And you must say to the soil of Israel, ‘This is what Jehovah has said: “Here I am against you, and I will bring forth my sword out of its sheath and cut off from you righteous one and wicked one. In order that I may actually cut off from you righteous one and wicked one, therefore my sword will go forth from its sheath against all flesh from south to north.”’”​—Ezek. 21:2-4.

Thus Jehovah depicted himself as a warrior who would act against the “wicked” and the “righteous,” evidently meaning those who imagined themselves to be righteous. The “sword” that Jehovah would use was apparently the earthly agency for executing judgment, though it may also have included his unseen heavenly organization of mighty spirit creatures. The earthly agency proved to be Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar and his armies. As a symbolic “sword,” the Babylonians moved against the Kingdom of Judah, which lay southwest of Babylon and south of the territory once occupied by the ten-tribe Kingdom of Israel. But the executional work of the symbolic “sword” did not confine itself to the “south.” The “sword” moved “from south to north” against “all flesh,” against surrounding non-Israelite nations.

The “sword” of Jehovah, however, will not stop its activity with the destruction of Christendom, the antitype of ancient Jerusalem that lay southward from Babylon as a “southern quarter.” That “sword” in modern times will likewise be brandished against “all flesh from south to north.” All the other false, hypocritical religious systems must also be devoted to destruction.