When the ill-tempered throng that had gathered to do violence to Alma and his companion saw that the missionaries withstood their evil intentions, they were nonplussed, and Alma, himself, realizing that the might of the Holy One of Israel overshadowed him, at once stepped forward and began to deliver his urgent message.
The burden of that message was Repentance.
The people of Ammonihah had forgotten the Lord's commandments, and were working the works of darkness. In the perverse imaginations of their hearts they thought they saw the fulfillment of their wicked desires in the still more wicked abandonment of Him who had led their fathers out of peril when none but God could deliver. They gave little heed to the fact that a Divine Guidance had piloted their great ancestor, Lehi, across the ocean to the Land of Zion. They also forgot how many times their repentant brethren had been saved from destruction at the hands of the Lamanites through God's long-suffering and His mercy.
If it had not been that God had protected and preserved the Ammonihahites, in spite of their many abuses of His grace, Alma cautioned them, that they, too, might have suffered even unto death as had many others. Affliction and misery of all kinds would have been their justly deserved lot, but, instead of quickly punishing them, the almighty Father was slow to anger and sent His servants to warn them of coming disaster if they did not repent.