Once the Nephites had won, one might think they deserved a vacation. However, Moroni put the troops back to work, “And now it came to pass that Moroni did not stop making preparations for war, or to defend his people against the Lamanites” (Alma 50:1). Sometimes, after a successful Family Home Evening, or a great talk in Sacrament Meeting, we can be tempted to adopt the attitude, “Well, I do not have to worry about that next week, or keep it up for a while.”
The question here is, how can that syndrome be prevented? It is a normal inclination to want to let up once something is going well. It is a form of the pride cycle. When the grass is mowed and the weeds all pulled, one wants to rest, but they do not stay the way we want them. As Captain Moroni showed us, we have to keep working in order to keep up with the next development. He moved people out of the way when they were in a dangerous situation and populated strategic parts of the land with Nephites so that they would be a deterrent to the Lamanites. He did many other things in order to keep ahead of the game.
The first time the Lamanite/Zoramite forces approached, they came from the south up to the cities of Ammonihah and Noah (in Alma 49), and found that they were unexpectedly fortified, but the next time, things were different. They went up the east side of the Nephite lands, planning to attack Nephihah, then Lehi, and then they would make a sweep up along the seacoast until they came to Mulek and the borders of Bountiful (51:22–30). Bountiful guarded the narrow neck of land and was the most important piece of Nephite geography.
If the Lamanites could get to Bountiful, the Nephites would have had no way to escape into the land northward. Wherever that narrow neck was, it was a place that everyone needed to go through it. It would also prove to be just as important in Mormon’s final battles at the end of the Nephite people, and perhaps that is why Mormon knew that territory so well and focused on this campaign in particular. The Nephites were desperate to ensure that this advance in particular did not continue. They were somewhat prepared, but not quite prepared enough for this change of attack.