Ep 31 | Strange Encounters with Rick Burgess

Hello and welcome to Strange Encounters.

I'm your host, Rick Burgess.

Host of the Rick Burgess Show.

That's a daily radio show.

If you'd like to find out what we do Monday through Friday, go to Rick BurgessShow.com.

Also director of the ManChurch.com, which is a men's discipleship strategy, being used

by over 2,000 churches all over the country and around the world.

If we can help your men's ministry with a sustainable, I mean, for years, strategy, reaching

and discipling men through two-fold approach, high challenge, followed by high equipping.

Just go to dmanchurch.com.

Also my wife, Sherry and I do marriage, and also she does women's events.

If you'd like to find out some of those that are going on, you go to our website, Burgessministries.com

and just look there under events.

That's who I am.

If you're joining us for the first time, this is a podcast designed to discuss the supernatural.

We certainly believe in the supernatural, but we believe in it from a biblical world view,

involving angels, demons, God Himself.

Today we've got a couple of things to work through.

We have lots of episodes, and if you'd like to go ahead and subscribe to all of our platforms,

that'd be great.

That way you got the notifications ready when something new comes out.

We got more content.

You're ready to go.

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So we'll start with which has become, sadly, a new segment, own Strange Encounters,

and that's demons in the headlines.

Sadly, they're there now at a very intense rate, horrible story, out of what the new story

describes as an affluent Florida community, where we have this mother that has killed her

two children, then herself in their upscale Lakewood Ranch home.

So these are the things you got to look for here.

Sadly, we have a double homicide suicide here, all with the markers of demonic activity,

including ending the life of the host.

I don't have any idea because the story doesn't tell me this.

Things that might have been going on that could have been an invitation for demonic activity.

But when you look at this, the medical examiner's trying to get the official calls in the

manner of deaths, but it is described as a violent murder scene.

Now this is a mother now with supposedly what we would hope, God given maternal connection

and instinct.

Now these are not children that she just met.

Sadly, the children are teenagers and they both are young, but they're not so young that

you could get into some sort of postpartum or something horrible like that.

That does not really seem to be in play at all.

One child is 14, the other is 11.

So when the investigators are looking into this, and we've heard this so many times, the

people in the community, what do you think they say?

They say we've seen nothing that would have indicated this would have happened.

So there's been no behavior that they've observed from a psychological standpoint.

The children's father was traveling in South America at the time with a horrible, horrible

shock he must have gotten when he got this news and returned home.

The neighborhood says it's a total surprise and shock.

This neighborhood is usually very quiet.

It's an affluent neighborhood.

It's a family community with small kids and other ones says this really hits you hard

when you hear about this stuff happening.

A motive has not been determined or released.

So the people that are investigating this say we see no motive, but we do see, and they

did release this, it looks like she was planning to do this.

So they did release that information.

So when you see this type of stuff, a mother murdering an 11 year old and a 14 year old,

her own son and daughter and herself and an affluent neighborhood and everyone said

the way that we saw them behaving would have never indicated to us that something so horrible

would happen.

Unexplained at this point, but really dark and twisted and we hear more and more stories

like this coming from our society and they seem to be in the headlines every day.

Of course, the most prominent headline as the time we were, we are recording this would

be the war that's going on with Iran and you say, well, what's that got to do with

strange encounters?

Well, everything because when you look at Islam and you look deep into the theology there,

you'll find one of the things that's always a marker to be concerned about.

And I would say this, even involving some religions that you may seem as heart, you may

seem not near as violent, not near as masculine as say, you know, the teachings of Muhammad.

But anytime you look into any sort of religion and Jesus Christ is not considered to be the

son of God is not considered to be deity.

That is a false religion and we know this just watching how Lucifer operates in the Garden

of Eden and we watch how Lucifer operates in the temptation of Jesus himself.

We find that he is manipulating scripture.

He's manipulating you know, because sometimes you'll say, well, in Islam, there's certainly

respect for Jesus.

There is.

The only problem is that they do not believe that the crucifixion and resurrection happen.

They believe that he was replaced.

Either he never died on the cross and his followers removed him from the cross, which by the way,

the Roman Empire is not going to let anyone come up and just remove a body from the cross

until they determine for themselves that the person is dead.

So that is, that's a bit of a reach.

And then there's another theory that they have that he did die, but someone replaced

him with a fake resurrection.

The bottom line is they take the center of the gospel and they take the message of the

gospel and they reject it.

So if you're rejecting the deity of Jesus Christ and you're rejecting Jesus's own words,

that he is the way the truth and the life, and no one can be redeemed and come into

the presence of our holy father who is holy, holy, holy and perfect, well, then you're

now just a demonic religion.

And then we see some of the things that go on in these, these theocracy, theocracies

that have been in Iran, you know, for 47, 49 years.

And we see the mistreatment of women, we see the killing of people by the thousands.

And plus anytime you're looking at any group of people that say the tenants of our belief

system is that those who reject our religion should be eradicated and removed from the face

of the earth and we wage war against Israel and we wage war against followers of Jesus

then what else do you think that is?

It's darkness and it's demonic.

And so there's a physical war that is going on again with this religion, but there's

always at the center of it a major dark spiritual war that is going on as well.

So pay attention to that.

And really the key to understanding dealing with these enemies of Israel and of the West,

if you can't understand the spiritual part of it, you really can never begin to come

up with any sort of strategy that'll have any impact.

Because until you realize that this religion and these theocracies that are taking Islam

to the place they take it to where all who oppose their religion must be destroyed until

you understand that they do not want Israel or those who are friends of Israel are those

who reject Islam to be eradicated from the face of the earth and you have no idea how to

approach it.

Because the only thing that they understand is violence, sadly.

So on a nation versus nation standpoint, not a human to human standpoint, but nation

versus nation until you break their will to continue, they will continue.

And any attempt to compromise with them or to appease them, they only see as weakness.

They do not see that as anything that they should respect.

So these headlines today, we've seen them before, we're seeing them now until Jesus Christ

returns and finally eradicates all who oppose him.

These wars and rumors of wars will always continue.

And when you're dealing with really any war, there's a physical side of it and there's

a nation versus nation, but there's always a spiritual element that we must understand

in order to have any idea what's going on around us.

So this should not surprise us.

So now getting into another topic, which is kind of where we're going to spend the rest

of this episode of Strange Encounters, it was very concerning.

I've never dealt with tarot cards, never have, never dealt, never sat down to have anyone

read those for me.

But I understand that this is actually pretty popular that now you can get these cards

just about anywhere.

And so the history of it, we need to understand, and because so you can kind of be careful with

this kind of thing, it's really become a very trendy occult item.

Now there are some Christians now that are trying to justify these cards and even have

come up with some sort of, and I'm doing quotes for those of you that are listening, not

watching Christian version of these cards, like you're expecting God to say something

to you through these cards, highly, highly dangerous, highly, I put the tarot cards right

up there with Ouija boards and things like that.

You have to understand that anything, well, let's go to the history first and then we'll

get to that.

So the history of these cards come from Northern Italy, if you go all the way back in the

1400s, 1430s to the 1450s.

And if you go back there, this is true, and we always want to tell the truth here.

It is true that this was not a game of prophecy.

It was not supposed to have anything to do with the supernatural.

It was supposed to be a game of skill, like any card game, or board game that someone

would play.

But then in the 1780s, French occultists, those practicing the occult, took these cards

and they started to make it popular that the belief was these cards held some sort of

ancient Egyptian secrets.

And this is when they started the fortune telling with the cards.

Now, by the way, if you go back to the history, it has nothing to do with Egypt.

However, these occultists, a French descent, they started to use them in this way.

They were absolutely part of the occult.

So there's red flag, not yellow flag, there's red flag number one.

I don't want in my home, I don't want to be sitting down anywhere throwing out a bunch

of cards that are used by the occult for some sort of fortune telling because we know

that that's divination.

And the Bible completely rejects that how this is crept into Christianity, I will never

know.

Though that shouldn't surprise me.

The Deuteronomy 18 verses 10 through 12 could not be clearer.

There shall not be found among you who burns his son or his daughter as an offering anyone

who practices divination, or tells fortunes, or interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or a

charmer, or a medium, or anyone who inquires of the dead with the necromancer, you've heard

of necromaniacs, which can anything be more evil than that, that's dealing with the dead.

So we know the Bible forbids anybody telling fortunes, anybody that some mediums as they

can talk to the dead.

If a medium, we've said this on other episodes, but these cards sometimes are used this way,

anybody who tells you they can talk to your dead relatives, I will tell you they're either

completely, you know, a scam, which that's what you hope for.

You kind of hope it's a scam, because if it's not a scam and they truly have spiritual

power, that power is not from God.

And anybody they conjure up is not your relative.

It is a demon that is trying to manipulate you.

You don't talk to your dead relatives that have gone on to eternity.

You just don't, and don't let anybody tell you different about that, okay?

So these cards were adopted by the occultists that were practicing the occult in France.

Now the modern cards that came around in the 20th century, now you want to really, really

look for this particular version, it came out in 1909, the Rider Weight Smith.

By the way, don't ever get around these cards, but what I'm saying, if you see somebody

and that is owned the cards, they're the ones that gave the more detailed scenes on the

minor cards, which made them accessible.

Now they got them in the divination as well.

There's 78 cards in these decks and there's the major arcaneus is what they call them.

These are like, they're called these trump cards, meaning that they're about the major life

themes that are going on.

There's the magician is one of them.

The high priestess is one, the lovers, the devil, I'd hang on to that, and the sun.

And then there's the minor arcana, and these are the things that kind of get involved

supposedly in your everyday events in these temporary situations.

There's four suits.

Each one has 14 cards.

They're numbered, eight to ten, plus they also have the four of the court cards.

And these are like, they'll have what they call ones, and that user represents the element

of fire, and that's supposed to be for passion, action, creativity, inspiration.

They've got one that's called the cups, the element of water there.

That's supposed to be emotions, relationships, intuition, healing.

They have swords or the air cards.

This is supposed to be intellect, intellect, communication, truth, mental conflict.

Then they have what they call the pinnacles or the coins.

This would be the earth, all three of these are in play there.

And these would supposedly tell you things about your finances, material possessions,

work, health, these court cards are in there.

And in the court cards that I mentioned, you've got the page and this is curiosity, learning,

new messages.

You've got a night action, movement, passion again.

You've got the queen, maturity, intuition, nurturing.

You have the king, authority, mastery, outward leadership, and so on.

So why are these things bad?

Well, the Bible prohibits it.

Prohibits it.

I've already told you that in Deuteronomy 10, I mean, so 18, 10 through 12.

So it's prohibited by the Bible.

So can we just go ahead and say that we should not be involved in anything that is prohibited

by the Bible?

For some reason, and I want you to stay with me now, I don't mean this to be offensive.

I just mean it to be factual, because men and women, the two genders, and there are

only two, men and women, as created by God, are equal and valued.

There's no question about that.

I don't be part of anything that calls for an inequality between men and women, because

that's not of God.

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However, in these beautiful distinctions, and they're not interchangeable, no matter what

the society that's riddled with demonic activity as we've covered, trying to cause confusion

in chaos, this beautiful uniqueness between the male and the female.

For some reason, the female seems to be more susceptible, now men certainly get caught

into this, to things like these tarot cards than men, because for some reason, women seem

to be more concerned about certainty.

You want to know what's going to happen, you don't like not knowing.

It was described to me one time that my wife has confirmed this, that how men can think

about one thing at a time and can compartmentalize things that they don't want to fool with

right now.

Women are thinking about everything all the time, like the analogy that I heard in a teaching

from a woman trying to help me understand women, and my wife brought it to me, wanted me

to try to learn that and understand some things.

She said like in a woman's home, there may be a bed that's unmade, there may be dishes

that need to be done, there may be dusting that needs to be done, or whatever.

She's not, a man can go in there and say, I need to dust, and then I need to go deal

with the dishes, then I need to go deal with the room, and women are thinking about everything

in their house that needs to be done all at the same time.

It never stops, and there's just this never-ending pursuit of certainty.

As we know in scripture, that Satan went to manipulate the woman first, now Adam, as

we know, is held accountable for this, because it was his job to protect his wife.

However, the manipulation started with the approach to the female, and women seem to

be involved in fortune tellers, mediums, cards, more so than men, not exclusively, because

you're looking for certainty.

Now, I want to tell you why these things are bad, and why these tarot cards are bad and

unbiblical.

I've already given you why they're unbiblical.

Anything associated with divination, seeking hidden knowledge is what that means, is forbidden.

The second thing is there's a spiritual danger here.

If you start dabbling in these cards, it opens the user up to demonic forces, because

what you're saying to demonic forces is instead of seeking guidance from God, which will

be our next point, you want to seek guidance from whoever shows up.

Remember, that's the thing we warned about in some of y'all.

You took it lightly, and we had some comments of people when we tried to caution you about

dealing with some of this Eastern mysticism, and even things like yoga.

Anything that is telling you to open your mind to hear from anyone, you don't care who

you hear from, is dangerous.

We should be seeking one voice, and that's the voice of God, not any voice that shows

up.

If you go into these cards, and you're wanting to know about your future, you want to

contact somebody that's gone on, you're now seeking false guidance, or worse, evil spirits.

That's who you're going to deal with.

There's nothing in scripture that says, if you want to hear from God, get out a bunch

of tarot cards, and sit down with some stranger, and throw them out there and start looking

at the images, let them interpret this for you, and then that'll take you to God.

That's nowhere in scripture.

This is forbidden, shouldn't be in your home.

It isn't funny, it's not something to play games with.

You should not be participating in this, it's some bachelorette party, or some girl trip

that you're taking, and men, you shouldn't be involved in this, of course, eat them.

The next thing is what I just said.

The Bible forbids it, it's spiritually dangerous, and then the next thing is what we were kind

of touching on.

It's a misplaced trust.

You're trusting something other than God himself, his word, the Holy Spirit, you're saying

God's word is not enough for me, the Holy Spirit is not enough for me.

I have to go and see if I can't check with some other resource to see if they can't give

me more certainty.

Look, you may very well get a supernatural message from these cards in this garbage.

You might, but it's not from God.

That's where the caution is, and so you are forbidden to do it by the Bible.

It is spiritually dangerous, and it's misplaced trust.

We trust in God and God alone.

That's the only voice you can trust every single time, and if his word is not giving

you enough detail, and you want some kind of sign from God and you're begging for a sign

and you've got to have more.

I've got to have something supernatural happen for me to be reassured, be very careful

because the demons are Satan himself, are more than willing to give you a supernatural

experience, but that doesn't mean it's from God.

Then the next point is it's associated with the occult.

These cards, you know, from all the way back from the 1780s forward have been associated

with the occult.

You don't want to be playing any card game that's associated with the occult.

It's linked to sorcery, witchcraft.

You want nothing to do with this, and I've already seen, I was researching this, and I've

seen other people teaching about this, and I was learning from, because again, I've never

dealt with these cards.

I'm aware of them.

I mean, I've seen them in movies and things like that.

I've never participated with them, so I've seen people already going, oh, it's just a game,

and you can only be trapped in something as long as you keep an in perspective.

Let me tell you something.

That's got to be some of the dumbest things I've ever heard.

You really think as a human being, you can go into the supernatural realm and you can

stay in full control.

It's foolish.

So the modern cards, like I told you, especially the writer Wait Smith deck, were designed by

members of societies like the hermetic order of the golden dawn.

Now you may not know who that is, but that's where the 1909 is when these cards were established.

Now this was a society that was dedicated to studying and practicing the occult, metaphysics,

esoteric traditions, and this was founded, which is going to stir a bunch of you up again.

I'm sorry.

It was founded by Freemasons.

I'm not every Freemasons, but a group of Freemasons made up the hermetic order of the

golden dawn.

And they wanted to get into the world of the occult, the metaphysics, esoteric traditions,

all that garbage.

And they're the ones that put together the cards that you see, I mean, you see them in

major stores, they're easily accessed.

And if you see the Wait Smith deck, the writer Wait Smith deck, that's what that was associated

with.

So no, that's where that came from.

Do you really want to be involved in a deck of cards that the original printing of those

cards were used by people who were practicing these types of things?

Why would you want that?

I mean, my goodness, if you want to play cards, then go play cards, but do not start getting

these tarot cards, trying to use them for you to have some certainty or get some message

about the future.

This is a huge mistake.

It should not be in your home.

It should not be anywhere near you.

And frankly, I wish we could eradicate them from the store because we've got a lot of

innocent people going out there picking up these cards, thinking it's just a neat little

gain.

Does any of you remember, I do, when I was a child, the first time that I ran up on somebody

that had a Ouija board in their house, do you remember how creepy that was?

And I mean, I had no idea what we were dabbling with, but even as a child, I knew that this

couldn't be good.

Well, tarot cards have a terrible history, horrible history.

And these are things you can research for yourself.

You can sit there and say, well, this Rick Burgess guy, I don't want him telling me what

I can.

Which you can't, I can't do.

I'm trying to educate you, but did you know you could also educate yourself?

You go find out the history of these cards and see if you think they're no big deal.

And then we get to the ones who take that point of view.

I want to talk to you, hey, it ain't no big deal.

And I tell you what, you're in here going on this guy, he's a radical, okay?

I want to take on you, hey, it's no big deal, people.

First of all, it is true.

And you will say this.

If you go back to his original history, Rick, they'll go all the way back to the 1400s.

It was just a game and it was just a game in the beginning.

So it's still just a game and it's nothing more and you need to, you need to get up off

your high horse and let us play with these tarot cards if we want to.

Well, but again, that's, that's not historically accurate.

It didn't stay there.

You got to go back and look at the entire history of the tarot cards.

The entire history, okay?

So and you'll find the occult starting, like I say, in the late 18th century forward.

Then other people say, Rick, Rick, Rick, Rick, it's just a psychological tool.

This is just a wonderful thing for us to have some self-reflection, you know, some brain

storming, working our brains.

We get into some of this psycho babble out there, the psychological thing.

You know, some things that could help us with our life.

There's no harm in this.

I will tell you that anytime you're doing anything that's dealing with your mind and

affecting the way you think are opening, opening your mind up to anything other than the

Holy Spirit or the Word of God, you're walking into really big trouble, okay?

So the history, you got to know it all, psychological tool, very dangerous.

Then the next, which is probably where a lot of you would be, the next, hey, it's no big

deal.

Then on these tarot cards, it's neutral.

I don't think it has any power of any kind.

I don't think it's going to help me psychologically.

It's just ink and paper.

It's all how you see it.

It's all how you use it.

It's what your intention is.

If I want to keep it into some kind of thing where it's just a game, or we're all just

having some fun with it, I have the strength and the ability to do that.

Ink and paper have no power over me and how I want to use it.

I could use it.

Well, so you could say the same thing about the Bible though, couldn't you?

It may be written to us in the way we hold it as ink and paper, but you tell me there's

no power in the reading of the Word of God.

Then you can't turn around and say there's no power in ink and paper that might be demonic.

If it's being used and has been used by the occult of, if it's been involved in all this

mysticism and witchcraft, I don't care how many printings of it there may be at its

foundation and at its root, it's wicked.

It does have power and anything that you allow to come into your life and into your mind,

we've discussed this a million times, can have an impact on you if it's spiritually

a problem and these cards are.

Now this I can't believe it's happening and this we've dealt with a lot and it never

fails.

I don't know why in our faith, if those of you that are Christians and I know if you're

not a Christian, a lot of things we talk about here, you don't believe or buy into and

you certainly have the right to do that.

I'm just telling you, I believe it and there's a tremendous amount of evidence that also

supports my faith.

But I didn't even know this until I started getting ready for this podcast.

There's now something that is a Christian tarot card deck, are you kidding me?

And this one is being used for Christian meditation and why would that be?

Why would a Christian need this?

Now this is always what happens.

It's kind of the thing that we try to do when we try to read the God of the Bible and

instead of just taking God at His word, that sin nature that is still in us, there's

always, and I was guilty of it for many years, so I'm not being self-righteous about this

because I did the same thing.

You find yourself going, well, I see the God of the Bible and I see what God has inspired

to be said about Himself.

I've read the revelation from God about Himself and I don't want to go to hell.

I certainly want to be right with God.

I want to be redeemed through Jesus, but I would like to now do my own version of what

God says to do, which by the way, that is not obedience.

That is not a saving faith.

If you want to be involved in true obedience to God, it is doing what God says God's way.

It is not doing what God says your way and saying that I want God to do it the way I want

to do it, which we're all guilty of, and what we do, we start trying to make God into

something that we're more comfortable with.

I won't go get tarot cards, but I'm going to do a Christian version of tarot cards.

I'm not going to participate in Halloween completely, the darker side of it, but I'm going

to do, I'm going to do ghost stories and stuff like that, or I'm going to try to talk

to people that have gone ahead of me, but I'm going to talk to them.

I'm going to see if I can't conjure an angel, not a demon to talk to me.

This kind of stuff.

What we probably need to do to be right with God is not keep trying to make Him something

that's more palatable to make Him something that we're more comfortable with.

What we probably need to do is to actually submit to Him completely and allow His power

make us us into something that He is more comfortable with.

But for some reason, it's like we always have to say God has had a revelation.

He said do this, don't do that.

We know that Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes has said, I tried everything the world has to

offer, including chasing after false gods, including divination, including drugs, including

alcohol, including fornication, including every kind of sexual thing you could imagine.

I tried everything the world had to offer, and Solomon said, the bottom line is that

all of us need to fear God and do what He says.

It's so rare that that's good enough for us.

It's like I can't be, I gotta be involved in tarot cards, so I know that I can't really

make a case for the ones that have been used by the occult, so I'd like to have a Christian

version of tarot cards so I can do some Christian meditation.

Is prayer not good enough?

What does this even mean?

It's like the time that I remember getting involved, and I couldn't believe what I was

hearing, when what was the book that came out that was Sennasty and Smudy, 50 Shades

of Grey, Nasty and Smudy?

I literally heard women in the church talking about how they all got together and were reading

that book together, and it's nothing but complete nastiness, and people were saying things

like, yeah, we're having some fun getting together with some mommy porn.

In the church, and I remember when I heard that and people were saying, no, no, this is

actually going on, I thought, how can anybody of all the things that try to justify, and

we all do try to justify our sin to a degree, look, I've been guilty of that sure.

But how anyone could say as long as it's women of the church and women in our supper club

or our small group of church, as long as it's us reading 50 Shades of Grey, I'm sure

it's going to be all right.

Why do we do this?

I don't understand this spiritual daredevil stuff that we just continue to do.

It's extremely dangerous, and it's one of the things that we were hoping this podcast

would help with.

So do I believe it's possible to be okay with tarot cards as long as we make them Christian?

Tarot cards?

No, I do not.

I thank God, rejects that and rejects that completely.

So there's the history of these cards.

There's the warnings about these cards, and I hope, I hope today you came to this podcast

as we're so hoping you will, saying, I just want to be educated on the things that I

shouldn't should not be associating with, so I can at least make an informed decision.

You have a right to make your own decisions.

There's no question about that.

I don't think God is afraid of choice.

Some people disagree with me, but I think He allows it because by allowing choice, when

we choose Him, that's actually bringing Him glory.

But I'll just want you to always, when we make these decisions about what we should

and should not associate with in a fallen dying world out there, let's at least always

make an informed decision.

So I hope today involving these tarot cards, we've at least done our part to give you

the information that you need.

So if these things come into your life, or someone brings them into your life, or you already

have them in your life, you will remove them if you have them, you want to allow them

if someone brings them in, and you'll never, ever have them if you don't, or you're not

in either one of those scenarios.

So then involving these very dangerous tarot cards, you'll either reject or be prepared

for the strange encounter they bring.