In this day and age where people in general are becoming more and more skeptical, especially with religion, and use the internet on a constant basis, how many investigators end up researching Mormonism online while they are investigating the church?

I would think that this would be a MAJOR problem for the missionaries. Out of habit I personally double check EVERYTHING online now and its hard to imagine that non-brainwashed people who own a computer today would not end up finding out all the crazy stuff about Mormonism while they are considering joining it. I served my mission before the internet exploded and I would HATE to be a Mormon missionary today.

For any of you who served a mission in the last few years, or know someone who did, how common is it for investigators to drop the discussions because they went online? Do the missionaries have to constantly tell them to NOT read stuff on the internet?

I did. I was willing to take the mishies at their word until I said something about wanting to look up something about the church online. I was strongly admonished not to do so. Big red flag! And off to the internet I went. I'm a member of a mainstream Christian church and if someone told our pastor that they were going to research our church and beliefs online, he'd encourage them to do so. Big difference.

My daughter refused to look at anything online or read any book. I don't know if it was her Mormon girlfriends who told her not to or the mishies who were after her for yrs. All I know is she would not take my advice to educate herself. Sad-we had been so close, too. Glad the above poster saw the admonishment not to look anything up as a big red flag.

I was not investigating the church as a potential researcher, but I was researching online to help a patient of mine avoid missionary service. By accident, I found the old RFM site and learned all the "meat" after not knowing that much milk going in to it. In the process, I learned far more "meat" than most non-temple Mormons will ever know.

Later, when LDS "friends" set the missionaries to meet me, I knew more doctrine and history than they knew. Scared all of them off because they knew I had my meat, not just my milk.

What's funny is that the mishies gave me the 17 points of the true church and told me that I could look that up online. Everything I found online about the 17 points is that the back story about them is essentially an urban legend. If they knew that, there's no way they'd suggest looking that up online. Well, what I found out looking up the 17 points plus the admonishment about not looking up anything else equaled someone who's no longer an investigator.

I was given those 17 points as well. When I asked for the names of the person in the group who actually concocted the list, they just gave me blank stares. LOL.

I just realized that tscc has a facebook page. I'm glad you can't dislike pages because I would have hit the button on that one.
I'm sure the missionaries want you to look at the church web site and if you stick to that you would never ever ever find anything making you question what the missionaries had been telling you.

I don't believe in god but would have done it for the marriage. I thought the church was the same as any other protestant Christian denomination except that they believed that Jesus Christ appeared to the Aztecs. I found out about the Curse of Cain/fence sitters in heaven nonsense after he asked me to marry him when his family freaked out. Everything I needed to know came from the public library and the internet. The sister missionaries I spoke with kept going on and on about the Restoration and claimed to have no idea about all the weird stuff--they didn't even know that Kolob was the planet that they supposedly came from before they were born and thought it was just a place mentioned in an old hymn. The church can't control information as they could in the past and the Zion Curtain will eventually fall.

I had no idea at all what I would find.

I was initially just trying to learn as much as I could because missionary lessons were a bit basic. I thought I might surprise/please my missionaries with my zeal for learning.

I thought it a bit strange at the time when my missionaries asked me to only look on official church websites for information.

Well I stumbled on Richard Packhams website very early on and printed off a few things to read. That was just the start.

I also discovered some Mormon Podcasts on Itunes by a member who didn't believe anymore. It was SamuelThe Utahnite.
He was very emotional and broken and very shocked at what he had discovered.

Then I came across Bob Mcue and his audio podcasts.

RFM and many other websites.

After two years investigating I was out for good, despite it being my favourite church ever until it was obviously a fraud.

Seemed to fend off lots of baptism attempts during that time. I couldn't understand why the push to baptise me when I was still learning and wanted to be sure the church was true. lol

3,921,796 and counting....

Moi aussi !
The Book of Commandments was the original Doctrine and Covenenants.
"God's "original revelation about Joseph Smith: "...he has a gift to translate the book (of Mormon), and I have commanded him that he shall pretend to no other gift, for I will grant him no other gift." ~ Book of Commandments (1833), Chapter 4:2 (Admin1)"