Verse 4 summarizes verses 1–3, which describe Alma’s delegation of administrative authority, the positive effects of these ordination, and the negative action taken by the organization in cases of noncompliance.
When Alma spoke in Zarahemla, he spoke to the church. Verses 2–3 are clearly referring to those who are not in the church. Therefore, Alma’s organization was designed to expand a mission to the non-church-men in Zarahemla.
To recap that social situation in Zarahemla, Mosiah2 and Alma1 created a tacit separation of church and state that became a full-blown separation of ideologies. By this point under Alma2, the population is under the same political aegis but follows two different religious paths. While a simple separation in the modern world, it was more complex in the ancient world. There was no science separate from religion. All explanations of how the world worked were religious.
Thus, Zarahemla housed two incompatible ways of viewing “reality,” a conceptual split that was more divisive than two political parties. The tensions between these incompatible worldviews in Zarahemla (and within the Zarahemla polity) might be held in check for a while, but they begin to escalate over the next several years.
Alma is trying to heal this ideological separation by converting the entire population to Yahweh’s way. Verse 2 suggest some measure of success, but verse 3 confirms that the unconverted (or only briefly converted) continue to espouse the alternate worldview, remain in Zarahemla, and, as we shall see, become even more influential.