To wrest the scriptures is to twist or interpret them to mean differently than they were intended. Peter, in the New Testament, warns of the “unlearned and unstable” wresting the Apostle Paul’s epistles “as they do also the other scriptures, unto their destruction” (2 Peter 3:16).
Wisely, Alma does not give us the false premises that had led many away. To quote these premises may plant seeds of doubt, and such has never been a substitute for truth. If we teach the truth, it will guide us in the straight and narrow path, and we will not be led astray (Alma 41:1).
The plan of restoration is God’s plan for restoring the attributes acquired in mortality to the soul (spirit) and body when they are resurrected. To be “requisite” is to be needful, indispensable, and required. Therefore, Alma is saying that the plan of restoration is in accordance with the justice of God. You will have justice according to the law of justice. Through the power and resurrection of Christ, “the soul (spirit) and the body (element) [will become] inseparably connected” (D&C 93:33). That will include every part of the body (Alma 41:2).
The judgment of God also requires, or is requisite with, the justice of God. We will be what we become. We will become an enemy to God or a saint (see Mosiah 3:19). If we are good in this life and/or repent of our sins, or if we are evil and do not repent, we will be restored or resurrected to the degree of goodness or evil that we attained on earth. The good will have eternal happiness in the kingdom of God, and the evil will have eternal misery in the kingdom of the devil (Alma 41:3–4). When the night comes (v. 5) has reference to the end of mortal life, or the end of our day of mortal probation. The endless night of darkness (v. 7) has reference to the state of darkness that exists where the light of Christ is not. Again the darkness will be more complete in some kingdoms than in others. The telestial kingdom will have more darkness than the terrestrial kingdom. The sons of perdition will be in outer darkness (see Alma 40:13). But all the people in those places will “return again to their own place, to enjoy that which they were willing to receive, because they were not willing to enjoy that which they might have received” (D&C 88:32). As father Lehi taught his son Jacob, they were free to “choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil” (2 Nephi 2:27).
We also read in Alma that they will “reap eternal happiness or eternal misery, according to the spirit which they listed to obey” (Alma 3:26). Thus men are their own judges (Alma 41:7), not in the sense of meeting at the judgment bar and deciding which kingdom they would like to live in, but in the sense that they judged themselves from the day they began to make conscious choices. The Prophet Joseph Smith made this observation: “The great misery of departed spirits in the world of spirits, where they go after death, is to know that they come short of the glory that others enjoy and that they might have enjoyed themselves, and they are their own accusers” ( TPJS, 310–11). On another occasion, the Prophet Joseph said: “A man is his own tormenter and his own condemner. Hence the saying, They shall go into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone. The torment of disappointment in the mind of man is as exquisite as a lake burning with fire and brimstone. I say, so is the torment of man” (TPJS, 357).
The unalterable decrees of God (v. 8) represent the attribute of justice in God. As Alma will say later, if God were not just, he would not be God (see Alma 42:13, 22).