Alma emphasizes the simplicity of the healing process in this incident. People bitten by poisonous serpents had only to look and be healed. Many did not believe that something so simple and symbolic could heal anything as real and deadly as the bite of a poisonous snake. Their disbelief prevented them from looking and therefore prevented them from being healed. Alma emphasizes this point because he has just told these farmers that they have also refused to “look.” Evidence for the Messiah—the “one God”—is in the brass plates (the teachings of Zenos and Zenock), but they have failed to “see” it. They correspond to the ancient Israelites who had the source of healing before them but did not “see” it.