Aren't there studies which show that, counerintuitively, the more harsh & strict a religion is, the more its adherents tend to be fiercely loyal?
I can't point to one in particular, but I believe you're right. This is sort of the core of cognitive dissonance - the more people invest in a belief, the more resistant they are to changing that belief. The continued lowering of the requirements will result in the R/F investing less and less time/money/energy in their belief that the WT is the only true religion, and they will therefore be primed for awakening.
The other problem for the WT will be that any one with 2 brain cells to rub together that actually has fully bought into it will have no choice but to start questioning why everything is slowing down if we're so close to the end. At a certain point the questions override one's joy at having to do less and, again, they'll be primed for awakening.
Punky - thanks for the antimatter quotes, that really made my day. That's the sort of stuff that I enjoyed when I was a child, but now I look at it and realize that it was all based on some cursory sci-fi understanding of the way the world works. If Jehovah used enough antimatter to clean up even one skeleton, the radiation released would be sufficient to annihilate all life on earth many times over. It would essentially be the power of every atomic bomb on earth going off at once. But, by golly it sounds good, and it sounds smart, and it sounds like we researched, so let's put it in!