“[T]he whole Bible wrestles with the problem that a given external pattern may be approved by God at one time and not another. Thus it should pose no religious difficulty that Joseph’s seer stone of his youth was later applied to the higher use of inspired translation of the Book of Mormon.”

Richard Lloyd Anderson, The Mature Joseph Smith and Treasure Searching (Provo, UT: BYU Studies Quarterly, Volume 24, Issue 4, 1984), 537.