Alma hammers home his point. If they believed scripture, then they must believe in the Atoning Messiah. This argument tells us more about the nature of religion in this region before the arrival of the Zoramites, since we understand that this particular group of people would have been in the land prior to that arrival.
The first thing that is important is that Alma suggests that if they had read the scriptures, then they would have believed. When Alma makes the suggestion, he is specifically speaking of two brass plate prophets. The evidence from the brass plate prophets hinges on the phrase “Son of God” which we have seen to have been ambiguous in the Old World context. For Alma there would have been nothing ambiguous about this because he was a man of the New World, and had access to Nephi’s teachings which were very clear about the birth of the Savior. Alma had all of the other Nephite prophets who had been very clear about the nature of the Son of God. What we learn from Alma’s discourse here is that he relies upon brass plate scriptures, not on any of the Nephite prophets.
We have seen that there has been in the Book of Mormon a seeming trend to accept the brass plates, but not the later Nephite prophets. Certainly this describes what we saw in the court of King Noah, and subsequent Nephite apostate groups such as the Nehors appear to have accepted the brass plate religion, but rejected Nephite “additions” to that religion, and very specifically the belief in the coming of the Atoning Messiah.
Finally, Alma’s teaching emphasis is on the Atoning Messiah here, and all of this part of the discourse comes in answer to the request of this people as to whether they must believe in “one God” (verse 1). It becomes quite clear that this “one God” is the Atoning Messiah, and that this people is one who has an understanding of the brass plates, but not of subsequent Nephite prophets. We do not know if this group’s religion was apostate Nephite, or whether their understanding of the brass plates might have come from a different source. In any case, their religious foundations are not recent, as Alma is not speaking of anything they have rejected from their religion, but rather an understanding of the Atoning Messiah that isn’t in the religion. This further substantiates our assertion that this people have been in place prior to the arrival of the Zoramites.