The Fuller's Soap

Malachi wrote of the Lord’s coming saying this: “But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap” (Malachi 3:2).  A fuller is someone who cleans cloth in order to “eliminate oils, dirt, and other impurities, and make it thicker."  So his soap would be the instrument used to purify and cleanse garments. 

The term is mentioned a few times in the Old Testament to refer to a specific place called the “fuller’s field” (e.g. Isaiah 7:3), and both the Savior and Joseph Smith quoted this verse from Malachi (see 3 Nephi 24:2 and D&C 128:24).  The only other reference to a fuller in the scriptures is in the account of the transfiguration: “And [Christ’s] raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them” (Mark 9:3).  I believe that what Mark was saying was that Christ appearance was whiter than what any fuller could do to a cloth, and I love the symbolism there.  Christ is more pure and clean than anything earthly, and it is only Christ who can truly cleanse us.  We won’t find forgiveness of our sins from an earthly fuller.  Indeed our garments can be “washed white through the blood of the Lamb” (Alma 13:11).  While the term fuller is not very common in the scriptures, the idea of “fullness” is used repeatedly, and I have to wonder if there’s not a connection between the idea of being cleansed and that of having a fullness.  One of the most common usages of the word is in the expression “fulness of the gospel” such as in the Lord’s declaration “And I have sent forth the fulness of my gospel by the hand of my servant Joseph” (D&C 35:7).  The most obvious meaning of course is that the word fulness indicates a sense of completeness.  But perhaps we can also think of it in the sense of the fuller to indicate that the fulness of the gospel is the gospel in its clean, pure, and untarnished state.  The other common usage of the word fulness is in the phrase “a fulness of joy.”  The Psalmist wrote, “Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy” (Psalms 16:11).  Again the typical interpretation of this is to mean a complete and overflowing feeling of happiness.  But perhaps there is value in thinking of it in terms of the fuller: we have a fulness of joy when we have been ourselves cleansed and purified and made capable of receiving pure joy.  As Malachi wrote, when the Savior comes everything of necessity will be cleansed—we can choose to accept the fulness of the gospel now and ultimately receive a fulness of joy through the cleansing power of the Savior, or we can choose a path in the world where the unpleasant fuller’s soap will come by force.