"The account of the deluge is a universal tradition in all branches of the human family. Up to the time of the flood there had been no rain on the earth -- vegetation was sustained by a mist that arose (Gen. 2:6). The waters of the deluge up to that time had constituted a heavy film or envelope which encased the earth and which by divine arrangement broke and descended upon the world partly in heavy rain and partly by a great flood from the two poles. Noah's flood was so timed by divine wisdom to meet a crisis in the affairs of mankind by the breaking of the last of the great rings which originally surrounded the earth, after the manner of the rings of Saturn." R. 3933