"To Dress It and to Keep It": Toward a Mormon Theology of Work

Authors

Walker A. Wright

Keywords

Mormon studies, eschatology, apocalyptic literature

Abstract

In the controversial film Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the protagonist, Brian, finds himself in the market square while being pursued by Roman centurions. In the speakers’ corner of the market, three different prophets are shown attempting to gain an audience with tales of Armageddon. One dust-covered wild man shrieks about “the beast . . . huge and black, and the eyes thereof red with the blood of living creatures, and the whore of Babylon shall ride forth on a three-headed serpent.” Next to him, garbed in red, a more refined preacher boldly pronounces that “the demon shall bear a nine-bladed sword. . . . Not two or five or seven, but nine, which he will wield on all wretched sinners.” Finally, a quiet, simple-looking man offers this less-than-extraordinary prophecy: “And there shall in that time be rumors of things going astray, and there will be a great confusion as to where things really are. . . . At this time a friend shall lose his friend’s hammer and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before around 8 o’clock.”

Recommended Citation

Wright, Walker A. (2016) ""To Dress It and to Keep It": Toward a Mormon Theology of Work," BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 55: Iss. 2, Article 8.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol55/iss2/8