There are any number of Mormon doctrines that could be described as “restored truths that engender spiritual confirmation.” But there is a subset of our teachings that we believe (rightly, in many cases) will be initially attractive to those who might hear about the Church. There’s a reason the Church doesn’t produce pamphlets or videos entitled “You Get to Pay 10% of Your Income to the Church! Hooray!” Most people aren’t going through life, looking for organizations to give money away to (at least not ones that make it a “requirement”). But many are looking for moral or spiritual guidance, or have questions about the meaning of life or the afterlife. We pitch these “hooks” initially in the hope that people will pay attention long enough to maybe stick around, absorb some of the more “difficult” or “dry” subjects, and even take the discussions seriously enough to decide to pray and seek spiritual confirmation.

One of the points I was trying to highlight is this: Much of the rhetoric in the Church about how “only the Spirit matters,” even if true in other contexts, simply doesn’t fly with respect to potential investigators’ initial contact with the Church (Adam’s pentecostal friends excepted). Everybody knows this. But for whatever reason, we sometimes don’t like to say it out loud.

Aaron B

I spent a good six months of my mission (in Germany) convinced that the message of eternal families was the selling point that would lead to success as a missionary. I focused on nothing else, regardless of when or where I was proselytizing. While the approach yielded a few potential families that investigated, it resulted in zero converts. Most people responded that they did not believe the “’til death do us part” spiel anyway, and were certain that God would allow them to be together with their families; after all, He is a loving God, right?

In retrospect, the three conversions that I was allowed to participate in were all a result of people being sold on the Book of Mormon, reading it fairly thoroughly, praying about it, etc.

Of course, it wasn’t always nice and orderly like that: different things rang true to different people. Perhaps you’d get to the third or fourth discussion without one Eureka! moment—but when that moment came, this process would start. Arthur Henry King, for example, after getting a spiritual confirmation of one aspect of Joseph Smith—History, reasoned that “I ought to believe other things he tells me, even though I haven’t got the same evidence of those. The story of the finding and disappearance of [the gold plates] seemed absurd to me. … It took me a long time to appreciate the Book of Mormon.” (Arm the Children, 43.) In other words, what was initially attractive to him wasn’t somehow separate from “trying to get a spiritual confirmation.” It was a spiritual confirmation, the first in a long line of them. As far as I remember, the selling points you specifically mentioned were spread pretty evenly throughout the lessons.

Anyhow, that’s my two cents—a response to your question about the typicality of your experience. I apologize if I came across facilely before.

In regards to spiritual confirmation, I think there’s a reality that needs to be faced: many, many people have never had it. They’ve never felt it, or at least they think they never have. Perhaps that’s why it’s always the same five or six people getting up on Fast Sunday to bear their testimony. I’m surprised at how many people I’ve spoken to who are willing to confide that they’ve never had an experience that confirms the Church is the true church. They have faith that it is, and they hope that it is, and their heritage and the attractiveness of the doctrines often bids them to stay involved, but I frankly think we’re fooling ourselves if we think we have congregations loaded with people who have had the spirit confirm the truth of the Gospel to them.