The setting of this speech was clearly a sacred one. The written part of the sermon is very short and concise, but it is very unlikely that Alma would have gone there to teach for only fifteen minutes, which is about as long as it takes to read Alma 7 out loud. Mormon explains that more was involved on this occasion. The record says, "Having taught the people of Gideon many things that cannot be written, having established the order of the church according as he had done before in the Land of Zarahemla" (Alma 8:1). The words "many things that cannot be written” may indicate that the Lord restrained him from writing or recording these great things that were said or done with these faithful people.
Alma’s speech or sermon on this occasion contained a classic statement of the coming of Christ and of the Atonement. He testified that Christ would come to earth, but we should notice that he did not know whether Jesus would come to these people or not (Alma 7:8). He had apparently received no revelation about whether Christ would come to this land or not. He knew that the Savior would be born in (or near) Jerusalem to a person named Mary, and that he was the Son of God. But apparently he did not know everything about how or whether Christ would get to his land, and if he did, how he would appear. Perhaps he knew more than he told the people on this occasion, but we don’t do the text any favors by reading things back into the text that haven’t yet been learned. When Jesus finally did appear in 3 Nephi 11, it was more amazing and wondrous than they had, or ever could have, expected.
After talking in verse 10 about the miraculous birth of Jesus who would come as the Son of God, Alma said, "And the Son of God shall go forth suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind" (7:11). Here, Alma appears to be drawing on Isaiah 53, which Abinadi had quoted when speaking to the priests of Noah: "He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him" (Isaiah 53:2); "He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter" (Isaiah 53:7); and "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows" (Isaiah 53:4). Alma would have connected these words with the people of Gideon, because their parents and grandparents were among the people of Noah and his son Limhi, just as Alma was the son of Alma the Elder, who had been converted by Abinadi. So, it is fitting that Alma would have emphasized the suffering dimension of the Atonement in speaking to these people.
Alma said that the Son of God would do this so that, "the word might be fulfilled which saith: ‘He will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people’" (Alma 7:11). If these words are an exact quotation, as they appear to be, we do not have the prophecy from which it was quoted. Or these words about Jesus taking upon him our pains and sicknesses may be Alma’s paraphrase of either Isaiah 53 or of some parts of King Benjamin. But, in either event, here Alma intensifies this prophetic information in two very important ways. First, Alma mentions pains, afflictions, and temptations of every kind. That is a stronger statement of the expansive reach of the Atonement than we can find anywhere else in scripture. And second, Alma says that all that will be accomplished in order for the prophetic word of God to be fulfilled.
In this regard, our minds rightly turn to the words found in Luke 22:44, which says that Jesus was in "an agony." The English word "an" here is a bit puzzling. What does it mean to be in an agony? He certainly was in agony, in unimaginable pain and affliction. However, in the Greek, Luke was actually saying that He was in an agon, which means a battle, a conflict, or a contest. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ fought and won the final battle, the ultimate conflict, between the Son of God and the Son of Darkness. And what was at stake was our eternal existence. He took up this battle; he took on death, and He won, so that He loosed the bands of death. Without having defeated the forces of death, He could not loosen us from those bands.
In addition, Alma says, "And he will take upon him their infirmities." And indeed, Christ has already taken our infirmities upon Himself, so that all we have to do is have enough faith to come to Him and draw upon the reservoir of credit that He has already put in the bank for us. If we can do what is right and if we will ask—and Alma gives plenty of instruction here that we must and should ask and pray for these things of which we stand in need—they will be granted to us.
It is a wonderful blessing that He has done this for us. Not only has He absorbed all of those infirmities, but He learned something in that process. In Hebrews 5 it says that the Son of God will learn obedience by the things that He suffers. But in Alma 7 we learn something unique to scripture, namely that He will also learn something in this extreme struggle as well: that His bowels may be filled with mercy. He had need to be filled up with mercy. Being full of mercy and empathy, there is no room for criticism or judgment on His part. You do not have to fear, that when you come to Christ, that He will be judgmental or critical. He will not turn you away or be disappointed that you have done such a thing or had such a problem, because He is full of mercy. There is no room there for anything else but loving kindness. He has learned mercy because He was somehow vicariously able to experience all of our infirmities, which gives Him a power, a real force, and a connectivity, that he otherwise would not have had.
And what does this word succor mean? To succor is to strengthen, but the root of the word "-cor," also means "to run." A courier is a runner. And the prefix "suc-" comes from the preposition "sub," meaning from beneath or below, as in the word "support," meaning "to carry or bear (port) from beneath (sub)." "To succor," therefore, means run to a person to give strength and help from a foundation below. Having descended below all things, the Savior now is so full of mercy that He knows how to run to us when we are in our moment of need and to bear us up. He won’t hold back. He will rush to our side. What a wonderful way of seeing and expressing the openness of the Atonement. Alma is the only one in scripture who emphasizes this aspect of Christ’s sustaining power. And Alma himself, in his own conversion, has had first-hand experience with Christ’s succoring power. His words in Alma 7:11–12, therefore, should be understood as Alma’s autobiographical testimony that this is what the Savior will do and how He is able to do these things. Because of all of this, Alma can truly say, "Now the spirit knoweth all things" (7:13). Christ experienced it all and has been filled with the knowledge of all things. Thus, Alma personally testifies, "that he might take upon Him the sins of his people, that He might blot out their transgressions according to the power of His deliverance. And now, behold, this is the testimony which is in me" (7:13). This is a humble, understated testimony here, but most certainly a clear and true one.
In 2009, President Eyring said in General Conference that it is perfectly clear and assuring that our Heavenly Father and Savior live and that they love all humanity and that "the very opportunity for us to face adversity and affliction is part of the evidence of their infinite love." It is interesting that God gave us the gift of living in mortality, so we could be prepared to receive the greatest of all the gifts of God which is eternal life in the heavenly kingdom of God, as Alma repeatedly mentions (7:14, 16, 19, 21). As President Eyring continued:
In this education we experience misery and happiness, sickness and health, the sadness from sin and the joy of forgiveness. That forgiveness can come only through the infinite Atonement of the Savior, which He worked out through pain we could not bear and which we can only faintly comprehend.
It will comfort us when we must wait in distress for the Savior’s promised relief that He knows, from experience, how to heal and help us. The Book of Mormon gives us the certain assurance of His power to comfort. And faith in that power will give us patience as we pray and work and wait for help. He could have known how to succor us simply by revelation, but He chose to learn by His own personal experience.
And then he goes on and quotes Alma 7:11–13. I think that is very powerful. It means Christ could have received this knowledge of suffering by revelation, because we know we can know things by the spirit. However, he chose to suffer. To me this is the Savior going the second mile. Alma emphasized that Jesus would know all this, not only by the Spirit, but also "according to the flesh" (7:12, 13). To make that choice, Jesus wanted to know exactly how it would feel, not just an impression of the spirit, what it would be like, and how we too, in a mortal state, would feel.
Henry B. Eyring, "Adversity," General Conference April 2009, online at churchofjesuschrist.org.