The people’s anger because Alma called them hard-hearted and stiff-necked shows their natural man tendencies. Such anger for being called a lost and a fallen people shows their apostate condition. Father Lehi taught that “all mankind [are] in a lost and in a fallen state, and ever would be save they should rely on this Redeemer” (1 Nephi 10:6). On his first visit to the people of Ammonihah, they had denied their membership in the church and did not believe in what they called “foolish traditions” (see Alma 8:11). Obviously, they considered the doctrine of lost and fallen man a foolish tradition. Abinadi declared the same doctrine about 148 B.C., some sixty years before Alma came to Ammonihah. His father, Alma I, had taught the doctrine as he learned it from Abinadi and established again the church of God, or the church of Christ, among his followers (see Mosiah 18:1–17). In just a few generations, they had again fallen into apostasy.
The Lord did not allow the people of Ammonihah to cast Alma into prison (Alma 9:32–33). The text does not say how he prevented this from happening, but he protected Alma in some manner until his mission was completed, just as Abinadi had been preserved. The face of Abinadi had “shone with exceeding luster, even as the face of Moses did while on the mount of Sinai speaking with the Lord”(Mosiah 13:1–5), and the people did not dare to touch him. The Prophet Joseph Smith testified of the same principle. “I defy all the world to destroy the work of God; and I prophesy they never will have power to kill me till my work is accomplished, and I am ready to die” (TPJS, 328; see also 274, 258, 361).
The words of Amulek, although not all of them were recorded (Alma 9:34), refute the objection of the people of Ammonihah that God would not send only one man to them. Amulek was a second witness.