1 Nephi 20

Listen, House of Jacob (a.k.a. Israel), who’ve come out of Judah’s waters (a.k.a. a kind of baptism). You swear by Yahweh’s name (that’s our God’s name), but what you swear to is trash. Total garbage. You call youselves the “holy city,” but you’re so far away from Yahweh, your city’s founder, that I can’t trust you anymore.

I’ve always shown you what you needed to know, facts of the past, sometimes suddenly, but not without epiphany. I’ve always done this because I know so well how stubborn you are, neck muscles like iron, eyebrows like brass. I’ve always done this because I didn’t want you to think I was just a golden idol—which is how you act toward me, as if I were all metal and no soul. It would be nice if you, just sometimes, shared the wisdom I’ve shared with you, those mysterious, even secretive new truths that most folks would die for.

I’ve wanted to share with you things you never thought before and no one else had ever heard about. But you had other plans.

I who gave you ears watched you cover them whenever I spoke. I who gave you life watched you steel yourself against the better life I wanted to give you. You turned against me from the moment you were born. How do you think that’s made me feel for the last few centuries?

Still—and don’t say, “Oh, it’s all always all about him”—I can’t let my name get thrashed the way you seem to want to do. I’m determined to not let you get away with your ill will toward me. If I want to get the respect I deserve as your Father, I’ve got to redeem even my most estranged children. That means you.

To do that, I’ve got to molten you in a furnace, just like gold. Because you’ve got my name all over your religion and culture and I’m not going to let you ruin it. My furnace will burn the pollution out of you.

And by the way, if you ask why I don’t just remand you to another God, I’ll just say that, first, that’s not my style. And second, you should realize that I’m the only real God. Who would I give you to?

I built this earth, from the core up. I can swing my arm across the entire night sky. I address the stars and they stand at attention.

You ought to act the same to me. And having done so, you should swear to others that I’m not only the only God, but I’m an honest God. I’ll do what I say, good or bad in your opinion, whether I’m talking about you or the nations you think inferior (Babylon, etc.).

You love prosperity. I’m the only one who offers the real kind. And although I reveal mysterious secrets about real prosperity to people, I don’t do it in secret. I’m not only honest, I’m public.

I do wish you’d have been better behaved in the past. If so, you’d have had peace like a rippling stream and righteousness like ocean waves. Your progeny, meanwhile, would have been like the sands on the beach—or, if you want a new metaphor, like all the gravel on all the roads on the planet.

So get out of every bad scene you indulge and sing, actually sing to others that God has claimed you for his own, in spite of how you’ve let him down. Sing all the old stories of Moses and the Exodus, but make them new again by transposing them to the present.

Still, let me make it clear: the wicked get no peace.