The servants were also taught and converted (see Alma 18:37). They knew that Alma was a prophet of God and testified of it to the queen (Alma 19:4). Those who claimed the king was not dead (v. 5) were probably the servants and their friends who believed what they were taught. They knew or sensed that something miraculous was taking place. Those who insisted he was dead (v. 5) had no concept of the Spirit working upon people, but were relying upon the reasoning of man. The queen, who had not been taught, may have been relying on the hope that there was still a flicker of life in her husband.
Although Ammon had not seen the king since his fainting, he still knew what was happening. He recognized that the veil of darkness was being cast off and the glory of God was coming in (v. 6). He had been with Alma during a similar conversion experience (see Mosiah 27:8–18). Although he had not experienced fully what Alma had experienced, he had been converted. He understood what the Apostle Paul later described as the old man of sin, or the natural man, being destroyed, and a new man in Christ coming forth (see Romans 6:1–11; Ephesians 4:20–22). As Jesus said to Nicodemus: “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). In other words, only those who have experienced the rebirth experience can understand it.