start. He still loves mankind.​—John 3:16.

6, 7. Why can we be confident that God’s creation of the earth and man upon it will not prove to be a vain project?

⁶ Happily God’s creating of earth and of man upon it is not to be a vain project. Setting a God-honoring goal before the first man and woman, God authorized Adam and Eve to be fruitful with perfect children and to fill the earth with them. They were also instructed to subdue the earth to a global Paradise and to exercise dominion over all the subhuman creatures on the earth. (Genesis 1:28) Sadly, after more than 6,000 years of human existence and experience, mankind has failed to do what it was authorized to do. Worse still, humans now threaten to wipe themselves out of existence most violently by their own hateful inventions. But mankind’s making itself, for the most part, a failure has not made God the Creator a failure.

⁷ The original purpose of God respecting our earth will be fulfilled. We have God’s assurance for that! (Isaiah 55:11) At Ecclesiastes 1:4 the Bible says: “A generation is going, and a generation is coming; but the earth is standing even to time indefinite.” And at Isaiah 45:18 God the Creator refers to himself as “the Former of the earth and the Maker of it,” and adds: “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.’” And “inhabited” it will yet be in God’s due time with a perfect race of humankind, favored with the gift of eternal life!

Surviving Into the “New Earth”

10, 11. (a) In their predictions, what do students of world affairs not take into account, and so what can we survive, and into what? (b) What can we learn from the survival of Noah and his family through the Flood?

¹⁰ The picture that students of world affairs generally paint leaves no hope of human survival on earth into a new and better system of things. Thankfully their thoughts are not the thoughts of earth’s Creator, neither are their ways his ways. (Isaiah 55:8-11) Their thoughts are not based on what happened on the earth long ago in the days of the man Noah. All the nuclear bombs and other high explosives of the nations cannot match in power the global Deluge that then poured down from the skies to put an end to that old world of violence. Mercifully Jehovah God the Creator made provisions for the human family to survive the disastrous end of the world at that time so as to continue on earth.

¹¹ As regards the human survivors of that ancient world, there were eight of them, namely, Noah and his wife, and their three sons and their wives. Through these eight human souls our race was given a new start, in righteousness. (2 Peter 2:5; 3:6) This serves as a pattern for the near future. (Genesis 9:1-7) What it shows is that, just as Noah and his family survived the end of the world in their day, so we can survive the end of this world into the new system of things that is so near at hand!

12, 13. (a) Why do millions today not fear the end of this old system of things? (b) Concerning what does the prayer taught us by the Son of man assure us about our literal earth?

¹² Millions today on earth appreciate that the “new heavens” and the “new earth” are immediately ahead of us. They do not fear the end of the present old world, even though it is to take place as if in a fire enveloping both heaven and earth. They know from the reliable Word of the Creator of all things that our literal earth will survive just as it did at the finish of the first world in the days of their forefather Noah. The inspired psalmist made this comment about our earth: “As regards the heavens, to Jehovah the heavens belong, but the earth he has given to the sons of men.”​—Psalm 115:16.

¹³ “The sons of men” were made, not for heaven, but for the earth, where the Creator authorized them to dwell. Down here on earth the Great Teacher who called himself “the Son of man” taught his disciples to pray to the Creator, saying: “Our Father in the heavens, let your name be sanctified. Let your kingdom come. Let your will take place, as in heaven, also upon earth.” (Matthew 24:37; 6:9, 10) For that prayer to be answered by the “Hearer of prayer” through the coming of his heavenly Kingdom, our literal earth must survive the approaching end of the present doomed system of things. (Psalm 65:2) Upon it, surviving mankind will do the heavenly Father’s will just as the angels in heaven loyally do it.

14. Who will start off the “new earth,” and how will that new earth be enlarged?

¹⁴ What a marvelous prospect thus lies before doers of God’s will on the cleansed earth! The human survivors of this present world, who look forward to endless service of the heavenly Father on a Paradise earth, will start off the “new earth” under the Messianic “new heavens.”