The Sea of Glass
- stephenstrent7
- Jul 12
- 4 min read
An image of Sirius A and Sirius B taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Sirius B, which is a white dwarf, can be seen as a faint point of light to the lower left of the much brighter Sirius A. (arrow, Wikimedia) A white dwarf is about the size of our Earth but is about 200,000 times as dense.
Where Science Meets the Doctrine and Covenants, for the Come Follow Me lesson July 14-20; Doctrine and Covenants 77-80
In Doctrine and Covenants 77, Joseph Smith was able to ask questions directly of the Lord and receive direct answers. One of those questions: 1: Q. What is the sea of glass spoken of by John, 4th chapter, and 6th verse of the Revelation?
A. It is the earth, in its sanctified, immortal, and eternal state.
What we understand from astronomy in what follows is taken from my Chapter 7, Creation of the Stars, in my book, The Infinite Creation: Unifying Science and Latter-Day Saint Theology, Cedar Fort, 2020:
The creation of the stars apparently proceeded in the following manner. After the Big Bang, the distribution of the earliest elements, hydrogen and helium, was not uniform; but those elements were distributed as cloud-like clusters by quantum gravitational fluctuations in the foam-like background of dark matter.1 Those clouds of hydrogen and helium coalesced and condensed by the force of the gravity within halos of dark matter, to form the early stars and galaxies. The earliest stars were giant but short-lived spheres of hydrogen, lasting a matter of only a few million years each, before exploding into supernovae. Those early stellar explosions created the rest of the elements that exist today—scattering them across space and seeding the universe with the matter that would form the long-term stars and planets.
Our sun is one of those later stars, now composed of about 75 percent hydrogen, 25 percent helium, and trace amounts of various metals. Its energy derives from the fusion of hydrogen—producing helium as the by-product. It began burning about 4.6 billion years ago and has enough fuel left to burn for approximately another 5 billion years. As the hydrogen fuel is depleted, it will consume helium and other elements by fusion, until those are also depleted.2 During this process, the helium will become compressed—speeding the rate of hydrogen combustion and expanding the outer regions of the sun into a red giant, which will consume the inner planets, including the Earth. The compressed helium in the core will become hot enough to fuse into carbon. Some of the helium and carbon will fuse to form oxygen.3
In much larger stars, carbon and oxygen will fuse to form larger elements, but in stars the size of the sun, those two elements will collect at the center. The outer layers of the red giant eventually, after a few million years, will be shed into space as a planetary nebula and the core will remain as a white dwarf star, composed mostly of carbon and oxygen. A white dwarf is only about the size of the Earth but is incredibly dense and hot—about half the mass of the sun and 200,000 times as dense as the Earth.4 Over the next billion years or so, the white dwarf will begin to cool down. The carbon and oxygen will form a crystalline lattice resembling a diamond.5 It is estimated that this diamond in the sky will last for around 1034-1036 years or more—essentially for eternity.6
This eternal diamond is reminiscent of the “sea of glass” mentioned in Revelation, “And before the throne [of God] there was a sea of glass like unto crystal…” (Revelation 4:6) John further stated, “And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire: and them that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name, stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God.” (Revelation 15:2) Joseph Smith asked God, “What is the sea of glass spoken of by John, 4th chapter, and 6th verse of the Revelation?” And God answered, “It is the earth, in its sanctified, immortal, and eternal state.” (Doctrine and Covenants 77:1) Joseph also taught the Saints living in Ramus, Illinois in 1843, “The angels do not reside on a planet like this earth; But they reside in the presence of God, on a globe like a sea of glass and fire, where all things for their glory are manifest, past, present, and future, and are continually before the Lord.” (Doctrine and Covenants 130:6-7)
Thus, it appears that the final destiny of the Earth is to be consumed by the sun, which, in turn, will become a diamond-like white dwarf resembling a sea of glass where exalted beings will dwell forever in the presence of God. Doctrine and Covenants section 77 was received in March 1832; section 130 was given April 2, 1843, eleven years later. Even though the answer given in 1832 was, “It is the earth, in its sanctified, immortal, and eternal state,” Joseph Smith’s statement in 1843 was that the sea of glass was “not…a planet like this earth.” A white dwarf is technically not this earth, but is derived from our own sun, which might be thought to replace the Earth. Perhaps such fate for our solar system can account for the apparent dual answers given in sections 77 and 130.
Trent Dee Stephens, PhD
References
1. Wheeler, J. A., Geons, Physical Review, 97: 511-536, 1955; see also Ng, Y. Jack, Quantum foam, gravitational thermodynamics, and the dark sector, J. Phys.: Conf. Ser., 845: 012001
4. Ibid
6. Adams, Fred C. and Laughlin, Gregory, A dying universe: The long-term fate and evolution of astrophysical objects, Reviews of Modern Physics, 69:337–372, 1997
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