After ministering to the needs of the Ammonites in the Land of Jershon, Alma and Ammon and their fellow missionaries, returned to their homes in Zarahemla. The results of their labors were indeed great, for they had carried the Gospel Message to a great many of the Zoramites who had accepted it, and had in every way complied with its requirements.
Wishing not to be disrupted in their desire to continue on in their easy-going way of life, the leaders and the priests of the apostate Zoramites resolved that to be rid of the believing ones among them would be the simplest way to carry on their nefarious, or impiously wicked, teachings without any hindrance whatsoever. Those who accepted the truth and repented of the folly that had ensnared them in the fowlers’ net, were driven “out of their land,” but, however, in the Land of Jershon they were made welcome and given lands which under their religious laws—the Law of Moses—were to be theirs for a permanent inheritance. The new homes they established in Jershon made it their homeland, and to defend it from attack by any erstwhile friends now turned enemies became an obligation to their wives and children that quickly turned peaceful adverents of the Gospel into warlike avengers of the atrocities that had been perpetrated upon them.
Alma’s mission whereunto he had been called to preach the Gospel was not ended when he returned to Zarahemla. Instead, it seems to have been the reverse. With a doubled zeal he went to every city and among all people and declared to all who would listen to his words the great truths of Life Eternal. But gradually, we conceive, with a heart bowed down with anxiety for God’s cause, he became aware that the people were not observing the Law as they had been taught. Prosperity had again hardened their hearts and again it was enfeebling their efforts in the advancement of God’s Kingdom. He sought new ways to infuse fresh efforts in the attempt to stop the decline in the rapidly deteriorating moral and spiritual fibre of the Nephite people which to him was apparent.
As before time was done by many of the prophets and teachers of old, he called his sons to him and charged them concerning the things of righteousness. Separately, one by one, he admonished them pertaining to what the Lord required of them, and with a father’s blessing on each, he solemnly pronounced the Lord’s blessings.