The Lord’s universal message to all mankind is to repent and come unto Christ. The clarion call of all prophets is repentance. After Alma enjoys remarkable success in his ministry in Gideon and Melek, he travels north to the city of Ammonihah where he finds himself among the hard-hearted who resolutely defy his entreaties. Just as in the parable of the sower (see Matthew 13:1–23), the word is received at various levels of acceptance and preparation. Concerning the prophetic office of issuing a call to repentance, President Joseph Fielding Smith explained:
“I think it is high time,” the Prophet [Joseph Smith] wrote, “for a Christian world to awake out of sleep, and cry mightily to that God, day and night, whose anger we have justly incurred.” The condition of the world should be, he wrote, as a stimulant “to arouse the faculties, and call forth the energies of every man, woman or child that possesses feelings of sympathy for their fellows, or that is in any degree endeared to the budding cause of our glorious Lord.” The Prophet was inspired to call upon the inhabitants to turn from their sins, and the Lord has called the weak to call upon the great to repent. This epistle [of the Prophet on January 4, 1833] was much like the calls to repentance by the prophets in ancient Israel, and without any questions was necessary to be given to the world shortly after the restoration of the Gospel and the priesthood. (Church History and Modern Revelation, 4 vols. [Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1946–1949], 2:139)