2 Nephi 24

God says. “I’m completely smitten with Israel. There’s nothing I won’t give them—in the end, anyway. I’ll make the greatest countries in the world seem like Israel’s pets.

“I’ll turn the tables: I’ll make their old masters—like Babylon—their new slaves. Israel will move into their homes and have the kings of old lands cooking their meals for them.”

This will be a time of rest for Israel that they’ve never seen. They can close their eyes and sleep on the pillow of their old fears.

You’ll come to mock Babylon: “What a pathetic kingdom led by a pitiful monarch. The golden city has become our silver spoon. God will break the gentile aristocracies like a yardstick on his knee. He’ll list all their crimes, read them to the jury of all nations.”

The earth will shut up, stunned, then break out in song. The forests themselves, where people cut down trees to make their tables and chairs, will sing for glee. No more lumberjacks.

The newly liberated will taunt their old oppressors like naughty schoolchildren.

Babylon’s pomp rolls into its grave. Their music turns to the worms of a corpse.

O Lucifer, you big pompous angel, God’s gravity has finally dragged you down. You spat on the nations, now you’re the spit people walk on. You said you’d float above the throne I saw in heaven. You said you’d gather your devils into the temples on earth. You said you’d kick God downstairs. Now you’re the one in the basement.

People will look at you, scratch their heads, and ask, “Is this the guy we were worried about? Is this really the schlump that trampled nations and made slaves of good people?”

Kings and queens still have nice furnished rooms. But you’re like roadkill. You’re just a bump under our tires. No funeral for you, just scraping up and dumping in a landfill. Because that’s what you tried to do to the whole earth.

As for Lucifer’s children, we’ll make a feast—not for them, but of them. They’ll never live in the cities and the cities will never live for them. When I say I have a bone to pick with them, it’s their own bone.

Babylon will be like an empty swimming pool collecting leaves and dead rats.

God reminds you all: I imagine it and it happens. So I’ll think Assyria into my chosen land then squash it like a beetle underfoot. Assyria will chain my people and I’ll twist off the chains and tighten them onto Assyrians. God says, I’ve already made up my mind. So don’t think of changing it.

This is what came to me (Isaiah) in the year King Ahaz died.

But don’t get too excited, people of Palestine, just because you think I’ve snapped your captors’ whips in two. The pieces of them will turn into snakes and roots from which more snakes will grow, flaming cobras.

The poor and starved will be safe at least. But the rest will slink away like the snakes they are.

So, as I’ve said: Howl. The wind from the north turns to smoke, choking you back to the pit that owns you.

And who will answer that howling? God, whose reply the poor, above all, can trust.