It strikes me that throughout scriptural history the Lord has provided mankind with a number of amazingly divine and miraculous instruments that the best scientists, engineers, and authors of today can’t duplicate.

Consider the Liahona, powered by faith.

Consider the Brother of Jared’s 16 shining stones which gave continuous light to the Jaredites in their barges for 344 days.  Are they still shining somewhere in some repository?

Consider the Urim and Thummim which translates ancient and lost languages.  I believe there was more than one.

Joseph Smith’s seer stone was another divine instrument.

Aaron’s rod was capable of doing truly miraculous things.  I believe it was kept and preserved in the ark of the covenant.

Also in the ark of the covenant (which in itself was another divine instrument) was preserved a sample of the manna that the children of Israel gathered every day.  Manna rotted and got wormy within 24 hours unless intended for use on the Sabbath.  The sample kept in the ark of the covenant stayed perpetually fresh.  Do you suppose it’s still fresh somewhere after 3,000 years?

Do you suppose the ark of the covenant and its contents are still somewhere?  The Lord seems to be interested in preserving sacred items, so why not those?  The Liahona and the sword of Laban, for instance, are in a room inside a mountain somewhere along with wagonloads of sacred records.

I’m not sure what happened to the brazen serpent that the afflicted Israelites were to look to in order to be healed in the days of Moses, but it was certainly another divine instrument.

But I do know that a second brazen instrument is still somewhere.  The Brass Plates have been preserved, and someday we’ll be allowed to read them.  How I look forward to that!  There is more in them than in our Bible.  (1 Nephi 13:23).

And Moroni’s golden plates:  we only have one-third of those writings.  Those plates are in Moroni’s care, and will be given to us at some point in the future.  No book on earth could possibly carry more power than the Bible, Book of Mormon, Brass Plates, Golden Plates, and the other scriptures that have been and will be given.  These books change lives, which makes them the most miraculous instruments of all.