A man named Antionah who was a chief ruler among the Ammonihahites sought to quell his people’s disquietude by asking Alma what he thought were unanswerable questions. His inquiry regarding the Resurrection and the Immortality of the Soul afforded Alma an opportunity to explain these and other vital principles of the Everlasting Gospel. From the manner in which the questions were put we imagine Antionah was, like a majority of the Ammonihahites, a corrupt man—the probabilities are that he would not have been elected to his high office if he had not been—or at most one who was very ignorant of the teachings of the servants of God. Whether he repented because of Alma’s preaching or was destroyed with the unrepentant Ammonihahites when their city was wiped out by the Lamanites shortly thereafter is not made clear by the Sacred Record.
Antionah thought he would make an irrefutable argument by asking Alma concerning the cherubim with a flaming sword which God placed on the east of the Garden of Eden to guard the Tree of Life What Antionah made to appear as conflicting evidence when compared to Scripture was Alma’s forthright declaration that through the Atonement of Christ all men, both righteous and wicked, would gain immortality and therefore live forever Antionah quoted scripture to show that the reason God sent guardians to watch the Tree of Life was that our first parents should not enter Eden and partake of its fruit and live forever
The thing Antionah urged upon his listeners in his rebuttal of Alma’s testimony was that it varied from scriptural fact. He implied that Alma confirmed what scripture denied. Alma promised immortality to the soul, Antionah pointed out that God had refused man that eternal gift. But what Antionah failed to add to his harangue was the further revealed truth that the Almighty, in his mercy, would not have it that man should live forever in his sins, or in his fallen condition. Antionah failed to see and recognize the great purpose in God’s Plan of Salvation The object of that Plan is Eternal Life in His Kingdom.