The Earth’s Baptism

In a sermon delivered to the Saints in Ogden, Utah, 12 June 1860, President Brigham Young stated that the earth has been baptized: “This earth, in its present condition and situation, is not a fit habitation for the sanctified; but it abides the law of its creation, has been baptized with water, will be baptized by fire and the Holy Ghost, and by-and-by will be prepared for the faithful to dwell upon…”¹

Many Church scholars and general members have assumed for years that the baptism referred to by President Young was the Flood of Noah. For example, Kent Nielson, at the time an assistant professor of the history of science at Brigham Young University, stated in a 1980 Ensign article: “Within this enlarged view of a celestial uniformity, the worldwide flood of Noah’s time, so upsetting to a restricted secular view, fits easily into place. It is the earth’s baptism. Brigham Young pointed out that the earth ‘abides the law of its creation, has been baptized with water, will be baptized by fire and the Holy Ghost, and by-and-by will be prepared for the faithful to dwell upon’ (in Journal of Discourses, 8:83).”² 

But why would the Earth need to be baptized twice with water?

We are told that the Earth was covered with water, that is, it was baptized, during the early phases of its creation: “And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.”³

It is clear from these verses that if the waters were to be gathered together in one place, and the dry land was to appear then: 1. The waters must have been previously dispersed over the face of the Earth, and 2. There was no dry land showing. In Abraham 4:9-10, we are told, “And the Gods ordered, saying: Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the earth come up dry… And the Gods pronounced the dry land, Earth; and the gathering together of the waters, pronounced they, Great Waters…”

Scientific data, such as geological and computer modeling data, are in complete agreement with this scenario of the Earth covered with water during its early creation, whereas, as important as the flood of Noah was to Noah, his family, the people he had tried to teach, and to us as a lesson in obedience; there is not a shred of scientific evidence that Noah’s flood was universal. The story of Noah is one of obedience to God’s commandments and warnings—not a scientific discourse proposing that everything on Earth was covered with water and destroyed a mere 4364 years ago.⁴ Noah’s story is important to teach us obedience. The flood did not have to be universal for Noah’s story to be relevant. If the Earth only had to be baptized once to “abide the law of its creation,” then I put my money on the baptism described in Genesis, Moses and Abraham; which is solidly supported by scientific data.

As the molten Earth began to cool, water vapor formed and water began to accumulate on the surface of the earth. The early atmosphere was rich in carbon dioxide and the resulting atmospheric pressure was very high; therefore, oceans of liquid water existed on the young Earth’s surface despite temperatures of nearly 450 degrees F.⁵ Most of the Earth’s water originated from the earliest eons of its history. During the early solar smashup of planetesimals when the planets were forming, apparently many of those planetesimals contained water—captured from the parent nebula as part of their early formation.

Evidence for this early origin of Earth’s water was obtained in 2012 by Adam Sarafian and colleagues at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), who discovered water with the same deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio as Earth’s ocean water in meteorites originating from the asteroid Vesta.⁶ Chunks of rock and even some planetesimals, like Vesta, hundreds of miles in diameter (Vesta is 326 miles in diameter),⁷ left over from the planetesimal collisions of the early solar system are scattered in several orbits around the sun. Most of that rocky debris, called asteroids (star-like) or planetoids (planet-like), if they are large enough, are located in the Main Asteroid Belt.⁸ Vesta is actually large enough to be seen with a simple telescope or even binoculars in the night sky. According to National Geographic author Andrew Fazekas, “It is visible low in the southwestern sky after dusk, about 6 degrees above the bright orange star Antares…Although you can easily see the asteroid with binoculars, a telescope will allow you to watch it move in front of a background of stars.”⁹ 

Sarafian and colleagues have discovered that the earth’s water accrued very early on, about 4.6 billion years ago, while the inner planets of the solar system were forming. To accomplish their discovery, the WHOI group analyzed meteorites formed at different times during the evolution of the solar system.¹⁰ The team first examined the oldest known meteorites ever found on earth. The oldest meteorites had been circulating around within the solar system since about the time the sun was forming, but before the planets were accruing. Eventually they were caught in earth’s gravitational pull and fell to earth. Concerning meteorites in general, the Planetary Science Institute has stated, “It is estimated that probably 500 meteorites reach the surface of the Earth each year, but less than 10 are recovered. This is because most fall into the ocean, land in remote areas of the Earth, land in places that are not easily accessible, or are just not seen to fall (fall during the day)… Five to ten meters is probably the smallest object that would likely survive passage through the Earth’s atmosphere.”¹¹

However, most of the bulk of those five to ten meter meteorites is burned up as they pass through earth’s atmosphere, so the piece that strikes the earth surface and is found, is much smaller. Those meteorites are of all different ages compared to the age of the solar system. The earliest ones originated as fragments broken off as parts of the solar system were forming and then glided through space until finally being caught up in earth’s gravitational pull. So, the meteorite discovered just last week could be one of the oldest ever discovered, such as a piece broken off from Vesta, whereas one discovered ten years ago may have been blown off from an impact of an asteroid with Mars relatively recently. Sune Nielsen, a member of the WHOI team, stated, “These primitive meteorites [from Vesta] resemble the bulk solar system composition. They have quite a lot of water in them, and have been thought of before as candidates for the origin of Earth’s water.” Whereas the WHOI team is not ruling out the fact that some of the Earth’s ocean water may have arrived later (as described below), the team’s data suggest that the bulk of the Earth’s water was here much earlier than previously thought.¹² 

In addition to the water originating in the Earth, comets and meteors from the asteroid belt, described as “dirty snowballs,” also pummeled both the Earth and the Moon, bringing water from outer space.¹³ By 3.2 billion years ago, the entire earth was apparently covered in water, and is referred to as the “Water World”, because the entire earth was covered with a shallow sea during most of the Archaean eon (4 billion to 2.5 billion years ago). The snowball meteors hitting the earth were probably a mixture of silicate rock and ices—some but not all of which was water ice. That frozen mixture would make up the core of the meteor, which would be surrounded by a fragile, brittle crust of rock.¹⁴ 

Between the water inherently present in the primordial Earth, which existed 4.6 billion years ago as the result of water-bearing planetesimal collisions, and additional water brought in to the Earth by water-bearing meteorites over the next two billion years, there was enough water present to cover the entire surface of the earth around 3.2 billion years ago. That unitary ocean was more shallow than the oceans today. About one billion years ago, land appeared relatively quickly (from a geologic perspective) over about a 200-million-year period. The emergence of a large land mass caused changes in ocean currents, extreme weather conditions, and the emergence of seasons. Those changes, in turn probably contributed to the rise in atmospheric oxygen levels, which preceded the explosion of new life on Earth about 500 million years ago.¹⁵ Thus, following the Earth’s baptism, it was prepared for the emergence of plant and animal life on its dry land.

References

1.     Young, Brigham, Religion, Progress, and Privileges of the Saints, &c, Journal of Discourses, 8:83, 1860

2.     Nielson, F. Kent, The Gospel and the Scientific View, Ensign, September, 1980

3.     Genesis 1:9-10; compare Moses 2:9-10; Abraham 4:9-10

4.     Barr, James, Why the World Was Created in 4004 BC: Archbishop Ussher and Biblical Chronology, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 67:575-608, 1984

5.     Sleep, N.H., Zahnle, K., and  Neuhoff, P.S., Initiation of clement surface conditions on the earliest Earth, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98:3666-3672, 2001

6.     Sarafian, Adam R., Nielsen, Sune G., Marschall, Horst R., McCubbin, Francis M., and Monteleone Brian D., Early accretion of water in the inner solar system from a carbonaceous chondrite–like source, Science, 346:623-626, 2014

7.     Russell, C. T.; et al., Dawn at Vesta: Testing the Protoplanetary Paradigm, Science, 336: 684–686, 2012

8.     Redd, Nola Taylor, Asteroid Belt: Facts & Formation, space.com, 4 May 2017

9.     Fazekas, Andrew, Mystery of Earth's Water Origin Solved, National Geographic, 30 October 2014

10.  Sleep et al, 2001

11.  Planetary Science Institute psi.edu/epo/faq/meteor.html, 2018

12.  Ibid

13.  Fazekas Andrew, Mystery of Earth's Water Origin Solved, National Geographic, news.nationalgeographic.com, 30 October 2014; also see the report of the actual study: Sarafian, Adam R., Nielsen, Sune G., Marschall, Horst R., McCubbin, Francis M., and Monteleone Brian D., Early accretion of water in the inner solar system from a carbonaceous chondrite–like source, Science, 346:623-626, 2014

14.  new.nsf.gov/news/scientists-determine-early-earth-was-water-world

15.  Moores Eldridge M., Pre-1 Ga (pre-Rodinian) ophiolites: Their tectonic and environmental implications, Geological Society of America Bulletin, 114: 80-95, 2002