When Alma pleads “with great anxiety even unto pain” for the people to hearken, he is speaking as a man intimately familiar with the most intense repentance process. Alma knows very well the spiritual pain that can attend the complete restructuring of one’s life. While we are never clearly told what ideology Alma adopted while he was rebellious, the long-running temptation of ideas similar to that of the order of the Nehors suggests that Alma’s beliefs may have once been similar to those of the Ammonihahites. Alma would have tremendous empathy for the process of repentance facing them.