Moronihah was a general, trained in killing the enemy with the greatest efficiency. What is he doing preaching to the people? Is that his job? Where does he get off teaching the people as if he were a prophet or a high priest? Shouldn’t he leave the preaching to Nephi and Lehi?
Certainly, the Nephite generals are unusual. They knew better than to boast in their own strength. They knew better than to fight the enemy without first cleansing the inner vessel. And they knew that ’the preaching of the word…had [a] more powerful effect upon the minds of the people than the sword, or anything else’ (Alma 31:5). Counterintuitive as it may be, when the Nephites were wicked, the preaching of the word was a general’s most powerful weapon. No wonder ’it was the custom among all the Nephites to appoint for their chief captains…some one that had the spirit of revelation and also prophecy’ (3 Nephi 3:19). Unless they had done so, they would most certainly have been destroyed long before 400 AD.