Scientific Description of the Event

By the end of Earth Event 3, there were oceans covering most if not all of the Earth. There was also some sunlight coming through a dark but diffuse cloud cover.
What happened next was the stabilization of the water cycle on the early Earth. The water cycle is the continuous movement of water between the surface of the Earth and the atmosphere. It includes evaporation (water turning into vapor), condensation (vapor forming clouds), and precipitation (rain falling back to the surface).

This water cycle is the natural result of clouds above the Earth that allow sunlight through to the water on the surface of the Earth. As the sunlight warms the surface water, some of that water would evaporate back into the atmosphere. As the water vapor rose through the atmosphere and cooled, it would condense into clouds again. Those clouds would then release rain, and the process would repeat. What started on the early Earth as simple cooling and condensation then became a repeating cycle.

The precursor of a stable water cycle probably started sometime during Event 3 during its long period of heavy rainfall. But with Event 4, the water cycle on the Earth became stable. According to the current scientific understanding, the water cycle stabilized sometime between 4.0 to 3.8 billion years ago.

The formation of the water cycle was extremely important for Earth’s future. The water cycle helps control temperature by moving heat around the planet. When water evaporates, it absorbs heat from the Earth. When water vapor condenses into clouds, it releases heat into the atmosphere. This constant movement of energy from heat helps prevent temperatures from becoming too extreme. The water cycle also shapes the surface of the planet. Rainfall causes erosion, breaking down rocks and carrying sediments into the oceans. These processes helped form the earliest sediments and may have created environments where the first simple life forms could eventually appear.

In summary, the beginnings of the water cycle on early Earth began in the Hadean Eon with a hot, molten world wrapped in steam. As the planet cooled, steam condensed into thick clouds. Those clouds produced enormous rainfall that formed the first oceans. Once oceans were stable, then evaporation, condensation, and precipitation began repeating in a steady pattern. This repeating pattern became Earth’s water cycle. By 3.8 billion years ago, Earth’s water cycle had become stable.

Scientific Evidence for this Event

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How the Event Description Harmonizes with Genesis 1

We shall now take a look at how the scientific description of the development of the water cycle is in harmony with what is described for Day 2 in Genesis 1:6-8.

And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.”

So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so.

God called the vault “sky.”

Genesis 1:6-8

The passage itself does not explicitly use the words of “water cycle”. However, in this passage, we see where God made a vault that He called the “sky”. This sky was between the waters above and the waters below. It is straightforward to see that the waters below the sky would correspond to the oceans that covered most of the Earth by this time. Also, for thousands of years mankind has associated water and rain with clouds. So, it is easy to see that the water above the sky would be the clouds. So, now we are just left with the question of whether the appearance of the space between the clouds above and the oceans below would necessarily lead to the development of the water cycle. Scientists have come up with certain scenarios where there could be clouds above and water on the surface of a planet and there would be no water cycle. An example of such a case is if the crust of the planet was made of minerals and compounds that trapped the water. But such was not the case of the early Earth. Given the early Earth conditions, then having a “sky” between the clouds above and the water covered Earth below, then the natural result would be the development of a water cycle. So, this is the reasoning behind saying that there is harmony between the development of the water cycle on the early Earth and the description given in Genesis 1:6-8.

We also have physical evidence from sedimentary rock in Greenland that clearly shows evidence of water movement. Some of the science in this case uses modeling. But the modeling in this case is not about the transparency of the sky as it was for Day 1 and will be for Day 4. But this modeling is for the behavior of water, which is more measurable. Given that we have concrete evidence for a water cycle at about 3.8 billion years ago, and given that the Genesis 1:6-8 passage is reasonably understood as a water cycle, then our rating for this harmony for Earth Event 4 is rated Very Consistent.