Who Will Inherit the Earth?

JESUS answered this question in his Sermon on the Mount: ‘The meek will inherit the earth.’ Centuries earlier the psalmist David had said: ‘The meek will possess the earth.’ Of Jehovah God himself it is said: “The earth he has given to the sons of men.”​—Matthew 5:5; Psalm 37:11; 115:16.

God gives man the guide he needs: “Your word is a lamp to my foot, and a light to my roadway.” (Psalm 119:105) It leads to happiness: “I, Jehovah, am your God, the One teaching you to benefit yourself, the One causing you to tread in the way in which you should walk. O if only you would actually pay attention to my commandments! Then your peace would become just like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.”​—Isaiah 48:17, 18.

But the majority of mankind does not have the meekness to accept divine guidance and thereby reap its benefits. It must assert its independence, must insist on taking the roadway to ruin. Only the meek find “the road leading off into life.”​—Matthew 7:13, 14.

Men today have become misfits. First they pollute themselves morally, then they pollute the earth literally. It is this moral pollution that renders them unfit in God’s eyes to inherit the earth. The following article gives two examples of how the immorality of people so polluted the land that they were cast out of it. Both cases reach back into ancient history.