Nobody knows what really happens when we die. Sure, plenty of people have very strong beliefs about what happens, and many books have been written and movies made about things people have experienced during a near-death tragedy. I’m not here to validate or reject any person or group of people’s personal encounters, but I will say if one TikTok minister’s experience is an accurate interpretation of hell — in which demons sang songs including Rihanna’s hit “Umbrella” — the afterlife will be nothing like what many of us expected.
Gerald Johnson, a pastor on TikTok, has gone viral after he posted a 5-minute video describing an encounter he had in 2016 in which he said he briefly went to hell after suffering a heart attack. Johnson described some pretty disturbing images, including a man who was burned from head to toe, down on all fours with a chain around his neck that was being held by a demon. He also described having his eyes opened to how the devil is controlling people through music. In his words:
There was a section in hell where music was playing, and it was the same music that we hear on the Earth, but as opposed to entertainers singing it, the music, demons were singing it. And it was some of the same lyrics we hear here.
The pastor is painting a pretty unsettling picture, and he went on to say that when people smoke to get high, they unwittingly open their minds to the spirit realm, where demons provide them with lyrics to disseminate to the people for the purpose of controlling them. Gerald Johnson listed lyrics by Bobby McFerrin, Jazmine Sullivan, and Rihanna as examples, as he continued:
Here, music is for, like, to get over a breakup. ‘Don’t worry, be happy,’ ‘I bust the windows out your car,’ ‘under my umbrella,’ whatever. There, every lyric to every song is to torment you as to the fact that you didn’t worship God through music when you were on the Earth. So it’s like you had the chance to worship him in church and worship him at home and worship him through music, but you chose to worship Satan by repeating the lyrics that he inspired to come into the Earth.
Yikes! Maybe it's just me, but "Don't Worry, Be Happy" seems like the creepiest song I can think of to be sung by demons. Gerald Johnson is far from the first person to equate secular music with the devil, but his call-out of Rihanna’s “Umbrella” comes at an interesting time, when the nine-time Grammy Award winner is just weeks away from headlining the Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show. You can see the pastor’s full recollection here:
@geraldajohnson1 ♬ original sound - Gerald Johnson
Rihanna’s kept pretty busy outside of the music scene recently. She launched her cosmetics brand Fenty Beauty and lingerie brand Savage X Fenty — which included her Savage X Fenty fashion show to showcase the line last year. The singer also welcomed her first child with A$AP Rocky back in May 2022.
In addition to Rihanna, Super Bowl LVII features an impressive lineup of performers, including Abbott Elementary’s Sheryl Lee Ralph and Chris Stapleton. Before the big show, you can relive some of Rihanna’s other iconic performances. Also be sure to check out how to stream Rihanna’s Super Bowl Halftime Show, and we should all rest assured that it will be the “Lift Me Up” singer who takes the stage on February 12, and not a demon.
