wordpress if ( have_posts() ) , loop not working

just wondering can anyone see anything wrong with this code. It worked perfectly on the development version, and this is an exact copy.

I thought it may have been something within the loop but I even tried echo 'hello'; straight after the if ( have_posts () ) : and nothing appeared, yet I did the same immediately before the if and it appeared.

Here is the overall code….

if ( have_posts() ) : 
            $the_query = new WP_Query( array ( 'posts_per_page' => 1, 'p' => 4998 ) ); /*  */
             while ($the_query->have_posts() ) : $the_query->the_post(); 
              the_content();
             endwhile;
                wp_reset_postdata();

                endif; 

            ?> 

Thanks for any help.

EDIT : Apologies if my problem sounded vague, basically whats not working is that nothing at all is appearing even though the post ID is correct and there is no other issues regarding css etc as to why it wouldnt appear. And even after trying to just display a word like “hello” after the if , still nothing.
Im just confused as to why this would stop working all of a sudden.
Thanks again.