It is stated in the Sūtra of the Golden Splendor that the Four Heavenly Kings (four guardian kings of Buddhism) declared to the Buddha:

Suppose there is a king in a country where this sūtra has been transmitted but has never been spread at all because the king would not recognize the sutra, listen to it, make offerings to it, revere it, or praise it. Even if he meets the four kinds of Buddhists (monks, nuns, male followers and female followers) who uphold the sutra, he would not revere or make offerings to them. As a result, we, the Four Heavenly Kings, our disciples and numerous gods would be unable to hear the teachings of this Wonderful Dharma, taste the nectar of the True Dharma, and bathe in the stream of the True Dharma. In the end we all would lose our authority and power, allowing only the spirits of the four evil realms (hell, realms of hungry spirits, beasts and birds and fighting spirits) to grow rampant in the land at the cost of heavenly and human spirits. People would all fall into the river of life and death, the realm of spiritual darkness and evil passion, losing the way to Nirvana.

World Honored One! Seeing this, we the Four Heavenly Kings, our retainers and others like the yaksa demons would all abandon this land, not wishing to defend it. It is not we alone who would abandon this king. Even if numerous protective gods exist to guard his country, we are sure that they all would abandon it. If we, the guardian deities and protective gods, all abandon this kingdom, various disasters would befall, and the king would be dethroned. All the people in the kingdom would lose compassion: arresting, killing, fighting, accusing, and flattering one another, causing even innocent people to suffer. Epidemics would spread widely; comets would appear often; two suns would appear simultaneously; the sun and moon would eclipse at random; two rainbows, a black one and white one, would appear foretelling misfortune; meteors would be seen; the earth would quake; voices would be heard in wells; unseasonable storms would occur; famine would not end; trees and plants would bear no fruit; and many foreign bandits would invade the land. Thus, the people would suffer in every way, finding no place to live in peace in this kingdom.

We read in the Sūtra of the Great Assembly, “Suppose there is a king who, upon seeing My dharma disappearing, gives up defending it. Even if he practiced charity, observed the precepts and cultivated wisdom in his numerous lives in the past, the amount of merit he accumulated would all disappear, and the three misfortunes would befall his country. … Upon death he would be reborn in the worst hell.”

Sainan Taiji-shō, Treatise on the Elimination of Calamities, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 1, Pages 90-91