Alma set up his recounting of his experience by restating the foundational Nephite covenant, and by asking Helaman to remember that his fathers had been delivered from bondage. He has used his personal experience to highlight spiritual bondage, and now concludes by reiterating the foundational Nephite religious teaching, that redemption comes only through the atoning Messiah.
As Alma was struggling in spirit, it was the Messiah who brought light and healing to his soul. In Alma’s use of this story, the understanding of the Messiah as the coming Redeemer becomes just as much a foundational principle as is the covenant of the land.