The Heretical Book of Ellis

This Sunday I volunteered to teach Sunday School at Church, and here's what I came up with!

The lesson in our manual was Lesson 5: The Creation. Being the visual artist that I am I decided to make a supplementary handout for the class that I was willing to draw myself that illustrated the simple steps from our pre-existence in heaven through the seven days of creation. A simple task right?

Well, by the time I laid pencil on paper, or better said "inexpensive bic pen on paper," I started improving upon my original design. I have always been intrigued by natural science and physics, and I was actually a physics major my first year in college. I have always been intrigued by how much true Science and true Religion actually do not conflict, especially in the arena of The Big Bang theory and Evolution so I decided to include a few side-notes in the visual handout I was making.

As you can see below the earth icon, the first of my "few" side notes were notes reminding me to explain that the King James translation of the Bible was weak and modern translations of the original hebrew show that in the first "period" God separated the heavens from the earth, thus allotting 500 billion years for the Big Bang o do its job naturally. At that point I figured that if I was willing to make a few sidenotes on the Big Bang, why not include a few more about evolution in the Old Testament... so I did (see more below Earth Icon).

This of course became an addiction.

After the Evolution notes I could not resist showing how, though man did not come from monkeys, he definitely descended from simpler forms of human life, i.e. Homo Erectus, Homo Habilus, and so on. Some of these cavemen were massive, and though homo sapiens eventually evolved alongside them to become the chosen vessels into which God "breathed life," that these massive earlier men suddenly went away, thus prompting the more than seven references to giants on the Old Testament and Book of Moses! (See Genesis 6:4)

And...now that we've conquered Big Bang, Evolution, and Giants, and at least one major Old Testament's observation of paranormal phenomenon, then why not take the full plunge and talk about Isaiah's observation of flying orbs, german foo-fighters, and how "UFO"s, both foreign and domestic, and the string theories and space-time continuems that make space their travel possible can explain God, Heaven, and a whole lot of other things!

By the time I was done, this masterpiece was the final result(see attached photo)! It was a Saturday night and I didn't want to have to break the Sabbath by photocopying my little eight and a half by eleven piece of heaven, (Yes, this was my Saturday night) so I quickly ran to the local FedEx-Kinkos on Park Ave.

Unfortunately, the 8.5 by 11 piece of paper I originally drew on was so loaded to the margins with pictures that I had to photocopy it onto an 11 1/2 by 17 piece of paper fro it to fit. To help me figure out the machine, the local kinkos guru, we will call him Marcus, and his expertise were enlisted. He came over to the machine helped me load the document, and then raised his eyebrows when the final products came out. He asked for an explanation of everything on the page and we got lost in doctrinal conversation for the last half-hour that the store was open. Before finally peeling ourselves away from eachother, upon the stern reminder of the manager that the store was closing, I gave him the first copy of my hand-out (now a full-blown double-page spread titled "The heretical Book of Cardon: Non-doctrinal musings for Sunday School") the copies of the prophet cycle and the origins of the book of Mormon I had drawn for him right there in the store, along with a copy of my business card and an open invitation to church, all stapled into one.

He thanked me heartly and then proclaimed, "You should write a book, man, really, you should write a book!"

I think I will...