2 Nephi 20

Bad news for anyone who makes unfair decrees, like robbing the poor with skewed tax plans or sucking the life out of widows and orphans with hikes in rent or hidden utilities fees. What will you do when the sky comes down on you? Where could you go then, and to whom would you leave your profits? Without prophets (pun intended), businessmen would nap under mounds of corpses.

But God keeps dangling hope …

I’m putting Assyria in charge of this one. It will be the stand-in for my fist. Because there’s nothing I hate more than hypocrites and Israel’s crawling with them. Go at them, Assyria, with God’s blessing. Scoop up the gold, tie up the women, trample anyone you choose as if you were putting out a fire. Which you are.

Assyria doesn’t realize they’re doing my bidding, of course. They think they just invade and massacre for their own glory. They think any of their rulers tower over the kings of others.

If I did such vicious harm to others, says God, don’t you think I can to you? Can’t I smash your false gods to bits? I could crush them with one hand on my worst day.

So, rest assured, when God’s done using Assyria to punish his own people, he’ll wipe the smile off of every Assyrian monarch’s face. Because they say they’ve done all this on their own, they’re wise, they’re fierce, not one can beat them, all the usual macho bravado. And they’ll say they themselves have discovered and claimed the riches of Israel.

Can an axe be snippy with the lumberjack? Can a saw get uppity with the carpenter? The point is, God can do anything he wants with you, which in this case is to starve you a while, get you so hungry you’ll feel the need for him again. For the time being, his glory will be a fire under the pot. It will spread from there to scorch the whole landscape, forest, fields, houses, chariots.

Whoever’s left will get the message. They won’t rely on their captors, they’ll stick with the God about whom they’ve known their whole lives. And these leftovers (whom we’ll call the “remnant”) will get to go home, set up shop, repopulate. God’s willful disasters will usher national blessings back into the foreground.

So, people, don’t fear Assyria, despite the horrors it will lay on your backs and parade through your eyes. It won’t be long, according to my time, that the horrors will end and you’ll be my favorites again. Your backloads will shrink, your dog collars will fall off. Praise the Anointed One for that.

In the meantime God will chop up the tree of Israel in order to get the self-sufficient ones in the community to feel his severity.