Baptism actually existed as ritual cleansing all the way back to Moses. And when John baptized, no one questioned what he was doing or even took the time to explain it. If we go to the Bible we learn almost nothing about the ordinance. But Peter explains that the flood was a type of baptism.
While Jesus body lay in the tomb, he said, his spirit went to Paradise, where he "preached to the spirits in prison." He writes that these are the spirits "which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water."
Notice they were saved "by water" and not by the ark. He then likened it to baptism, “the like figure where unto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ."
One non-LDS scholar, in addressing baptism before John, writes:
The liturgical use of water was common in the Jewish world. The Law of Moses required ablutions (washings) on the part of priests following certain sacrifices and on certain individuals who were unclean because of an infectious disease (Num. 19:1-22; Lev 14,15, 16:24-28). The natural method of cleansing the body by washing and bathing in water was always customary in Israel. The washing of their clothes was an important means of sanctification imposed on the Israelites even before the law was given a Mt. Sinai (Ex 19:10). The use of water for cleansing was used symbolically as well in such passages as Eze 36:25 where God says, "I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities...." We do not believe that the practice of baptism for the remission of sins as taught in the New Testament was based in any way on the Old Testament, however the Old Testament washings with or in water that were for the purpose of physical cleansing can be seen as a type or shadow of New Testament baptism, which is for the purpose of spiritual cleansing (1 Peter 3:21).
And Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise write concerning baptism before Jesus as referenced in the Dead Sea Scrolls:
On the heels of this text, we come upon a series of fragments related to baptism. By baptism, of course, the reader should realize that the proponents of this literature did not necessarily mean anything different from traditional Jewish ritual immersion. The terminologies are synonymous, though the emphasis on baptismal procedures at Qumran is extraordinary. This can be seen not only in texts such as the one represented by these fragments and the well-known Community Rule, iii, 1-4, which in describing baptism makes reference to 'the Holy Spirit', but also the sheer number of ritual immersion facilities at the actual ruins of Qumran -- if these can be safely associated with the movement responsible for this literature.
Once again, one is confronted with the vocabulary of 'Glory,' this time in terms of 'a law of Glory' (4.3), as well as, if our reconstruction is correct, 'the purity of Righteousness' or 'Justification' (4.4). There is reference to 'making atonement for us', being 'cleansed from pollution' as one 'enters the water', and the usual 'Laws of your Holiness' and 'Truth of Your Covenant'.
The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered, New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 199.
Heaven » The moon does not give Earth its seasons.
Actually it does. No one really knows where the moon came from, and we've seen nothing like a planet our size with a moon the size of ours. Someone or something brought that monster into our orbit in such a way that it stabilizes Earth precisely. Without it, man could not survive on this world. We would not have seasons but would wobble to and fro with our weather changing radically from week to week.
