A Wonderful Future for Planet Earth

“RESEARCH shows Earth is now the warmest it has been in 600 years,” reports the Toronto Globe and Mail. In 1995 a heat wave in the central United States claimed the lives of more than 500 people in Chicago. Similar extreme conditions befell India and Australia, while England experienced “the third driest summer in 200 years.”

What is the cause of this? Henry Hengeveld, a climate expert with the federal Environment Department in Canada, says: “The balance of evidence suggests there is a discernible human influence on the global climate.” According to the Globe and Mail report, “the strange weather is consistent with computer models simulating the effects of global warming, thought to be caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels.”

The existence of global warming is still debated in scientific circles. Nevertheless, The New Encyclopædia Britannica observes: “Humankind is abusing the atmospheric environment faster than it is understanding it.”

Happily, the Bible tells us that the earth is “standing even to time indefinite.” (Ecclesiastes 1:4) This is because the Creator, Jehovah God, will not allow man or any natural forces to destroy it. On the contrary, he will “bring to ruin those ruining the earth.”—Revelation 11:17, 18.

Additionally, the Bible assures us that Jehovah God has a wonderful future in store for our planet, Earth, and for all obedient mankind. “The meek ones themselves will possess the earth, and they will indeed find their exquisite delight in the abundance of peace.” How happy we can be that earth’s future is in God’s hands, not man’s!—Psalm 37:11; 72:16; Isaiah 65:17-25; 2 Peter 3:13.

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[Picture Credit Line on page 32]

NASA photo