Alma’s next two questions diminish the possible effects of the time disjunction. While the Atoning Messiah will come in the future, the atonement extends backward into the past (Corianton’s present) because Yahweh has assured that “the plan of redemption” is “made known unto this people” as well as to people in the future. By phrasing it as a rhetorical question, he assumes Corianton’s agreement to the obvious question about whether a just God recognizes that both those living in Corianton’s day and those living at the Messiah’s coming have the same rights. But he further demands Corianton’s assent that the mere fact of teaching the plan of redemption now proves Yahweh’s current concern.
He then poses a third question: whether it is “as easy” for Yahweh to send an angel now as it will be to send one in the future. Again, the answer is obviously yes, but Alma also expects Corianton to recognize that Yahweh has already sent this angel. Although he does not repeat (or at least, Mormon does not record) his conversion story for this third son, it is impossible to imagine that Corianton would not instantly have picked up this personal allusion. Is sending the angel just as easy? Not only just as easy, but it has already happened. Alma definitively confirms that the disjunction between Yahweh’s justice and the Messiah’s atonement in the future is not a cause for disbelief; while the event may be in the future, its benefits (knowledge of the plan and the declaration by an angel) have already occurred.
Text: There is no chapter break at this point in the 1830 edition, and the break introduced here in 1879 edition seems particularly unfortunate. While the topic shifts slightly, what follows is intimately connected to Corianton’s beginning to repent from his apostasy and is still part of Alma’s blessing/call to repentance. During Corianton’s apostasy, he apparently rejected some crucial doctrines of the Atoning Messiah—doctrines that Alma is now explaining so that he will fully understand them.