The Study of Last Things
Utah State University BFA Thesis Project | Logan, UT
And it shall come to pass, because of the wickedness of the world, that I will take vengeance upon the wicked, for they will not repent… for behold, my blood shall not cleanse them if they hear me not… And they that believe not [go] unto eternal damnation; for they cannot be redeemed from their spiritual fall, because they repent not.
– Doctrine & Covenants 29
I was raised a faithful member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an organization that believes we are in the last dispensation of the fulness of times. Members teach that, in 1820, the Lord called modern-day prophet Joseph Smith to restore the One True Church and begin the gathering of his servants for Christ's imminent return. LDS youth and young adults are entrusted as the key guarantors of spreading this truth and congregating non-believers as the world prophetically begins to decay.
As often occurs when a young bird jumps in flight from its nest, or perhaps as the mother’s wing opens up to the bewildering winds of the internet, it did not take long before I was swallowed into the scape of reality and drawn into a world-shattering investigation of the Church’s historical and doctrinal legitimacy. According to LDS scripture, my apostasy positioned me as one who “the Lord God will send forth flies upon,” whose “tongues shall be stayed that they shall not utter against me; and their flesh shall fall from off their bones, and their eyes from their sockets” (D&C 29).
By conjuring eschatological imagery, somber landscapes and religious allegory, The Study of Last Things narrates an ongoing pilgrimage from a Church that I once knew as the only true thing on the face of the earth, and a deconstruction of a tunnel-visioned world of religious catastrophe.
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– Doctrine & Covenants 29
I was raised a faithful member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an organization that believes we are in the last dispensation of the fulness of times. Members teach that, in 1820, the Lord called modern-day prophet Joseph Smith to restore the One True Church and begin the gathering of his servants for Christ's imminent return. LDS youth and young adults are entrusted as the key guarantors of spreading this truth and congregating non-believers as the world prophetically begins to decay.
As often occurs when a young bird jumps in flight from its nest, or perhaps as the mother’s wing opens up to the bewildering winds of the internet, it did not take long before I was swallowed into the scape of reality and drawn into a world-shattering investigation of the Church’s historical and doctrinal legitimacy. According to LDS scripture, my apostasy positioned me as one who “the Lord God will send forth flies upon,” whose “tongues shall be stayed that they shall not utter against me; and their flesh shall fall from off their bones, and their eyes from their sockets” (D&C 29).
By conjuring eschatological imagery, somber landscapes and religious allegory, The Study of Last Things narrates an ongoing pilgrimage from a Church that I once knew as the only true thing on the face of the earth, and a deconstruction of a tunnel-visioned world of religious catastrophe.
︎