The angel forcefully impressed on Alma that he needed to repent and become fully committed to the Nephite religion by reminding him of his fathers’ captivity and Yahweh’s intervention to save them. In the context of the rest of that angelic visitation, it must have seemed like a capstone argument. Surely it was an important part of convincing Alma to repent. His conversion was so intimately linked with his understanding of Yahweh’s hand in the history of his fathers that he assumed the argument would have a similar converting power among other peoples to whom he preached.