The experience right prior to his transformation showed him the logical extension of his current behavior. He was “like to be cast off.” We should see this experience in that described by Benjamin:
“Mosiah 3:18 For behold he judgeth, and his judgment is just; and the infant perisheth not that dieth in his infancy; but men drink damnation to their own souls except they humble themselves and become as little children, and believe that salvation was, and is, and is to come, in and through the atoning blood of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent.
Mosiah 3:19
19 For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.”
Benjamin had clearly taught what Alma has now so clearly experienced. Alma felt what it means to be an enemy to God, and to “drink damnation to [his] own soul.”
Just as Benjamin describes the resolution of the damnation as the acceptance of Jesus Christ, so too will Alma be delivered because he accepts the atonement of the Savior.