One wonders why it was that Alma was touched by the testimony of Abinadi when none of his fellow high priests seem to have been similarly affected. Was Alma troubled by the pangs of conscience even before Abinadi came on the scene? Did Alma’s sense of right and wrong, his inner sense of justice, cry out against the abominations of the court of King Noah? We do not know. Perhaps his situation was not unlike that of Saul of Tarsus.
Saul, it would appear, had begun “to wonder whether what he was doing was right or not. Perhaps the shining face of the dying Stephen and the martyr’s last prayer began to sink more deeply into his soul than it had done before.... Perhaps he wondered whether the work of the Lord, if he were really engaged in it, would make him feel so restless and bitter. He was soon to learn that only the work of the evil one produces those feelings, and that true service for the Lord, always brings peace and contentment.” (David O. McKay, Ancient Apostles, pp. 148-49.)
Could it have been otherwise than that both Saul and Alma-who courageously wielded the sword of truth in an estate now forgotten-experienced a sense of recognition, a remembrance of truths and feelings, a reminiscence of things once known?