🔴 Website 👉 https://u-s-news.com/
Telegram 👉 https://t.me/usnewscom_channel
Strange Encounters: The Truth Behind the “67” Trend
Host: Rick Burgess
Welcome in to a brand new episode of Strange Encounters. I’m your host, Rick Burgess. If you’re joining us for the very first time, Strange Encounters is a podcast devoted to the supernatural, but maybe not in the traditional sense.
What we’re dealing with are angels and demons, and anything here that deals with the supernatural, we’re going to look at it through a lens of what we believe to be the inherent, God-inspired Holy Bible. What has God said and revealed about this world of angels and demons?
And it’s enough there. If you are intrigued with the supernatural, the Bible has plenty. We certainly don’t need to spend time on these other myths and legends. Let’s talk about what those of us of the Christian faith—and you may not be of that faith—this is what we believe to be true.
It is going on in dimensions all around us according to scripture. We’ve talked about some of that in prior episodes if you want to go catch that. There are 20 other episodes as of the time of this recording, and then we continue to add more today.
What we intend to do is this: we intend to give you information about the supernatural. We want to educate you on the supernatural dealing with angels and demons. Now let me tell you, we can give opinions; we will give speculation.
We will always acknowledge that we’re speculating if we are. We don’t apologize for scripture. We don’t really entertain thoughts outside of that. However, here is what we’re not intending to do. We are not here trying to tell you what to do.
These are decisions that ultimately you need to gather information and make for yourself. I may give warnings. I may give an opinion on whether I think something is something to be concerned about or not. But ultimately, we’re not the thought police.
We’re not here to say this is what you have to do or should do. You have to make those decisions for yourself. Here’s what we’re hoping: that if you leave our podcast, when you make these decisions in your life of things you should associate with, things that should be in your home, things that you should be seeing, and also protecting your children today.
That will be a big topic on things that may potentially be dangerous for them. But we’re not going to make that decision for you; you’re going to have to make that decision. And here’s one thing I know, because today we’re going to concentrate on something that’s involving our children.
These are the most difficult, especially when something becomes trendy and popular. I am the father of five, so I understand this completely. And I will say what I hope you already know: if you are a parent, if you want to parent and you want to parent well, it is extremely difficult.
Now, it’s not that difficult just to sit back and let your kids do whatever they want to do and try to be liked. That’s a huge mistake, but it’s not as difficult. But when you have to make tough decisions because they’re not capable of making these decisions on their own, it’s hard.
We’ve talked about things like you may choose, like our family did, not to participate in Halloween. That’s hard parenting because your kids see other kids doing it and they obviously want to do it too. And sometimes things are fun, but maybe they’re detrimental.
There are a lot of things that are fun that may be detrimental, and sometimes these are hard decisions. Today’s going to be another one of those; I’ll tell you that before we even get started. It’s going to deal with this “67” thing that has kind of taken over, unfortunately, small children.
Not as much young adults, yes, but small children are really, really into this. “Six, seven, six, seven,” and they’re all doing this. Now, the first time I saw it—all my kids are grown, so I’m not really in this world—but the first time that I saw it, I’m going to be completely transparent with you.
I knew we had trouble here. It just felt that way to me. Especially when you try to ask someone, “What is this?” and they don’t know. So, I’m already having a chaos warning, but kids a lot of times do things that are just stupid and silly.
There’s no harm to it and sometimes none of it makes sense. So that’s kind of what I was hoping. And I think if you’ve come here, you might be willing to say, “I may have some tough decisions to make.”
But I know that it would be easier and simpler if you just didn’t pay attention to this and just hoped it wasn’t any big deal so you don’t have to be the killjoy or come across as the parent that’s saying, “Well, why are you keeping these kids from doing this? It’s just fun.”
I’m not going to make that decision for you today. I am going to give you the information and I’m going to go ahead and tell you this: the information about this isn’t difficult to find. So, let me start though, because I want to read a strange encounter that was emailed to me.
You can email those if you would like or any questions to Rick at BurgessMinistries dot com. BurgessMinistries dot com will tell you some things that we do ministry outside of this. The Man Church dot com is our men’s ministry discipleship strategy.1
If you’d like to be part of what I do for a living Monday through Friday, it is called The Rick Burgess Show.2 We deal with this some on that show, but it’s mainly a comedy show where we cover the stories of the day. This was sent to me and it said:
“Rick, I’ve been listening to your Strange Encounters podcast, and I have one that I’d like to share. Feel free to use this on your podcast if you’d like.” I would love to have that permission. If not, I don’t want to share something you don’t want me to share.
“I am a follower of Jesus and I grew up in a Baptist church. When I was a teenager, my youth group went to Shako Springs for youth camp. Pretty common where this emailer is from. A lot of churches use this.
The dorms were set up like hotel rooms where there were three or four of us in a room. I shared a room with two other boys. Our first night there, one of the others, I’ll call him Tim for this retelling, wanted to play something called Bloody Mary.
Now, if you aren’t familiar with this, it’s an urban legend that you stand in front of a mirror and you say, ‘Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary,’ three times, and something is supposed to jump out of the mirror. I didn’t want to participate in this, but was talked into it by the two other roommates.
After the second statement of Bloody Mary, I chickened out. But I stepped away from the mirror. As I did, the other person we’re going to call Tim reached out to grab me to keep me from stepping away.
There was a mirror on the adjacent wall over the sink outside the bathroom. It did not occur to us that we were also standing in front of that mirror and we really didn’t pay any attention to it. But as Tim reached out to grab me, this gave him the vantage point to see the other mirror.
He screamed in terror as we all dropped to the floor. Tim described a dark shadow in the shape of a person walking. The mirror was situated in a way that the reflection of anyone in the room would have been from the waist up.
But Tim’s description was that of a full head-to-foot body walking and actually growing larger as if it were coming from a distance inside the mirror toward our room. I’ve never seen anyone as genuinely terrified as Tim was and we were shaken from the experience.
Just then we heard a knock on our door and it was our youth pastor doing his rounds making sure everyone was settled in for the night. We told him what had happened and wisely, listen to this, this youth pastor told us that urban legends like these are not something to play around with.
He said that these are often used by demons as invitations to come in.” The youth pastor is correct. “He led us in a prayer to cleanse the room and protect us. And we had no more problems after that.”
Rick Burgess: Yeah, playing around with some of this stuff may seem so innocent, just like this 67 thing. Oh, it’s just so innocent. What’s the harm? It’s just all good fun. And sometimes that is the case.
I know that sometimes we don’t pay attention to these things because we have people within the church that seem to look for demons around every corner. And we don’t want to do that. As a matter of fact, when people started asking me about this on the main show, I honestly didn’t want to fool with it.
There’s almost this side of this where I want to study this, but I never like being the person that has to walk in and tell parents difficult things, especially friends that I know very well. I know they’re great parents and I know this is consuming kids everywhere.
You may think to yourself, even if this comes from a bad place, maybe it’s not a big deal. That’s an interesting thought. But I wonder sometimes as parents if we would feel the same way with other things that we know are dangerous for our children.
Would we ever take on, say, a knife that was left out on the counter? “Well, I’m going to let my kid play with it, but I’m going to hope that the kid turns the knife away from him and doesn’t stab himself or herself or anybody else.”
I mean, I know it’s potentially dangerous, but if I’ll just kind of keep an eye out, maybe something bad won’t happen. I’ll still let them play with the knife. You probably wouldn’t do that.
“I’m going to let my kid keep playing on the side of the road because they’re not actually in the road. And I’m sure it’ll be fine that they won’t accidentally wander out there or a car will careen over and hit them.” See, all this sounds outrageous right now.
“I’m going to let my kid play with matches and I’m going to stand there or just tell them don’t go out there and start a fire.” These kind of things we would never do. But sometimes when it comes to entertainment and the culture, it’s like we won’t take the same attitude.
And really what I think that is—and I’ve been guilty of it too, so I’m not preaching at you, I’m talking with you—when it comes to the spiritual realm, I think that sometimes you go, “Well, Rick, a knife, I know that’s bad. I know playing by traffic’s bad. I know playing with fire is bad.”
But if we truly believe what the Bible says and that the spiritual realm is real and that we have a devil, and we have Satan, the fallen angel Lucifer that is extremely powerful—not compared to God, but compared to human beings—and then the demons which also operate with him.
If we truly believe what we’re saying, then why do we pretend that that is not dangerous? It’s extremely dangerous. So let’s give you an example that happened in our home since I’m not dealing with the 67 thing because my kids are adults.
I remember Star Wars was a really big deal when I was growing up and then it continued to be a big deal when my kids were growing up. I remember my wife coming to me at one time and even talking to our children and she was like, “I’m not sure that the message of Star Wars… we got to be careful with this message.”
And I was like, “What? What are you talking about? What’s wrong with Star Wars?” And she said, “Well, you know, if you watch the story and the theme, certainly fictional, it’s really based on Eastern mysticism—the yin and the yang. Sound familiar?”
You’ve seen that symbol before. Meaning, there’s nothing really good, there’s nothing really bad, and there’s a little bit of good and a little bit of bad in us and everything. That’s just the way it is. No big deal.
And the Force has a dark side and a good side and they’re equal in value and we just kind of vacillate between these two forces. It doesn’t declare that one is more powerful than the other and that we all are just a little bit of both.
Well, in Star Wars, I guess that’s okay. But what you have to be careful of is that this point of view is based on a religion that is in conflict with what we deem to be the truth.
This is kind of like, we’re not as concerned with Buddhists, for instance, as we would be for, say, radicalized Islamic people who want to blow us up because the sweet little Buddhists don’t really bother anybody and they seem like pretty nice people.
But when you think about that they are worshiping pagan gods and they reject the one and only living God and they’re in conflict with his first commandment that there will be no gods before him, they’re actually pretty bad and dangerous because it’s a false religion.
So with that being said, let’s journey into 67 and what it’s based on. Well, I know and I already had it on the show even as I’m recording this today. People knowing we were going to talk about this and somebody says, “Hey Rick, it’s all based on some basketball player in the NBA who was 6’7. That’s what this whole thing’s based on.”
That’s just not true. There was a meme about a basketball player in the NBA, but the meme was based off the song “67” and the 67s in the song. So, if you really want to get to the origin of what this 67 thing is all about, you got to go to where it started.
It started with the artist Skrilla.3 And I’m going to tell you something, this stuff is not hidden from you. You can go research it yourself. I’ve watched Skrilla in interviews and he’s not holding back what he worships, what he does, and what he intends.
And it should concern all of us greatly. So, we want to play a clip for you here from Nathan Bentley. He’s pastor of LifePoint, Arizona. I like this clip because I think that Pastor Bentley has the perfect balance.
He’s kind of like us. He said, “I don’t adhere to all these conspiracy theories.” So, this is going on in the pastor’s life with school teachers and all this. He just thought it was something annoying and stupid that children were doing.
But he decided to take a deeper look and just listen to him walk it out. It’s about 3 minutes. There’s all meat. It’s everything you’re wanting to know and then we’ll continue the discussion. So here is Pastor Nathan Bentley.
Nathan Bentley: I don’t even want to say the words, but have you seen the 67 trend? Yes. To all the teachers in the room, God bless you for still being alive and being here and loving the Lord.
So, my kids came to me a while ago with it and they said, “Hey, our teacher said we can’t do this. Isn’t that dumb? It’s just a silly thing. Look, here’s how it originated. Here’s the memes.”
And so, I went and I looked it up and usually I can look up things and find their original source and see what’s really going on behind it. And usually you’ve got some few crazy Christian conspiracists who are out there who everything’s evil.
And I thought, I’ll find it. Nothing. Nothing came up. It was just, yeah, it’s a simple funny thing. It’s from this song and then this reporter did this and then this TikToker combined the two. And now kids just… it’s a funny thing they do.
I was fine. All right. Whatever. I don’t care. Just don’t do it around me. This morning I woke up and I saw a video that wasn’t just conspiracy, that wasn’t needing—”Well, if you take the six from this word and you add it to the Fs from that word,” you know what I mean? True conspiracy crazy stuff.
This one was just, hey, here’s the guy who sings the song. Yes, Skrilla. Yes. The song got popular at the beginning of this year and then it got really popular when an NBA player said his height was 6’7 and then somebody made a meme and put them together with a highlight reel.
Skrilla is a self-confessed member of the church of Santeria or the church of Satan.4 He worships Ochun and Ogan and the gods. He participates. You can go find his live. You can watch him on podcast and interviews.
He sacrifices goats and chickens and mice—depending on what the sacrifice is, is what he says. And he does it so that he can have favor in Hollywood. And he talks about since he’s really dedicated himself to this, since he’s began to put blood oaths into it, his career took off.
Now, here’s something really fascinating. Why does a guy who presents himself as a hardcore thug rapper where the song is only about 2 minutes long and it is about sex and drugs—that’s what he’s singing about.
And by the way, if you listen to the song, I don’t recommend it. Like go in with a lot of prayer, but if you do, it just sounds like he’s honestly speaking in tongues. You can’t even understand him. I had to have subtitles to understand what was being said.
But he’s speaking about drink and drugs and sex. And then halfway through the song, he does the Baby Shark theme. Now, tell me, why would a rapper who’s got this hardcore persona, who’s singing about things that are very mature, throw in the middle of his song the Baby Shark theme?
Unless you want it to appeal to an audience. And now our entire country has our kids doing this thing and shouting the words out. “No pastor, you’re being one of the psychos. You’re being somebody who’s over-obsessed with things, right? 67 is just where he’s from.”
Really? So it has no connection to the god Ogan or the god Tamara who he says he worships? Who he says if you go in—I forget the name of the bowl—but you put a name with a birth date in the bowl, anything you want to happen to that person happens to him?
He goes “shot, stabbed,” whatever. But you still think it’s just an address. You see, why am I speaking this? Because one of the things that was said to me this week was, “Pastor, it’s not our job to condemn.” I’m not condemning anybody.
It is my job as a shepherd to protect those who come here to learn from me and understand. And so I’m telling you, I’m telling you that when artists—and I am going to name them—like Taylor Swift, Beyonce…
Beyonce, who has come out and said, “When I take the stage, I take the form of Ochun,” which is the goddess of fertility and sex, which by the way goes back to Egyptian Baal worship. Follow it. That’s where it originated from. She says it.
Billie Eilish. Go watch one of her videos. I mean, don’t, but there’s more demonic imagery in there than you’ll find in the book of Satan. I mean, it is… they’ve stopped even hiding it.
Rick Burgess: And there you go. So, don’t make the mistake of starting at the meme about a basketball player. That’s not its origin. Its origin is from this rapper.
And we’ve already on Strange Encounters played for you aspiring rappers in this hip-hop world that said that he encountered demons. He was told to do bizarre things in order to be favored. Satan has used music and rhythms since the fall.
So think about this. These are not things… I want you to understand what this pastor said. Nathan Bentley did not make any assumptions about this artist Skrilla. He simply went and watched the artist be interviewed, as did I.
So we’re not saying it might be—and you know six is the number of man and seven is God’s perfect number—maybe there’s something there. Whatever, who knows. But I am not speculating on what Skrilla worships. That’s not speculation at all.
And the thing that really, really got to me is because I haven’t listened to this ridiculous song and I don’t think I’m going to, but when the pastor who did listen to it says it’s got Baby Shark in the middle of it.
And now little kids everywhere are doing something that is associated with pagan gods, animal blood sacrifices. The religion, research it yourself: Santeria. It’s easy to research. It’s all about these gods.
They actually have, if you kind of look at it the way it’s set up on the core beliefs, Olodumare—however they say it—that’s their supreme god and it’s a pagan god and it’s at the center of the religion. And then they have these Orishas.
That would be kind of like what we would say in the truth: angels and demons. And so they’re lesser deities. And this religion has practices including dancing to rhythmic drumming, using herbs and charms, making offerings to these demonic lesser gods.
They want these lesser gods to go on their behalf and harm people that are their enemies, or to protect them in some way, or to have favor in Hollywood. So they also have animal sacrifices. They use chickens.
Skrilla says that he has sacrificed goats, that he has sacrificed small animals, he sacrificed chickens.5 And of course, they also want to communicate. So you’ve got them trying to communicate with demons and spirits to get their guidance.
They interpret palm nuts or cowrie shells, they do that. The initiation is something that has a seven-day initiation that a person may become a devotee of a specific angelic being—called Orishas, lesser gods. It’s ugly stuff.
So if you’re parenting right now, you go, “So where do I land?” Well, I would make my decision not on things that are up for debate, because you can justify doing anything by saying, “Well, we really don’t know.”
Or you can make these decisions on your children being intrigued by this by going and making that decision on what you already know to be true. So, do you want your children doing some sort of ritual with six and seven that comes out of a pagan religion?
Santeria includes worship of pagan gods, animal blood sacrifices, omens, mysticism, blood oaths.6 And then you go, “Well, you know, Rick, I’m still in.” Okay. So the song that’s getting the six seven out of it… this is randomly thrown in there?
I’m sure it means nothing. You want your kid to be replicating an artist that is singing about drugs, sex outside of marriage, fornication, everything under the sun and drunkenness. And the artist is not hiding any of this.
He’s actually telling you this is what he does and this is what he believes and it is in conflict. Not just a different belief system—he is worshiping something dark and demonic that at the foundation is more satanic.
This is not some Buddhist, okay? Even though I told you we tend to think—and I was guilty of this in my own life too—where you go, “Okay, I’m not really playing games. I’m not some Satanist. I take them to church every Sunday.”
We teach the Bible inside our house. So if they peddle around with this, it’s not some big deal. But I would ask the question: you’re probably trying to do what I did in my life too much, thinking that there is a third option on being for God or for Satan.
And I think that I don’t have to choose those two. There’s actually this third option that we’ve created in our own flesh and our own minds where I can kind of hang right in here. “I don’t believe any of these pagan religions. I teach my kids about drugs, sex, and all these things.”
“So I’m going to stay right in here. It doesn’t matter if they’re singing about it, they’re doing a chant about it. Hey, this 67 thing, it’s cute when they do it.” The thing that would concern me is if I was making that decision that you’re going to manage it by being sure they know real stuff but still letting them do that.
I know you think it’s not possible, but I’ve seen it in my own life and I’ve seen it in my own—hear me now—parenting mistakes. Parenting mistakes. There have been times I’ve done it right and there have been times I’ve done it wrong.
And the times that I took the attitude with any of my children—I see that they’re on a road that is a little bit in conflict with what we believe, but I have instilled in them the faith so solidly—which by the way is an arrogant point of view.
But I remember thinking, “Oh, they’re solid. They know the truth.” And how about this? I can read things from the children that have had issues. I’m talking about things that were biblically sound. I’m talking about reading the Word of God, talking about Jesus.
They were as sold out as a parent would ever think. But I made the mistake of thinking that because they know the truth and because they’re raised in a home where the faith is the center—not just cultural—that they were ready to be exposed to things and they’ll still not be pulled away.
And unfortunately, in some instances with my children, I regretted that decision because I thought they would impact the culture with their faith more than the culture would impact them. And it was a foolish thing to think at the time.
There were certain hard parenting decisions, things I should have kept out of their life, that I didn’t. Now, is it over? No. Is there progress on some of that being repaired? Yes. Are the ones that I allowed things that I thought they could handle… has the prodigal come back home? No.
Am I hopeful they will? Yes. But if I had just done things a little bit differently and not been so careless, it’s possible they wouldn’t be a prodigal at all. I can’t guarantee that, but I can tell you that I was naive to how wicked and dark the world can be.
You can send a child out into this kind of stuff recklessly, thinking that they’re so solid in their faith that they’ll be okay. And I worry with this—not sinful worry, concern. I’m concerned. And I can hear it right now: “Rick, you’re overreacting. It’s cute when my kid does all this.”
Well, I hope that you were saying that before you did some research and know what’s at the heart of this. This is not mild stuff. This is not Star Wars where we’re dealing with the yin and the yang—which is very dangerous.
We did not let our kids participate and learn the lessons of yin and yang until they were adults and then they could go watch Star Wars if they wanted to. They’ve established their own lives now. And we didn’t treat it like it was something terrifying, but just to watch out for this confusing message.
Anything that you’re walking your kids through, even if you think it’s okay, explain to them what’s going on. But I want you to know, and we all know now what this pastor found out. He didn’t think it was any big deal.
He thought those that were thinking it was a big deal were silly until he went and did the research. And when you see some of the things that this artist openly says and practices and drops Baby Shark in the middle of his dark twisted song.
And now he has all of America’s children, and probably around the world too, doing their little 67 thing. Do we really ever feel good about some kind of chant or some kind of saying that our children are doing that we have no idea where it comes from?
They don’t have any idea what they’re doing. Just looking at what has happened throughout time dealing with demons and angels, I think sometimes—and we’ve seen it over and over again, and C.S. Lewis takes this on a little bit with The Screwtape Letters.
One of the greatest strategies that the adversary has with us as human beings… No, is Satan equal to God? He is not. There is no yin and yang. God is a Creator; Lucifer is created. Big drop off.
But now when it comes to human beings and these supernatural creations of God, angels and demons, we won’t fare very good against them. That’s why we need Jesus. Even the archangel Michael in the book of Jude would not take on Satan without Jesus.
So we certainly don’t stand a chance without Jesus. But we can decide to look to our Shepherd who’s protecting us and say, “I’m going to go my own way on this one. I don’t think it’s a big deal. I think it’s cute.”
But I will tell you that one of the things that the adversary is hoping—and the demons that I think are clearly at the root of this 67 thing—one of the things that they have banked on is that all of us as parents and grandparents will think it’s cute and we’ll determine it is no big deal.
And I’m going to tell you, if it opens the door to something that brings your child to it, it doesn’t mean that it’s all going to be bad. But if you make the decision to continue down this dangerous road, you’ll do it educated.
Now, for the love of all that’s good, at least go check out the artist yourself: Skrilla. He’s not hiding this from you. He says, “I put people’s birth dates and their name in bowls and I put animal blood in there and I begin to do a ritual.”
With these pagan false gods, better known as demons, he tells them what he wants to happen next. “And if I have an enemy, I sick him on him or her.” You heard what the pastor said about Beyonce and these other artists.
There’s a darkness and a twistedness. This is bigger than the old 60s adage: sex, drugs, and rock and roll. This is—even though those things are sinful and they can lead to lots of darkness and opening people up to demons—but we now have satanic worship going on in a very influential medium.
Music does have influence, and this artist Skrilla is not even hiding it. He’s not even pretending to be of the faith. He’s not even pretending that he’s not satanic. He’s saying it straight.
And look at what we’ve done because I see it on my own show. People say, “Now, this comes from an NBA meme,” but it doesn’t. The NBA meme came from this. Go to the foundation. Go to the root of it. And the things that you find there should be very troubling.