1 Nephi 4:9

9  And I beheld his ^asword, and I drew it forth from the sheath thereof; and the hilt thereof was of pure gold, and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine, and I saw that the blade thereof was of the most precious steel.

            -All of these things are earthly evidences of a great and powerful man, yet it means nothing in consequence of the impending events.  Power is, finally, not a function of temporal materials or position but of Christ-like character.  This type of power is an attribute, a thing which Laban was very much destitute. A thing that is the opposite of earthly conceptions of power.  In fact those oriented to earthly power view this as weakness  -ironically, the opposite of their view of power.