Rhetoric: Alma emphasizes the seriousness of their sin by contrasting them to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Why should Alma assume that this argument will impress his people? Do his people consider themselves comparable to those prophets? The answer is in Alma’s description of a “place to sit down” with these prophets. Luke 16:23 compares the afterlife to being in the bosom of the prophets. Alma’s congregation also understood that in heaven they would be in the same place as the prophets—but only, Alma emphasizes, if they repent.