Alma promises the Gideonites that those who are baptized (“whosoever doeth this”) and keep the commandments will have eternal life.
Redaction: This verse has an interesting “correction.” Alma begins in present tense, then shifts to the past tense: “… will remember that I say unto him, yea, he will remember that I have said unto him.… ” The first possible explanation is that it accurately reproduces Alma’s discourse. Speaking extemporaneously, Alma might well have used the present tense, then realized that he was speaking of his audience’s future when his current words would necessarily have been spoken in the past. The second possibility is that Joseph Smith dictated the error, followed by an immediate correction that became part of the record. I suspect that it was easier for Joseph Smith to make a mistake between present and past in his dictation than it would for Alma, particularly since Alma’s discourse had to be written down and therefore was possibly subject to editing.