These references stand out much more strongly to JWs than anything else. For a JW, fear of DF is much more scarey than death itself.
This is a mouthful, so true. Its crazy when you think about it, that there's at the least thousands, if not millions of JWs who don't buy everything coming from the WT. They don't have any fear of Jehovah punishing them because they don't accept the WT as the so called channel of God. What they fear is hurting their families and friends, and losing, straining, or damaging those relationships. They're not overly concerned with Armageddon, but they are concerned with maintining their family ties. It's really sick when you think about it. Just plain sick and dispicable. To think families are broken up and strained, all because an individual's views change regarding several old obscure white men and a token black in Bethel.
Another thing, considering how young people are when they get baptized, makes this all the more sickening. Teenagers making decisions that will affect them for the rest of their lives. A kid at 16 gets baptized, and his views change in his early 30s, and as a result he has the decision to make whether or not to hurt his family and friends, or live a double life with all the stress that comes along with it. You know, thinking back and reflecting on my own life, if I could trade in my decision to get baptized at age 16 for having a sex crime label placed upon me for being 18 and having sex with a 16 year old and getting charged with statuatory rape, I'd strongly consider it. I'd rather live with a the scarlet letter of a sex crime on my file for statuatory rape, than get baptized into this religion, which by the way wasn't done in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but rather recognizing that this is God's spirit directed organization. They're a fraud.