They showed how the Bible said these were the last days and the end would come soon. From the proof which is stated in the books they study, how could one dispute what was written there. You could only answer the questions in the book with answers from the book. Free thinking was not encouraged. If the book did not say that was the answer, verbatim, you must rephrase it.

A new vocabulary is formed during the study process and a kind of Orwellian doublespeak develops. They have a language and a culture of their own within the organization. This further seperates the study from grips of the real world. The fear depicted in the study books, complete with gruesome graphics of what Armeggeddon will look like would assure the study that they did not want to die like that. I still get nightmares thinking of those pictures.

Since the book you study tells you beyond a doubt the world would end soon and they give a very complicated mathematical/Biblical formula to prove that Jesus rose invisibly in 1914, and that the generation would see the end of this system of things is proof enough that you must act now.

So the decision was clear to my mom and to others who study, you are either for Jehovah or against Him. There was no hell, but eternal sleep after your terrifying death in Armeggeddon. Only 144,000 would go to heaven. The few who would remain on earth were those who followed Jehovah's "faithful and discreet slave" also known as the GB.

My mom got baptized. My dad thought it was just a phase and my mom wouldn't really take something like that too seriously, but then again, he wasn't around enough to notice when she was pushed over the edge.

The road to baptism was a piece of cake. The road to "eternal life" would be a tortuous struggle. The really hard work was about to begin. After all, there was talk that the end was coming in 1975.