The Dangers of Doomsday Indoctrination: The Kids Aren’t Alright[1]
By Robert E. Cruickshank, Jr.
Copyright © Robert E. Cruickshank, Jr. (February 2, 2026)
Daniel E. Harden (Editor)
All Rights Reserved
[12-Minute Read Time]
“But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it is better for him that a heavy millstone be hung around his neck, and that he be drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:16).
While Evangelicals no doubt support President Trump’s executive order on “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,”[2] they seem to have no interest in ending pop-prophecy’s radical indoctrination of young minds regarding the end of the world.[3] According to a Lifeway Research study, 63% of Evangelicals believe that we are living in the end times,[4] and this is what they are raising their kids to believe as well. This mental engineering is reinforced on social media as prophecy punditry is endlessly algorithmized[5] and recycled.
What today’s young people don’t realize, however, is that everything they’re being fed in their feed is merely the recycled mess of the failed predictions of yesterday. Their parents should know this, and they should know better, but they don’t.
So, the doomsday drumbeat is boosted by parents, pastors, and prophecy pundits alike. While this is in keeping with the pattern of previous generations, today’s online platforms amp up the prophetic pulse to new heights. The content may be old, but the delivery system has been upgraded. It’s another example of previous sparse analog exposure versus current constant digital saturation.
In the 70s and 80s, for example, there were the intermittent Chick comic books, the occasional showing of A Thief in the Night on a Wednesday night, and of course the end-times preachers on the radio here and there. Today, however, the positive reinforcement of pop-prophecy’s negative message is 24/7, and all you need is an internet connection. Prophecy punditry is streamed to every young person with a touch of their screen. It is among the many dangers of the digital age that confront children of an impressionable age.
And a real danger it truly is.
Highway to the Danger Zone[6]
In 1996, then US Senator Al Gore famously referred to the emerging internet as “the information superhighway.”[7] Right he was, and all would agree that this superhighway does a super job funneling information – both good and bad. Sometimes the information is so bad, in fact, that the internet is very much the Highway to the Danger Zone.
This includes driving young minds down the dangerous highway of pop-prophecy – at a speed as high as their internet connection will allow.
A sobering example of this appears in a reader’s question to Mary Follin on her Ask Mom forum:
“I’m afraid my 13-year-old son has gotten into some stuff on the internet that’s causing him a lot of anxiety. He’s convinced the world is going to end soon, and he can’t stop talking about it. He’s lost interest in the activities he used to enjoy, like playing guitar and watching sports on TV with his dad, and he’s trying to convince everybody else to worry, too. He has also confided to me that he feels hopeless, and he doesn’t know what’s going to happen to him after the world ends. He is suffering so much, and I feel awful for him, but I don’t know how to help him.”[8]
Before he knows it, that mother’s 13-year-old son is going to turn 23, then 33, then 43, and so on. At some point in his life, he’s going to realize that he wasted his childhood…waiting. Waiting…for something that never happened. Waiting…for the end to come.
He’s going to realize that he should have been playing guitar. He should have been watching sports with his dad. He should have been chasing girls and doing all the things that a teenage boy is meant to do. But, like so many others from previous generations, this young boy is convinced that he’s part of the final generation.
Someday down the road, he’ll sadly come to see that he’s been wrong all along. It takes longer for some than others, but the reality eventually sets in sometime in their lifetime – the reality that they really did have a lifetime, but that lifetime has passed them by.
How much time will go by before they realize that they’ve lost so much time? That’s always the question, and only time will tell. It’s different for each one. But when that time does finally come, the ramifications of that realization are far from momentary.
They live on as haunting memories and reminders of time that has been lost and can never be regained.
The Ramifications of Failed Revelations
One example of those whose memories are haunted by pop-prophecy is popular social media personality Jen Hamilton. She is one of the fortunate ones who came to the realization rather early on. Hamilton recently weighed in on living in the fallout of the “end” that never panned out. If readers recall, September 23, 2025 was yet another date that was earmarked for the great escape (i.e., the Rapture)[9] to take place. Accordingly, Hamilton posted this:
“My parents never ever participated in ‘rapture prep’ or ever gave credence to any specific rapture prediction but hearing about the rapture at church made me so fearful that Jesus would come back before I got to experience life. I would bargain with God to let me stay a little longer. I feel so bad for those kids in the families telling their kids that they will be taken from the earth on Tuesday. I remember feeling ashamed that I wasn’t ‘excited’ about ‘going home’ like the pastor said we should be. The fear those kids feel right now will stay with them forever.”[10]
A young Jen Hamilton saw through the hype and was able to shift course before it took over her life. For some, it takes a bit longer. But for them, the efforts are even stronger to ensure the same damage isn’t done to a whole new generation.
Such efforts are inspiring and refreshing to behold as they unfold.
A Turn Around at TBN
About a month after the Rapture once again failed to materialize in the twinkling of our eyes, TBN aired a broadcast titled “Have These PROPHETIC Events Already Happened? Unlocking the TRUTH Behind Revelation.”[11] Alongside Dudley Hall and others on the broadcast, David Holland reflected on the damage caused to him by the doomsday drum machine.[12]
Speaking from personal experience, Holland shared how, as an eleven-year-old already primed by a love of science fiction, he was introduced to The Late Great Planet Earth in Sunday school. He describes the experience as a “gamechanger” for him, but “not in a good way.”
Holland discussed the way an adolescent child, moving into his teenage years, is supposed to be “future oriented.” That’s how we’re naturally wired. That’s how God made us. That’s how we’re supposed to be. However, the theology of his Sunday school teacher’s eschatology gave him every reason not to be.
This was reinforced by every evangelist who came to his church while he was growing up, and here’s how he sums it up:
“I was 100% convinced. All of these spiritual authorities in my life told me that I was never going to get out of high school, much less enter college. I was probably never going to kiss a girl and all of those things. So, I just wrote that right into my thinking and I became completely futureless.”[13]
These days, Holland is doing everything in his power to undo the damage that was done, and prevent future damage from being done to impressionable young minds. For example, check his recent interview with my good friend, Rick Welch, on the Burros of Berea Podcast HERE.[14] In this sense, Holland joins a long list of others whose childhood joys were stripped away as girls and boys. Holland and those like him are dedicated to breaking that cycle and restoring that joy for the children of today.
Butterflies and Days Gone By
Perhaps the most heart-wrenching story in this regard comes from Flor Edwards in her book, Apocalypse Child: A Life in the End Times. The book is a fascinating memoir, chronicling her upbringing inside an apocalyptic cult. From an early age, she was programmed to believe that the world was on the brink of imminent destruction. Edwards reflects on how the constant expectation of catastrophe robbed her of everything a little girl should be. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “innocence lost.”
Her book opens with a story of her and her twin sister Tamar when they were just seven years old, and their shared fascination with butterflies. Why butterflies? Because, in all their beauty, butterflies existed on the verge of disappearance – like two little girls born on the eve of destruction.
“From our limited knowledge of science,” she says, “which we’d learned from encyclopedias, we knew that butterflies only had six weeks to live.”[15] She describes watching them with a mix of wonder and sadness, knowing that their lives would soon be cut short. That image becomes an analogy for her own upbringing in an end-times environment.
Like the butterflies, everything lovely in life was temporary and brief for Flor and her sister Tamar. Instead of being free to grow and glow in the springtime of their lives, they were told that their lives would be cut short by the soon-coming apocalypse. All she knew about life, she learned from the teachings of the cult’s leader – Father David.[16] Edwards recounts:
“He was the leader who would guide us, like Moses, into the End Time, a period that was fast approaching and was predicted in the Bible, in the book of Revelation. He said I was a chosen child of God, and I was to be God’s End Time soldier. He was God’s chosen prophet, preparing us to save the world from the Great Apocalypse, which would come in 1993, when I would be twelve years old.”[17]
As Paul Harvey would say, we all know the rest of the story. 1993 came and went, the world did not end, and Flor Edwards lived to see her 13th birthday and has enjoyed many more since then.
From Prophecy to Poetry
On that day, when she was seven and chasing butterflies, Flor Edwards wrote a poem capturing her thoughts on the brevity of life already slipping away at a tender young age. She “stashed” the poem in a “secret hiding place” because she knew she “could be punished for being creative.”[18] Her efforts were in vain. The poem was found and confiscated, but she already had it memorized and included it in her book:
“One day I was walking through the garden,
Very, very pardoned.
I wondered why this and that;
I guess I’ll know when He comes back.
I wondered why the flowers blossomed,
Only in spring, And never forgotten.
I wondered why it rains in May,
And butterflies seem so gay.”[19]
This little girl’s poem is cutting in its clarity, functioning as a lens that brings into focus a problem that extends far beyond the confines of an apocalyptic cult.
Pop-Prophecy and the Child Psyche
While Flor Edwards’ heart-breaking example is extreme, the net effect of Doomsday Indoctrination on the minds of young children is the same even in mainline Christianity. For example, it forces Isaac and Angie Tolpin of Courageous Parenting to address issues like “Preserving Your Children’s Dreams During End Times.”[20]
In this podcast, the Tolpins “are concerned that this next generation of believers won’t want to bring children into this world due to an imbalance of what parents are focusing on in their conversations while they are young.”[21]
In the video,[22] which aired shortly after the Hamas attack on Israel in 2023,[23] Isaac Tolpin says,
“Putin and president Erdogan…of Turkey both said if America gets involved, then they’re going to get involved. And so this could escalate into something. Some people are wondering, and I was wondering, is this Ezekiel 38 through 39 – the war of Gog and Magog?”[24]
In a faint echo of Tolpin’s concern, in January of 2024, George Saines wrote an article titled “Choosing to Have Kids During the End Times.”[25] In the article’s closing, Saines asks, “What’s the point in struggling to raise children when there’s a non-trivial chance Putin will end the world in 2026 with the flip of a button?”[26]
While the concerns of Saines and the Tolpins are sincere, genuine, and commendable, those concerns stem from a misplaced and misguided understanding of Bible prophecy. For example, Ezekiel 38-39 was fulfilled in real time, in the Bible’s own time, at the time of Esther. For my 10-part series on the subject of Gog and Magog, go HERE.
While Ezekiel 38-39 provides us with a wonderful opportunity to show our kids the accuracy of Bible prophecy and the importance of the book of Esther, it has nothing to do with Vladimir Putin, Hamas, modern-day Israel, or the end of the world. While all parents do indeed need to have hard conversations on tough topics with their kids,[27] preparing them for Gog and Magog and an imminent apocalypse is not one of them.
And any efforts to do so are not healthy for a child’s psyche.
More Voices, Same Story
Examples could be multiplied to a myriad. One person shares:
“We were taught from a young age that the world was going to end—I believed I wasn’t going to live past 6 years old. We were reading about how to prepare for the coming of the Antichrist, the raining fire, the fissure, and the rapture, all that stuff. I just remember being afraid all the time. I’m 56 now, and I still have nightmares. I still sleepwalk sometimes, and I still have high levels of anxiety.”[28]
Similarly, Josiah Hesse recalls a childhood filled with gloom, doom and preparing for the end of the world.”[29]
“One stormy night in the summer of 1992, I walked down the basement steps of my parents’ house to await the apocalypse. The Iowa air was thick with humidity, the ominous green sky prophesying a tornado. My 10-year-old hands trembled as I laid out my inventory: animal crackers, juice boxes, a Bible, and every sharp knife in the kitchen.
“My parents were home late and my first thought was that they’d been raptured up to heaven. I was a sinner who had been left behind to face the Earth’s destruction.
“Thunder boomed as I opened my Bible to the Book of Revelation, a passage I knew well after years spent on my dad’s knee as he read it aloud to his kids. This would be my roadmap to doom: the stars falling from the sky. The cracked earth spitting locusts with the heads of lions. The beast with seven heads, the body of a leopard, and the feet of a bear will rise from the sea and be worshiped by all those left behind on Earth.”[30]
Hesse describes his childhood as being raised in a world where it was “normal for adults to tell children they would probably never grow old.”[31] He correctly points out that this rightly qualifies “as brainwashing.”[32] Like all forms of brainwashing, the side effects often linger long after recovery. While he no longer holds these beliefs and currently enjoys a successful life and career, with a goal of successfully growing old, Hesse speaks of the “frightened child inside” still being “plagued with chronic nightmares.”[33]
Growing Up Fearing the End
Sadly, this story is all too common for young people growing up under the fear of pop-prophecy’s end-times scenario. This condition even has a name, Rapture Anxiety Disorder (RAD), and is now an officially recognized mental condition similar to post-traumatic stress.[34] According to one report, “rapture anxiety can take a lifetime to heal.”
Theologically, addressing RAD is a relatively quick fix since it’s fairly easy to point out the errors of pop-prophecy and demonstrate what the Scriptures really say. Emotionally? That’s another story. But the two are not that far apart. A healthy theology leads to relieving the stress of pending doom, thus leading to better emotional health as well.
David Holland, Jen Hamilton, Flor Edwards, and Josiah Hesse are all real people who’ve suffered the real-life effects of the very real dangers of Doomsday Indoctrination. And they are but the tip of the iceberg. Fortunately, as it turns out, at this point in life they’re all doing “alright.” Praise God for that! But their childhoods were not “alright,” and they’ll never get those back nor have the chance to relive them.
With every new generation, pop-prophecy reboots itself with a whole new crew of prophecy pundits trying to sell sensation. This “new crew” is at least partly populated by grown-ups who never realized the dangers – and errors – in what they were taught from an early age. Each new incarnation feeds off the Biblical illiteracy of the general public. As a result, parents have a responsibility to educate themselves in these matters. This is especially true in our high-tech digital age where even young children have instant access to the bad news of the end-time gurus.
As believers today, we need to reclaim the future that’s been taken from us by the prophecy pundits and hand it off to the children of the future. Because there is going to be a future, and it’s theirs to have. They deserve to enjoy that future, and they deserve to enjoy thinking about it now – while they’re still young.
That’s how a child is supposed to grow up.
Undoing the Doomsday Indoctrination
To that end, the authors and contributors here at Cruickshank’s Corner are dedicated to breaking the pop-prophecy monopoly through sound exegesis and solid theology. Our aim is to leave a better world for the next generation than the last generation left to us. Our goal is to produce materials that undo the stranglehold of pop-prophecy’s control.
My friend, Gary DeMar, has produced similar resources for decades now at American Vision. The intention of his efforts is to help believers understand the text of Scripture well enough to teach it responsibly. To that end, his book, A Beginner’s Guide to Interpreting Bible Prophecy: a Five-Part Study, is a good place to start (available HERE ).
Parents must equip themselves to protect their children’s minds from the dangers of Doomsday Indoctrination. When children encounter online prophecy punditry, parents must equip themselves to counter the sensationalists’ claims. When their child has a question about a particular verse, parents must equip themselves to go to the passage and explain it – faithfully and accurately. Or, at the very least, they need to have an idea of where to go to find sound theological explanations to offset the doomsday mindset that is so rampant today.
For the “kids” to truly be “alright,” they need to be freed from fearing the future. They need the freedom to embrace it. They need the freedom to chase it.
The truth is that you don’t need to worry about the Beast, the Antichrist, or the Gog and Magog war. But you do need to worry about what pop-prophecy does with this Biblical imagery. Specifically, you need to worry about the effects it will have on your child’s mind. Those effects can linger…for a long time. Even a lifetime.
And that’s one heavy millstone to have around your neck.
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[1] Taken from “The Kids Are Alright,” by The Who https://tinyurl.com/mru6vtpn
[2] President Trump Issues Executive Order Entitled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” | Shipman & Goodwin https://tinyurl.com/2jfmr4cr
[3] The point here is not to make a 1:1 comparison in every respect, nor is it a suggestion that pop-prophecy somehow be addressed through anything like an executive order. The point is merely that Evangelicals don’t express the same outrage over the indoctrination that takes place in the religious sphere as they do with regard to the public schools. The false end-time narrative of our current time is no less indoctrination than indoctrination in other areas, realms, and spheres. Yet, they are complacent and even compliment, for the most part, with regard this particular from of indoctrination.
[4] 2 in 5 Americans Believe We Are in the ‘End Times’ | Lifeway Research https://tinyurl.com/mpkaahk8
[5] See: Concetta Cucchiarelli, How Internet Algorithms Are Designed to Trap Us | Get Free Write https://tinyurl.com/2s4kmsd8
[6] From Kenny Logins, Highway to the Danger Zone https://tinyurl.com/4snbf8yv
[7] https://tinyurl.com/fcw4uvu3
[8] Q: Mary Follin, ASK MOM: SON HAS ANXIETY ABOUT WORLD ENDING | Fredericksburg Parent & Family Magazine https://tinyurl.com/3n4hm2fs
[9] For example, the tile of Terry Lee Mabus’s book: Rapture: The Great Escape (Beginning to End Bible Studies). Mabus states: “I acknowledge that the word Rapture is not in the Bible, but its meaning is a catching away. That is exactly what will happen any day now, the catching away of the Bride of Christ. I, for one, do not wish to have to go through the events that are going to take place after Jesus steps out on that cloud and calls his bride to meet Him in the air. I have broken down events from the book of Revelation, the events that will be unfolding after the Rapture has taken place, The Great Tribulation. I hope that my walk with God, by taking on His name (Jesus) for the marriage supper, and being filled with His glorious gift of the Holy Ghost will enable me to be among those that are taken away in the Rapture.” https://tinyurl.com/2nbn9sjb
[10] Jen Hamilton – Rapture Anxiety Post | Facebook https://tinyurl.com/y9ahtxut
[11] Have These PROPHETIC Events Already Happened? Unlocking the TRUTH Behind Revelation | Praise on TBN – YouTube https://tinyurl.com/53snr2n6
[12] Have These PROPHETIC Events Already Happened?, 11:50-12:25
[13] Have These PROPHETIC Events Already Happened?, 11:43-12:25.
[14] Rick Welch, My Interview w/ TBN Contributor and Author, David A Holland | The Burros of Berea – YouTube https://tinyurl.com/37uu7bdr
[15] Flor Edwards, Apocalypse Child: A Life in the End Times – A Memoir (Nashville, TN: Turner Publishing Company, 2018), 1.
[16] Although she never personally met the cult leader. See her interview here: Leaving a Cult & Living with Purpose (Flor Edwards) | MedCircle (YouTube) https://tinyurl.com/3tb6pywd
[17] Apocalypse Child, 2-3.
[18] Apocalypse Child, 104.
[19] Apocalypse Child, 103-104.
[20] Preserving Your Children’s Dreams During End Times | Courageous Parenting https://tinyurl.com/anbr5kse
[21] Preserving Your Children’s Dreams During End Times | Courageous Parenting
[22] Preserving Your Children’s Dreams During End Times | YouTube https://tinyurl.com/2zd6ncbn
[23] The Hamas attack was on October 7, 2023 and the Toplin’s video dropped on October 10, 2023.
[24] Preserving Your Children’s Dreams During End Times | YouTube, 7:32 – 7:49.
[25] Choosing to Have Kids During the End Times | Stuff George Writes https://tinyurl.com/2nh5u7v2
[26] Choosing to Have Kids During the End Times
[27] See: Timothy Diehl, The 5 Hardest Conversations You’ll Have With Your Kids | All Pro Dad https://tinyurl.com/3pdajn3d
[28] Q: David Epstien, How We Survived Growing Up in Apocalyptic Cults | Slate (March 06, 2021) https://tinyurl.com/4mpc5ym7
[29] Apocalyptic upbringing: how I recovered from my terrifying evangelical childhood | The Gurdian
[30] Apocalyptic upbringing
[31] Apocalyptic upbringing
[32] Apocalyptic upbringing
[33] Apocalyptic upbringing
[34] See: Robert E. Cruickshank, Jr. and Daniel E. Haren, The Rapture, It’s No Secret Anymore: So, Who’s Going to Buy the Antichrist’s Lure? | The Burros of Berea https://bit.ly/4azxBM4 ; see also: Gary DeMar, RAD: Rapture Anxiety Disorder | American Vision https://tinyurl.com/2p3e4768
