What Would You Tell the World If You Knew the Sky Was About to Fall?

There’s a haunting clarity that comes with final words. When someone speaks knowing the end is near, the usual filters drop away. That’s what makes Anthony E. Larson’s Last Lecture so unforgettable. He didn’t rage against the dying of the light. He looked up. He reminded us to look up too.

If you haven’t encountered Larson’s work before, let me briefly introduce him. Anthony E. Larson (1943–2018) was a teacher, journalist, and Latter-day Saint author who spent his life asking a difficult question: What if the ancient sky looked radically different from the one we see now? And more importantly, what if the prophets of old weren’t using metaphor when they described cosmic events—but memory?

He wasn’t the first to ask these questions. But he was one of the few to bring those ideas to the Restoration tradition. Through his books, videos, and lectures, Anthony suggested that the restored gospel cannot be fully understood without recovering its cosmic dimension. From temples to the Book of Abraham, from the visions of Ezekiel to the symbolism atop the Salt Lake Conference Center, he insisted that Latter-day Saints have inherited a legacy written not just in scripture, but in the sky.

Hugh Nibley on Cosmism

In April 2017, not long before his death, he posted a video titled “Hugh Nibley on Cosmism.” It wasn’t really about Nibley. It was Anthony’s final defense of his life’s work, anchored in the authority of the Church’s most respected scholar. “Cosmism was the whole show,” Nibley once said. Larson took him at his word. And so do I.

I’ve been spending hours rewatching and rereading Anthony’s material this week, and I find myself asking: If I knew the sky was about to fall, what would I say? What would I write?

The answer, for me, is the novel I’m working on.

Red Sky is My Witness

Red Sky is not Anthony’s story. But it carries his echo. It channels his warning. In it, a rogue planet disrupts not only the heavens but the very assumptions humanity holds about science, religion, and survival. At the center stands Manny Volynsky, a retired professor and scholar of ancient prophecy. Manny, like Anthony, sees the sky with different eyes.

He sees memory where others see myth. He sees symbols where others see coincidence. He sees a reckoning, where others see bad weather.

And he does what prophets do: he tells the world.

Of course, they don’t believe him. At first.

In Anthony’s Last Lecture, he calmly explains that everything we need to understand what is coming has already been revealed—in scripture, in temple symbolism, in ancient stories, and in the celestial architecture of our own faith. But we’ve lost the keys. We’ve turned sacred patterns into decorative trim. We walk past Saturn stones and concentric starbursts and don’t ask why they were placed there.

That’s what Manny is trying to recover. And that’s what I hope Red Sky stirs in the hearts of its readers: the sense that there is more to the heavens than we have been taught.

Why Now?

You might ask: Why return to Anthony E. Larson now, years after his death? Why this blog post today?

Because I believe we are living in an age where the veil between past and future is thinning. Where science and myth are converging. Where cosmology is not an academic curiosity but a tool of survival. Because I believe stories matter—and that prophetic stories matter most when no one is listening.

If the sky were truly about to fall, wouldn’t someone be trying to warn us? Would we even recognize them?

Anthony tried. I’m trying now, in my own way. Through fiction. Through reflection. Through looking up.

Let This Be the Beginning

This post is not an endnote. It’s a starting point. In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing more excerpts from Red Sky, along with additional reflections on Anthony’s legacy, cosmological prophecy, and what the ancients may have seen and encoded in their myths and monuments. If you’re just joining this journey, you can catch up at RedSkyStory.com.

And if you already feel something stirring in your memory—some echo of sky and stone, some instinct to look up—then welcome. You’re not alone.