Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 118:471 (Jul 1961)
Article: Water and the Word
Author: Henry M. Morris

BSac 118:471 (Jul 61) p. 203

Water and the Word

Henry M. Morris

[Henry M. Morris is Chairman of the Department of Civil Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Virginia.]

“For the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea” (Rev 21:1). Perhaps the strangest and most remarkable aspect of the new earth which God will create, after the millennium and the judgment of the dead at the great white throne, is the absence of the sea. In the present earth, the great oceanic reservoirs of water constitute its predominant geographical feature. Covering over seventy percent of the earth’s surface, the sea is God’s great storehouse of water, the amazing substance which uniquely equips our planet earth to be the abode of man.

There are many, many ways in which water is indispensable for life on the earth. Water, for example, is itself the primary component of all living substance. Over two-thirds of the human body is water. “The life of the flesh is in the blood” (Lev 17:11), and the blood serum is made up of about ninety-two percent water. All nutrition and digestion processes are carried out by means of a water medium. The growth of plant life, the basic source of food for animal life, requires water, together with light, as prerequisites. In fact, practically all important chemical and biological processes involve water in one way or another.

As far as known definitely, the earth is the only place in the entire universe where water exists in sufficient quantity to support life. Certainly no known planet contains anything comparable to our present oceans of liquid water, upon which depends the marvelous hydrologic cycle, the physical mechanism by which water is being continuously conveyed from the oceans through the air to meet the water needs of all parts of the earth.

And yet, despite its basic and profound importance on the present earth, the Bible says that one day there will be “no more sea.” There will be a new earth and a new atmosphere (heavens), but no sea.

But why? Before we can discern an answer to this question, we need to consider in some detail the history and purpose of the sea and the waters of the earth.

BSac 118:471 (Jul 61) p. 204

The Primeval Ocean

“And darkness was upon the face of the deep” (Gen 1:2). In the new earth, there will be no sea; on the primeval earth there was a universal sea! In like manner, a global darkness enveloped the earth at first but, on the new earth, there shall be no night there”