Rhetoric: Alma demands that his listeners measure themselves against his father’s church. By asking if they remember their parents’ captivity, Alma is not assuming that each person in the congregation was a literal descendant of Alma1’s church founded in the land of Nephi. But he is rhetorically positioning them as spiritual descendants of that church.
While Alma begins by addressing the entire community and evoking a communal memory, he moves to the personal level by reminding them that Yahweh has already performed a miracle of deliverance for their own souls. Rhetorically, he has deftly moved from the group to the individual, from the past to the present, and from those first baptisms at the waters of Mormon to each individual’s personal covenant and baptism. Even though they might have been Nephites from birth, becoming a member of the church was not automatic. They had to exercise a choice.