After serving as the chief law-giver and judge of the people for nine years, Alma the Younger became increasingly distraught with what he observed among his people. People were growing prouder and vainer, focusing more on “riches and upon the vain things of the world,” becoming “scornful, one towards another,” and persecuting those who believed differently. There were “great contentions among the people” as well as “envyings, and strife, and malice” — and this division, this conflict, this hate existed not only outside of the church but inside it as well, festering like a cancer among people who had outwardly professed to have adopted the doctrine of Christ. The “wickedness…