Even when I was dyed-in-the-wool J-dub, I felt the Armageddon teaching was one of the most MORBID concepts to be hammered into the psyches of JWs. Think about it, only JWs would survive this catastrophe, which translates to roughly .001 percent of the population would survive while EVERYONE else would die a horrible death. That includes people who do GOOD THINGS and are GOOD PEOPLE, but are just not JWs. This would also include billions of CHILDREN. Why would such a loving God annihilate billions of CHILDREN?? Also killed in this global genocide are billions of workers whose lives are built on helping people - doctors, missionaries, police and fire personnel, etc.
I remember thinking back to the 80s during my middle and high school years and think how my teenage years were so depressing for me because the reality that I knew, my teachers and classmates, other good people who reached out to me, but were not JWs were all going to die and die very soon, because the end was right around the corner. I spent my teen age years depressed over that, and as such my studies in school suffered. I remember thinking what's the use of even trying to do well in school? Everything is going to be destroyed anyway. There was no striving for higher education, because that was spawned by Satan. It was full-time ministry or else! And that's if the system even lasts that long. The end was so close, two minutes to midnight if you remember the imagery from a popular Watchtower article from the 80s.
But at the same time, you had publications and various parts in meetings that would promote Armageddon as such a happy time for mankind. Who else remembers the countless pictures in publications (witness porn), showing non-JWs being destroyed at Armageddon with buildings falling on them, the earth swallowing them up and any other imagery you can imagine to show the destruction that awaited the "wicked" or non-JW's. And then there would be a corresponding picture showing only the JWs walking past Armageddon and on to the New Order, smiling at the destruction being executed against the wicked. Looking back, that was MORBID AS HELL, and I wonder how the psychological damage especially on young minds being taught that nonsense can be quantified.
I remember thinking how crippling and morbid that so-called future was and as a youth I think it affected me more than I realized. Anyone else had a similar remembrance/experience/feeling about ARMAGEDDON??