Alma uses an interesting technique in this sermon. He asks no less than 40 questions in this chapter, and most of them are rhetorical. The effect of these questions is to make the listener examine himself, to remind him of the many possible ways in which he may be in need of correction. And so we see this pattern typified by the following, can ye look up to God at that day with a pure heart and clean hands? Who can answer yes to a question like this? Any honest individual must say, “no, I am in need of repentance,” and this is precisely the response that Alma is looking for. Unless the listener completely ignores the question, he or she is bound to be introspective and humbled by the perspective given by Alma’s well worded questions. If a picture paints a thousand words, then Alma teaches us that a question stirs a thousand feelings that a statement would otherwise leave dormant.
Ezra Taft Benson
“We all need to take a careful inventory of our performance and also the performance of those over whom we preside to be sure that we are teaching the ‘great plan of the Eternal God’ to the Saints. Are we accepting and teaching what the revelations tell us about the Creation, Adam and the fall of man, and redemption from that fall through the atonement of Christ? Do we frequently review the crucial questions which Alma asks the members of the Church in the fifth chapter of Alma in the Book of Mormon? Do we understand and are we effective in teaching and preaching the Atonement? What personal meaning does the Lord’s suffering in Gethsemane and on Calvary have for each of us? What does redemption from the Fall mean to us? In the words of Alma, do we ‘sing the song of redeeming love’ (Alma 5:26)?” (The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson p. 28)
Marion G. Romney
“I say, no one with the spirit of the Book of Mormon upon him can honestly answer to himself these soul-searching questions without resolving to so live that he can answer them in the affirmative on that great day to which each of us shall come.” (Conference Report, Oct. 1970, p. 30)
Neal A. Maxwell
"The Lord has given us all the vital answers we need in order to be saved and to become men and women of Christ; in fact, ’enough and to spare.’ But His questions are also revealing, as are the questions emanating from His prophets….Why not, therefore, take full advantage of the answers contained in the tutoring questions and their emerging and instructive one-liners from the Lord? Though asked of others, these questions are full of generic insights and needed directions for us as well as for the actual addressees.
“The questions asked by the Lord also tell us much about the questioner and His substance and style, which we are to emulate. Thus these interrogatories are placed in the holy scriptures to inspire us, to encourage us, and to be pondered by us.” (Men and Women of Christ, pp. 110-12)