Fulness of Wrath

I wrote yesterday about the word “fulness” in the scriptures as it relates to the great blessings that the Lord has in store for the faithful.  There is one other usage of the word that appears in the Book of Mormon in a much different context.  The phrase first appears as Nephi taught his brothers about the destruction of the wicked in the land of Canaan when the children of Israel arrived there from Egypt: “But behold, this people had rejected every word of God, and they were ripe in iniquity; and the fulness of the wrath of God was upon them” (1 Nephi 17:35).  The nations that lived there were destroyed not because the Lord arbitrarily favored the house of Israel; rather they had continually rejected the word of God and were ripe in iniquity.  It was not an immediate punishment for sin that they received; but rather the Lord had waited and sent prophets and given them every opportunity until finally the “fulness” of His wrath was upon them.  Surely that “wrath” is not the kind of hatred we might associate with the word as we describe it in mortals; but it was a hatred for sin and wickedness that God has.  There is, the phrase would seem to say, a sort of threshold of how much wickedness He can tolerate in His children that when it is reached divine punishments must come.  (As a side note, I remember one religion professor who suggested that this Book of Mormon verse tells us that prophets were sent to the nations of Canaan during the time the Israelites were in Egypt, and that the most likely source of those prophets was the land of Midian were we know at least one righteous Priesthood leader dwelt: Jethro, also known as Reuel, the father-in-law of Moses who was the “priest of Midian” according to Exodus 2:16.) 

                Most of the other references to the “fulness of the wrath of God” in the Book of Mormon are forward looking and warnings for us today.  As Nephi wrote about the last days and the Second Coming he said, “For the time soon cometh that the fulness of the wrath of God shall be poured out upon all the children of men; for he will not suffer that the wicked shall destroy the righteous.  Wherefore, he will preserve the righteous by his power, even if it so be that the fulness of his wrath must come” (1 Nephi 22:16-17).  That appears to be a warning for us about the kinds of destructions that will come to the earth as we become more and more wicked in the last days.  We see the phrase also repeated multiple times in the account of the Jaredites.  The brother of Jared was warned about the promised land from the Lord “that whoso should possess this land of promise, from that time henceforth and forever, should serve him, the true and only God, or they should be swept off when the fulness of his wrath should come upon them.”  Moroni then commented, “And now, we can behold the decrees of God concerning this land, that it is a land of promise; and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall serve God, or they shall be swept off when the fulness of his wrath shall come upon them. And the fulness of his wrath cometh upon them when they are ripened in iniquity.”  So that clearly applies to those of us living on the American continents today, and the question it seems is no longer whether we are an iniquitous people but rather whether we have fully “ripened in iniquity”.  The decree is clear: if we don’t serve God then eventually the fulness of his wrath will come upon us eventually.  Moroni continued by pleading directly with us: “This cometh unto you, O ye Gentiles, that ye may know the decrees of God—that ye may repent, and not continue in your iniquities until the fulness come, that ye may not bring down the fulness of the wrath of God upon you as the inhabitants of the land have hitherto done” (Ether 2:8-9, 11).  One of the great purposes of the Book of Mormon then is to warn us about what has happened to two other great civilizations that inhabited this land but rejected the God of the land: they were swept off when they had reached the “fulness.”