Ep 380 | 2 Kings 16-25, Come Follow Me 2026 (July 13-19)

**Bryce Dunford** (0:03)
Hey everybody, welcome to Talking Scripture, a podcast where we illustrate relevance and application of the scriptures in Come Follow Me.

**Mike Day** (0:10)
We also dive into the history and cultures of the text.

**Bryce Dunford** (0:13)
Thanks for taking the time to share and subscribe to this podcast.

**Mike Day** (0:16)
For show notes, head over to our website, talkingscripture.org. Welcome to Talking Scripture, I'm Mike.

**Bryce Dunford** (0:25)
And I'm Bryce.

**Mike Day** (0:26)
And today we're going to be covering the end of Kings, almost 200 years of history.

**Bryce Dunford** (0:32)
Which during that time period, in one Come Follow Me week, we're going to talk about the fall of the Northern Kingdom to the Assyrians and how the 10 tribes become lost. And then in the same week of Come Follow Me, we're going to talk about the Babylonian captivity and the fall of the Southern Kingdom, which is over 100 years later. Now there's going to be a lot of history here. And, to make sense of the history and see the bigger picture, we've got to go back to Abraham. Abraham is the hook or the nail upon which the whole Old Testament hangs. And you have to understand the essence of that Abrahamic covenant. And that is that Heavenly Father needs someone to help take care of all of his children. And he chooses Abraham and he says, Look, I'm going to make a deal with you. And he gives them this list of things to do. And among that list are things like, Make my name known. If you will make my name known in a strange land, if you will bless them with the blessings of the priesthood, make my name known so that you bless all the families of the earth with salvation and eternal life. If you will do that, the Lord says, I will, and he gives them a whole bunch of promised blessings. And they're all kind of P words. I will preserve and protect you. I will give you power.
I will give you all the blessings of the priesthood. I will give you a posterity that is not numbered. And I will give you a place, a physical place to live. So all of those blessings come to Abraham and his descendants if we will make the Lord's name known. Now, why does the Lord put Abraham right in the center of the known world? If you look where the Lord placed Abraham, you've got all the world empires surrounding you in the ancient world. You've got Egypt, you've got Babylonia, Assyria, Greece, Rome, and boom, right in the middle is Abraham. And that's because that's the best place where they can influence the world. But here's the problem. If the world influences Abraham, then Abraham loses all of those protective blessings. And that's the point we're making today.
We're going to watch Israel walk away from God. And then we're going to watch Judah do it. Now, where are they going to go? Let me remind you where it was promised that they would go. If you turn back to Deuteronomy 4, which is kind of Moses' farewell plea to Israel, the repetition of the law, he repeats everything that God gave him.
And he says, verse 26, I call heaven and earth to witness against you, that you will soon utterly perish from off the land wherein you go into Jordan to possess it. You will not prolong your days upon it but shall utterly be destroyed. And then Moses says, the Lord shall scatter you among the nations.
That's where they went. And the reason that's where they went is because that's exactly how they wanted to live.
The Lord says, as soon as you are like the world, as soon as the world has so completely influenced you that you just want to be like the world, then that's exactly where you're going to end up. And so he scatters them among all the nations. Now that's exactly what Nephi understood. So Nephi comes into the picture after the northern tribes have been taken, after the kingdom of Israel is conquered by Assyria. And right before the Babylonians are about to conquer the southern kingdom, Nephi writes, and he says in 1st Nephi chapter 22, Wherefore, the things of which I have read are things pertaining to things both temporal and spiritual. For it appears that the house of Israel sooner or later will be scattered upon all the face of the earth, and also among all nations. See that emphasis? They are going to be scattered among all nations. And then he even speaks specifically about the kingdom of Israel. He says in verse 4, And behold, there are many who are already lost from the knowledge of those who are at Jerusalem. Yea, the more part of all the tribes have been led away, and they are scattered to and fro upon the isles of the sea.