In this series, Paul and Brian examine the biblical history of blessings and curses, how generational inheritance of blessings and curses can occur, and how we can be free from curses through the authority we have in Jesus Christ.
We highly recommend this seminar for anyone seeking higher levels of freedom through God, and for anyone who is helping others gain freedom.
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Transcript
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Session 1 of 4
I am looking forward to what Dr. Paul has to say in the second seminar, Tipping the Scales. Thanks for being here. We pray that Holy Spirit will come and enliven us, instruct us, and lead us into all truth. In Jesus Name.
Good morning. We are delighted to be here at Libertyville, Illinois in the United States of America. I recently just came back from the Mediterranean, Rome, and London and I love being home. We are so grateful for Pastor Patti Velotta and Mike and the entire team here at Calvary Way for inviting us to come again.
This is actually the first seminar that we ever recorded. It was some 12, 13, 14 years ago that someone who Donna and I cannot remember now asked us to do a seminar with Dr. Charles Kraft. I had met Dr. Kraft before because I invited him to come to our church to help explain what was happening to us. We became acquainted and he has been a great blessing in our lives. We very much respect Dr. Kraft. It was at that meeting that a man named Arthur Burk showed up and that is how we became friends over the years. It was about four or five years later that another man, Dr. Tom Hawkins, was introduced to me and we spent a week together. The Lord has His ways of doing these things and causing us to meet people He wants us to meet and have relationships He wants us to have so that we can learn from each other.
As I was landing last night in Chicago, I had a memory of an event in my life that I have not shared with a whole lot of people. The memory was of an event that took place probably around 1994. After I had left the church where this all started in Southern California, we went and started another church, which eventually merged with another church. I served there for two years until that all fell apart when my co-pastor got into some sin issues. I was given six months’ severance pay and released again, a second time now.
I had had a dream of living in the High Desert. I did not know that is what it was then. When we went to visit our son, Brian, who at that time lived in Adelanto, we came in contact with some people who had been deacons in my church in Southern California who had moved up to Apple Valley. We reacquainted ourselves and one night we were talking about this dream. They said that this place that I had dreamed about was right there. It was the old Sky King Airport where Roy Rogers would bring people into the High Desert to buy property. That is when there was nothing out there but weeds and sagebrush. Now it has about 300,000 people in that Valley.
They took me out there and it was one of the freakiest things in my life because it was a piece of a land that was next to a shopping area and actually you could see the runway because it had gone in disrepair. We drove out on the runway and we went into the position of taking off. I got out of the car and I was freaking out because it was the same place in my dream.
It was several months later that I received a call from a little church in Apple Valley and we ended up moving up to the High Desert. So by this time I was in the High Desert and I received a phone call from a man who said he was an associate pastor at a church that I think was somewhere in the High Desert. He was asking me if I knew a certain man and this happened to be the man that Ravens was written about. He asked me about that. I am a guy that loves to read novels, the conspiracy type. Mike Velotta and I share a lot of common interest there in what we read. There are always conspiracies and things going on, but you know real life is not like that, I thought.
Sometime later I received another phone call and found out that this guy was acting as a private investigator for somebody else and was investigating my life and what had happened at the church where this all started. I thought, “What is the point of all this?” As a result of that, a letter was written to my former church talking about me and this other gentleman that Ravens is about. In the letter were all sorts of errors. I was accused of doing things that he did. He was accused of doing things that I did. I was still thinking, “What is the point of all this? Why all this conspiracy and investigation? I am just this Baptist guy.” What you see is what you get. I do not have some sort of ulterior motive or power or whatever.
I was landing last night and I had this thought and then I thought, “What is the big deal about all of this?” You see the big deal about all of this is that this is information the enemy does not want to get out. That is the big deal. If any of you saw the Matrix, now I don’t go to R-rated movies so I had to wait until it got on television, and I just watched it recently again. I am shocked with all the spiritual parallels that go on in the Matrix. In the Matrix the whole story is about what is happening behind the scenes and how one, which I believe is the enemy, is trying to draw power from those that are operating in real life.
There is one scene, I don’t know if you remember it, where they are on the ship called the Nebuchadnezzar. There is a brief shot of the dashboard of the Nebuchadnezzar. If you look at it ever so briefly, I had to actually stop it, there is a Bible verse that is on the Nebuchadnezzar. This is the Bible verse, Mark 3:11. It kind of tells us about what the movie is about. “The unclean spirits, whenever they saw Him, fell down before Him and cried out saying, “You are the Son of God”.
We are talking here about a war that is taking place between the seen and the unseen world. The issue is that the enemy does not want us to understand this war. It was a really shocking thing to me when the Lord started doing all of this in the church where I was pastor for 11 years. In fact, it was 9 years before it started; in 1989 was when it started.
I became so excited that finally something was happening in church. I grew up in church. I was born in the church nursery. I only remember church. I don’ have anything bad to say about that. I received a wonderful Bible foundation. I am not complaining about that. But, all of a sudden spiritual life took on a whole new meaning. The shocking thing to me was that the more exciting it got, the less excited some other people got. The more power that came, the more people complained about the power coming even though these were the very people that had been praying in prayer meetings asking for the power of God to come. When it finally came, they did not want it. That is exactly what Jesus found.
I want you to look at John 11. Jesus does what to the established church, which were the Pharisees and Sadducees, is the most unforgiveable thing. He goes to the tomb of Lazarus in John 11:43 and He says, “Lazarus, come forth.” You have heard this before I am sure, that if He had just said ‘come forth’, He would have emptied the entire graveyard so He had to say “Lazarus”. He said, “Lazarus, come forth!” and this is the terrible thing that happened, Lazarus was raised from the dead. This is terrible.
You have in the next section in verse 46, “Some of them went away to the Pharisees, and told them the things Jesus did. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered a council and said, ‘What shall we do? For this Man works many signs? If we let Him alone like this, everyone will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and nation.” And one named Caiaphas, being high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all, nor do you consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and not that the whole nation should perish.” Now this he did not say on his own authority, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation.” He probably did not know that part. “Not for that nation only, but also that He would gather together in one the children of God who were scattered abroad.” Now this is the phrase that amazes me, “Then from that day on, they plotted to put Him to death”.
Now friends, this is the result of everything we are going to talk about today. If you believe what we are going to talk about today, you will have people that will come against you and say that you are of the devil and that this is not the Christian faith. If they had a right many would try to plot to kill you. You see, there is a war going on and the enemy just does not have people just outside the Christian church. People, unfortunately many, do not want people set free.
At the very end of my experience at the church where this all started, we had deacon meetings. Praise God, I do not have deacon meetings anymore. Amen! There are many blessings to this stage of my life. In the deacon meetings I can remember discussions because all of this that was going on in the church and people were finally getting better. This was the scary thing. People were getting healed. Physical healings were taking place. People were finally improving and there were all sorts of discussion about whether or not this was real.
Finally, my best friend turned to me and said, “Prove it to me.” I said, “Okay.” We had an evening church service that lasted for about three hours. We had never had a service that long. We were Baptists and we had an hour service. Testimony, after testimony, after testimony, after testimony. People that had been in the church for nine years, ten years. Testimony, after testimony, after testimony, after testimony. After it was all over, this was his response to me. “I do not care what they say. I do not believe in this.” It was the same thing wasn’t it? Lazarus was raised from the dead. Think of the impact to their family, and the Pharisees do not care about it because they had their own agenda, they had their own beliefs, they had their own systems, and they did not give a rip about helping anybody.
I love Jana Green. Jana and I have often talked about this whole issue of deliverance and dealing with blessings and curses and disfavor. She has a great phrase and this is the phrase she says if someone starts challenging her. She simply says, “How is that working for you?” You see, that is a great line, because then they have to be quiet because it is not working.
I am here to tell you, it does not matter. It does not matter what anybody thinks anymore about this. Because for me, for my wife, for my children, and for my grandchildren, it has been enough to make an astronomical difference in our lives. I don’t care what you think about that, not to be nasty, but the proof is in the evidence. Isn’t it? The proof is in the evidence.
What we are going to share with you today is a new understanding that I have had since 1994. By this time I had been living for over 45 years and I had been in the church for that long. I had been in full time ministry since 1971. That was quite a period of time when I did not understand this and now I did. I want to tell you, it works.
During our first trip to Toronto Airport Church, one of the great joys of my life was to be there about three or four times, but on our first trip there was such warfare over us going. The car that I had which had never broken down broke down before I went to the airport. We had to borrow a rental car. On the way to LA-X we go lost. I have never gotten lost in LA. We turned the rental car in that we had to borrow from someone else to turn in. We were standing there, our plane is getting ready to leave, this guy is giving me a lecture. We finally get on the bus transport to go the airport and I was this close to having a nervous breakdown. For two or three days before that I had been in such anxiety that I had never experienced before in my life. We literally walked onto the plane and the door shut. We landed in Toronto and the anxiety for the first time in days disappeared. I realized that the Lord was showing me what was happening as an attack against the staff at Toronto. As I talked to them, they all talked about such high anxiety.
We were now there and then Christy called. Christy Lisle is our daughter and Jessica is our granddaughter. She called and said Jessica had started crying and she would not stop crying. We were not talking about crying, we were talking about screaming. We were not talking about five minutes, we were talking about hours. I got Jessica on the phone. I think she was like 2 or 3, very young. I could feel the evil around her, witchcraft, demonic and I would pray for her and it would stop and then I would hang up and it would start again.
Some of you know my daughter, Christy, at one point she said, “If this is not fixed, you are coming home”. Janelle can be like that too, my wonderful daughter-in-law that I love. I pray and pray and pray and she got better and better. Finally she got better.
Then I asked the Lord, “What is this about?” I should have probably done that first. I had a dream and in the dream there was this bird the size of a horse coming towards me. I realized that Jessica, because of her giftings, was seeing this bird attacking her. I remembered that Donna had a recurring dream, it was a nightmare, all of her life of being attacked by blackbirds. Then I had a real interesting thought, “This must be a generational issue”.
We got back home. I remember we sat out by the pool at Aslan’s Place. It was Donna, Christy, Jessica and I. We went back in Donna’s line because she was the one who had the dream also. We went back to the time of the Druids. The Druids worshipped the black ravens. We asked the Lord to break all evil that came from that event and she has never had the dream since.
Before Jessica was born, Christy had gone to the doctor many times. The doctor said, “There is a brain tumor in your daughter and you need to get an abortion”. She, of course, refused to. We were very, very nervous. Finally, her amniotic fluid level had dropped to such a critical level that she was hospitalized. She had an HMO and the HMO said that she needed to stay in the hospital for the next six weeks. Now friends, if you don’t think that was serious, then you don’t work with the HMOs that we work with. This was absolutely impossible.
Of course, I was visiting Christy, and I think it was the second or third day I felt like I was to lay my hands on her tummy. I put my hands there and I felt demonic. I just commanded all evil to come off her stomach. Looking back, I realized that I think there was a generational curse on the firstborn. So for about 20 or 30 minutes I could feel evil coming off. We said goodbye, I kissed her goodbye and went home.
The next morning she called me at 8:30. She said, “My numbers are all normal, I am coming home”. I said, “What? What?” to which she responded, “Well, don’t you believe in what you do?” She had been totally healed. Jessica was born without any physical difficulties. She has had other challenges like all of us face, but the truth is that God intervened and broke I believe the consequences of evil that had come down the generational line.
I remember I was lying in bed one night contemplating this seminar. This was, of course, over 10 years ago. All of a sudden, I believe the Lord gave me the title, “Tipping the Scales”. I have given this seminar many times over the years. As I have given the seminar, by the time we get finished, I have a line of people saying, “How do I deal with this?” Some people come to me and say “everything that you have talked about that is bad is in my life” which absolutely devastates me because I realize the enormous need of people in the church.
In our previous seminar, Biblical Basis for Spiritual Conflict, we have dealt with the whole issue regarding ‘is it possible for Christians to be demonized or to have difficulties that come down the family line’. We are not going to address that issue. We are going to assume that it is a settled issue for you. We are simply going to talk about what are the consequences of the evil that happened in the family line and how it affects you.
AUTHORITIES
This began back in 1992. I had a dream. In the dream I was standing like this in front of a cave. Out of the cave came three specters or it looked like three ghosts. I was braced against it like this, I could see myself just like this, and they came against me the three of them. I woke up and I thought, “I don’t think I had pizza last night. What was that?”
I was dealing with a man I had prayed for several times. This man had been into heavy metallic music, a lot of the music that had curses in it, that talked about dying and suicide and black, everything was black and dark. You know that kind of music. So we were addressing that.
In those early years I had talked to demons and to evil spirits. That was just the way I was taught and that is what I did until the Lord told me very clearly through several intercessors, “You need to stop doing that”. I know why now, I was not to teach you to do that. It was a hard thing for me to change because it worked. Incidentally, I thought that really you only want to have communication with someone you want to have relationship with. I don’t want to have relationship with any demons. So, wouldn’t it make more sense to try and develop a relationship with Jesus? He probably knows the same information, right? From a lot more healthy perspective too.
This time I said, “Who are you?” and this entity says, “I’m an authority”. I thought, “That’s nice. What in the world does that mean?”
It was some time later I thought, you get these thoughts that the Lord keeps on putting in your mind, like “Paul, why don’t you look up and see what an authority is in the Bible?” I thought that was a good idea, why didn’t I think of that?
Turn to 1 Peter 3:22. I need to tell you that I had not read this anywhere else. This is my opinion. I believe it is by revelation, but you have the right to declare that you do not believe this. I give you total permission to be wrong. No, you can believe what you want. But, it certainly works for me. As I have taught this now for over 10 years, I have not had anybody who has really had any trouble with it. I deal with enough people who do not believe what I do, you would think by now I would find someone who had trouble with it.
In this passage, Peter is talking about Jesus. He says about Jesus Christ who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels and authorities and powers having been made subject to Him. In our seminar, Spiritual Servants of the Most High God, we actually talk in detail about all of these spiritual beings.
In fact, the very first time I did that seminar was in this church, which helped me greatly to clean up all the mistakes that I made before I did it correctly. It was a great first time. We were over in the Civic Center in the bottom floor where we did that seminar.
We have angels, the word in the Greek ‘aggĕlŏs’ and these are beings that bring messages, and ‘powers’ are beings that we believe are in charge of electromagnetic fields, and now ‘authorities’. The Lord started teaching me that ‘authorities’ are beings that carry blessings and they carry curses, and I am going to add a new word, they also carry disfavor. They carry things that are positive if they are righteous. They carry things down the line that are negative, we will talk more about what the negative is, if they are not righteous. This is the responsibility of ‘authorities’. I have had people, maybe only a couple of people, who have actually seen ‘authorities’. I do not at this point discern ‘authorities’. They appear to be, probably like in my dream, like specters. They are beings that have power.
If you look at the definition of authorities in Webster’s, it is very interesting. The word authority means ‘Exert energy, force, or might. The power of sway or controlling influence over others’.
In the Greek, the word authority means this. This is very interesting from Ardnt and Gingrich, Greek-English lexicon. The word is exosia. Authority as a freedom of choice, right to act or decide. It is the ability to do something, capability, might, power to indicate the thing that is to be done.
The Dictionary of New Testament Theology writes that authority is the lawful right of action and unrestrictive possibility or freedom of action.
Therefore, if you can look at these authorities, these authorities are beings that carry power either for the good or for the bad in the arena of affecting blessings, which is of course good, and curses or disfavor. They are not demons. They are not evil spirits. They are authorities.
I get really particular about this. If you have a dog, you say this dog has four legs and a tail. Look at this, here is something a little bit littler that has more fur on it, but it has four legs and a tail so that must be a dog also, but it really is a cat. In the Christian church we tend to lump everything under demons or evil spirits, but I believe there are other beings. The spiritual world really is very complicated. There are these beings that are called evil authorities that carry disfavor or curses and these righteous beings that carry blessings.
So, if I come to Pastor Patti and say, “I bless you in the name of Jesus” it is not only a nice thing to say. When I say that, there is a spiritual being called an authority that goes and releases favor. In fact, I felt that. It feels pretty good doesn’t it? I like this. You know, it doesn’t cost any money.
What would it be like if every time you left your spouse and your children, your last words were “I just bless you in the name of Jesus, have a wonderful day, meet lots of friends, have an impact for the Kingdom of the Lord, have success in your relationships at school and in your tests, have favor with your boss”? We are going to talk more about the power of words when Brian comes to his section.
BLESS
Let’s look at the word bless. Now remember in light of my definition I hope this just proves my point that righteous authorities carry this power.
The word ‘bless’ is ‘barak’ in Hebrew from the definition in the Dictionary of New Testament Theology. It means ‘A self-contained beneficial force which one can transmit to another and which stood in contrast to the destructive power of cursing”. There it is – self-contained, beneficial force.
Some of you know Linda Cesana whom we have been friends with since 1989. She has traveled with us on our journey. Linda had an interesting experience in the course of her professional life; she is a registered nurse of cardiac care. She is very bright in this area. She can talk very competently about cardiac care. She worked in Intensive Care and she knows her stuff. She has three stories.
She went to the first hospital while we were still living down in the Valley in Southern California. She went to this hospital and the hospital said, “We were going to hire you, but we are experiencing a low patient census. I just want you to be aware that your job may not be real secure.” She went to work there and immediately the wards filled. She went to the next hospital, same thing. She shows up there and the wards filled. She went to the High Desert and then she went on a three week ministry trip with us. When she left, the hospital was filled. By the time she got back, they had closed a whole section off. She went back to work and the hospital filled again. Some of you say, “Well how is getting a lot of sick people a blessing?” That is not my point. The point is that we carry the Kingdom of God inside of us. Where the Kingdom of God goes, Jesus goes and there is blessing and the blessing just contaminates the whole area. Isn’t that good?
So, it is a beneficial source. Sometimes we get so neurotic about there being witchcraft. I fight that and I understand that and it is annoying. The truth is that the Kingdom of God is an all surpassing power so we just need to learn how to release that Kingdom to our world that we live in.
Now, notice the characteristics of this word barak, the conferring and transference of a beneficial power. Actually a power is transmitted to someone else by you. The performance of a blessing involved a word invested with power. This word works. The blessing works vertically with continued growth of succeeding generations.
Actually the blessings are passed down to thousands of generations. I used to say a thousand. The Hebrew actually says ‘thousands’ of generations. The great news about a blessing is that it cannot be cancelled. It can be covered up by a curse or by disfavor. When you peel away all the stuff that has come down the family line, guess what, the blessing is there. It is still there. Horizontally it affects for peace, security from enemies, good fortune, and well-being for the tribe or group.
Derek Prince in his book, Curses and Blessings, gives what is a possible list of blessings. This is really good. I have to tell you that as a Baptist it was never taught, but it was implied, that the more you suffered the more it was evidence that you were living a good Christian life. So the poorer you were and the more conflict you had, like ‘my bad marriage is just the burden I have to bear and this is just the way life is and it is not going to ever change.’ Really it is a mind concept that I just need to accept my lot in life. Here is a new thought, “I do not need to take this anymore”.
What are some of the benefits?
Exaltation. You shall be the head and the enemy shall be the tail. Some people have trouble with exaltation and so they think that is very prideful. I remember when I was with Dr. Tom Hawkins and there was a group of us and the Lord spoke something to me. I say that rarely, but this thought was so brilliant I knew it wasn’t mine. You know how when you just know it wasn’t your thought. We are talking about this whole area of pride and arrogance versus exaltation and this is what I believe the Lord said to me. “Pride is when you say you are the source. Humility is when you say God is the source.” Isn’t’ that good? Pride says, “I am the source.” Humility says, “God is the source.”
Now those of you who know me know that I have no sports genes. Some people say that is a defect in the family line, it is generational, it is true of my father, it is true of my son. In fact, most of our family is not in the sports world. I appreciate what happens in the sports world, I am not against that, but I will not sit on a Sunday afternoon and watch a football game. I love it when a football star or a soccer star at the end they indicate that He is the source. That just really makes me feel good when you see an actor do that or a movie star and they say it is only because of Him.
The truth is that none of us can do anything unless He does it. He is the One who gives us the ability. What is the amazing thing is that when you have that attitude, then He exalts you. It’s like, “Stop it. This is just too much.” I cannot tell you all the people that the Lord has sovereignty had me meet. It is always a shock to me. He will just do that because that is the kind of life He wants us to live. He wants us to live a life of blessing. Why? It is a simple answer.
Rahab, the prostitute, is in Jericho, a walled city. It is a pagan city. They are probably doing sacrifices of human beings. They are worshiping other gods. They get a report about what is coming out of Egypt. Rahab, the prostitute, who is in the line of Jesus Christ, another shocking thing, says, “We have seen what your God has done and I want to follow Him.”
That is why favor is good. The reality is that the world looks at the Christians and says that we do not have anything that they don’t have. Frankly, we Christians look at the world and say that they are doing better than we are. The world looks at the Christian and thinks we are so miserable and wonder how there is any joy in that. If they look at us and they see God’s favor, and they come and say, “How did that happen?” You say, “Well, let me tell you about Jesus. Let me tell you what Jesus does. It’s all because of Him.” Do you see how that works? So that is exaltation.
The next thing is health. I am becoming more and more to believe that sickness is not what God wants us to have. This is a new thing for me. I just thought this was part of life.
Reproductiveness. Some women say, “You have blessed me enough. Thank you.” Children are a blessing. My children are the greatest blessing outside of my wife. Now we have grandchildren who are even better.
Prosperity. As a Baptist you never talk about that. This is not the prosperity gospel. The prosperity gospel says you are supposed to have stuff. I think prosperity is having everything that you need to have to do God’s will for your life. That is prosperity. Besides, He likes you to have a little overflow for that too. In fact, what He says is that He wants you to have an inheritance for your grandchildren. That is a pretty amazing thing. That means that you need to have a big enough inheritance for your children so that you can have an inheritance for your grandchildren.
I will kind of throw this out now. We made an interesting discovery not too long ago. We realized that when the Egyptians and other cultures buried possessions of the people that had died, like the emperors or the pharaohs, they literally were putting a curse on the inheritance that was supposed to go down to their children. Right? Because you were putting them into the grave. So, you were putting a curse of death on your inheritance. In fact, let’s just pray that right now. I have done this and I think there is something to this.
In the Name of Jesus Christ and by the power of His Blood, I renounce and repent for all my ancestors that took their inheritance and buried it and put a curse of death on my generational inheritance. I am talking about the possessions and the finances that were buried. Lord, I declare that this is for the living and for Your Kingdom. Now would You release those funds back into my family line and into my life so that I may accomplish all that You want me to accomplish for You?
Do you feel that? There is a deliverance going on. Isn’t the enemy sneaky?
Victory is another result of blessings. Incidentally, this is all taken from Deuteronomy 28:3-13. And God’s favor. I am continually shocked by God’s favor. I shouldn’t be, but I am. Especially, when I am not really in a nice mood and I am tired.
Donna and I were on a ten-day Mediterranean cruise, I know you are all sorry to hear that, but you know you still get tired traveling. We got off the ship early, I cannot remember what day it was, Wednesday I think, got on a bus, had a glimpse of Rome, went right to the airport that evening, flew to London Heathrow. The plane is late of course, that is the state of life now I think, the plane is late. It shouldn’t be a surprise anymore, the plane is late. We are going through Customs and I am already calculating ahead because I did not have but seven hours of sleep and my minimum is nine so I am already in deficit. I was calculating that I was not going to get even eight again today. We had a free night at the Hilton, praise God. I was thinking how we would get to the hotel from the airport, but where is it at the airport and Heathrow is scattered over about 25,000 miles I think. It is the most spread out airport in the world.
We came out of Customs with our luggage and there was a guy standing there with Hilton Airport. I looked at him and said, “Is this the Hilton Airport?” of course the sign says that, but I am sort of in shock. He said, “Yes, please come with me.” I said, “Are you here for us?” He said, “Yes, please come with me. We need to get you right to the bus.” I was just like shocked. He ran us to the bus which was now just driving up. We walked right out of luggage, right to the bus and got on and were taken right to the hotel. I think, “God, You are so good to us.” We got to the counter, we had just stayed two weeks at another Hilton because that was really the best price we could find in London believe it or not, and they said, “Well, I see you are gold, but we do not have a nice room for you, so we will give you free breakfast in the morning.”
Jana and Mimi were there. The breakfast at the Hilton is $40.00. My mind was calculating, I just got $80.00 worth of breakfast free. I am a happy man. Donna is only eating porridge/oatmeal. I was thinking that she just enjoyed the most expensive oatmeal she ever had in her life. This is God’s favor. I think He just loves to do nice things. I love to do nice things for my kids and grandkids, I really do. Isn’t that fun? God is like that. He just loves to do nice things for us. I do not think it is wrong. I grew up thinking it was wrong. I cannot put my finger on it, but in some subtle way it seems wrong if things go well. I am learning it is wrong if things don’t go well.
CURSE
Let’s talk about the word ‘curse’. When I first did this seminar, I talked about the word ‘curse’. I knew I was going to redo the seminar so I started studying, trying to find some new books. Every book I read they would have a footnote about this other book. As I read more and more about this book, I thought that I needed to find this book. I went on Google and I put the book in and it showed up in some bookstores that deal in older books and so I ordered it. I get this manuscript. It was a doctoral study done on the word ‘curse’ showing how we have misinterpreted the word in the Bible.
This is somewhat perplexing for a guy who has now been speaking for a lot of years on the word ‘curse’ and has done this seminar all over the world. I now realized that I had not been teaching it correctly. This book is what we call a primary source book. This book is filled with Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, maybe even some Italian, all these languages that I do not understand. I am starting to read through this and I am starting to glean understanding that I had never had before. I have come to learn something new that I am going to teach for the first time.
I was sharing this with some of the people that work with Aslan’s Place. I was sharing that when we talk about discernment I get really particular. If you say that you discern it meaning that you think that, that is not the right word. The word discernment actually means the use of the five physical senses. You cannot use that word for something that you know. Right? So we get very specific, if you are talking about spiritual beings that are in charge of electromagnetic fields, you do not use the word ‘angel’ you use the word ‘power’.
I realized after studying this book that we needed to change our language. After I have been doing this now for over 15 years, this is really difficult. Let me explain to you what I have learned and then maybe we can start working on helping each other use correct language.
First of all, let’s look at the definition of the word ‘curse’. The English term curse has a broad connotation ranging from a simple synonym for misfortune to a condition of unrelieved hopelessness brought on by supernatural forces magical or divine. However, that is not the actual definition of curse. Let me read that again because it is important. The English term curse has a broad connotation (you will read this in several books, especially Christian books, which is why I believed what I was taught) ranging from a simple synonym for misfortune to a condition of unrelieved hopelessness brought on by supernatural forces magical or divine. However, that is not the actual definition of a curse.
The actual definition of a curse is the following. 1. It is a prayer or invocation for harm or injury to come upon one imprecation. 2. It is something that is cursed or accursed. 3. It is evil or misfortune that comes as if in response to an imprecation. (Here’s a definition. The word imprecation means to place a curse or as retribution.) Therefore, when you use the word curse, by definition you are talking about a formula that is uttered to pronounce a curse on someone which then can go down the family line.
Misfortune can go down the family line, hopelessness can go down the family line, sickness and mental disorder can go down the family line. All these bad things can go down the family line, but they are not all curses. You see the distinction I am trying to draw here? How can we draw this distinction?
We need to look at the Hebrew words that are translated curse in the Old Testament. This is the most academic part until Brian gets up, but for me this will be the most academic part, so just bear with us because truth is important. I am committed to the Word of God and I want to make sure that when I teach the Word of God that I am teaching it correctly and this is why I want to be very particular about this, that the words are translated correctly. Unfortunately, because of our misunderstanding of what the words are, even people who are very smart people have translated these words as curse, but they really are not the word ‘curse’. Are you tracking with me?
The first word that is often translated curse in the Old Testament is the word alah. The number one meaning is really oath. An oath is a promise with a promise that a penalty will take place or a curse. The emphasis is that if I take an oath, how many of you understand that the word is really covenant? A covenant by definition has implied that there will be blessings and curses. That is different than a contract. In a contract you have an agreement between one or more parties in which if you break the contract, then there is breach of contract. Am I doing okay Mike? We have an attorney back there.
A covenant, however, has implied that if you break the covenant, then you will enter into a series of things that are going to be bad that are going to happen to you. If you keep the covenant, then a series of good things will happen to you. In the past we have used the word blessings and curses.
Let’s look at a couple of places where the word is used. Genesis 24:40. Understand that while I am reading this that maybe your translation may contain the word ‘curse’ which is why we are dealing with this; the translation which I am reading is the NKJV.
Genesis 24:40. “He said to me, “The Lord, before whom I walk, will send His angel with you and prosper your way. You shall take a wife for my son from my family and from my father’s house. You will be clear from this ‘oath’ (alah -now sometimes they have translated it curse) when you arrive among my family if they will not give way to you, then you will be released from my oath.”
Genesis 26:28. “They said, “We have certainly seen that the Lord is with you. So we said, “Let there now be an oath between us, between you and us, and let us make a covenant with you.”
Again, sometimes they have translated that as curse. New King James Version is correct in calling it an oath. Does anybody here have that word curse in your translation? In the past this has been done.
Deuteronomy 29:12. “That you may enter into covenant with the Lord your God, and into His oath, which the Lord your God made with you today.”
Ezekiel 17:13. “He took the king’s offspring, made a covenant with him, and put him under ‘oath’ (some other translations translate it as curse). He also took away the mighty of the land.”
Proverbs 29:24. “Whoever is a partner with a thief hates his own life. He swears to tell the truth, but reveals nothing.” (I think the word ‘swears’ there would be the word that we are looking at.)
Now the second word in the Hebrew which we see that has sometimes been translated as ‘a curse’ is the word ‘arur’. The Authorized Version translates it as ‘curse’ 62 times and ‘bitterly’ once. It means to curse, cursed be he, to be cursed, cursed, to curse, lay under a curse, put a curse on, to make a curse, be cursed. There are several scriptures that are given.
Genesis 3:14. “So the Lord said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all the cattle, and more than every beast in the field. On your belly shall you go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life.”
Let’s skip down past the verses and look at the definition and then we will go back to the verses. This word is best rendered ‘banned’ not ‘cursed’. Its basic sense is best rendered ‘spell’. When applied to the earth or the rain, it is a spell which bars fertility to men. When applied to men or animals, it bars them from the benefits of fertility or associating with their fellow creatures. The power of the curse is derived from a deity or a priest of a society with unusual powers.
Therefore, because you have done this, you are banned more than all the cattle and more than other beasts of the field and on your belly you shall go. So it is a sense of being banned from what you previously had, not as much as being placed under a curse.
Genesis 4:11. “So now you are a curse in the earth.” Here is the same idea. “Now you are banned from the earth which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.”
If we had time to look at this more carefully, you can see that a lot of the things that we have built from some of these passages may not carry the weight that we have put on them in the past.
Genesis 27:29. “If a people serve you, and nations bow down to you, be master over your brethren, and let you mother’s son bow down to you. Cursed be everyone who curses you, and blessed be those who bless you!”
There is a sense here of banning from that which you previously were able to do and you can no longer do.
Deuteronomy 27:15. “Cursed is one who makes a carved or molded image, an abomination to the Lord, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and sets it up in secret.” All people shall answer and say, ‘Amen!’ “Cursed is the one who treats his father or his mother with contempt.” All the people shall say, ‘Amen!’
It goes on and on. Every case here is that you are banned if you do this. Now understand that if you are banned, then that issue becomes a generational issue in the family line. We are saying two things here, so let’s get this clarified. We are saying that if you do this, then you are banned, but then that banning carries down the generational line.
In the past, we have used the word ‘curse’ carrying down the generational line, but it would be better to say that issue of separation that has taken place because of something in your family line, that issue of separation will continue down the line rather than saying that curse will continue down the line. See how we are trying to make a distinction here?
Joshua 6:26. Then Joshua charged them at that time saying, ‘Cursed be the man before the Lord who rises up and builds this city Jericho; he shall lay its foundation with his firstborn and with his youngest he shall set up its gates.’
Again, this is the issue of being banned rather than being cursed.
1 Samuel 14:24. And the men of Israel were distressed that day, for Saul had placed the people under oath, saying, “Cursed is the man who eats any food until evening, before I have taken vengeance on my enemies.” So none of the people tasted food.
What did he mean there? That you will be banned if you do that.
There are many other scriptures that are listed. In fact, let’s go to the last one.
Malachi 2:2. “If you will not hear, and if you will not take it to heart, to give glory to My name,” says the Lord of hosts, “I will send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings.”
See how that works, “I will put a ban on your blessings”.
Yes, I have cursed, I have put a ban on it already because you do not take it to heart.
Do you see how that is different? We do not want that ban on the blessings to continue down the family line.
Malachi 3:10-11. Here is the whole issue in tithing. “Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house, and try Me now in this,” says the Lord of hosts, “If I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it. I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, so that he will not destroy the fruit of your ground, nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field.”
Now in this particular context in verse 9 it says, “You are cursed with a curse, for you have robbed Me.” In reality that means there has been a ban put on your finances. You have been banned from the finances.
That is the second word.
The third word is the one word I used in my previous seminar. It is ‘qualet’. This word is translated as ‘curse’ 39 times, ‘swifter’ 5 times, ‘light thing’ 5 times, ‘vile’ 4 times, ‘liar’ 4 times, ‘despised’ 3 times, ‘ease’ twice, ‘light’ twice, ‘lighten’ twice, ‘slightly’ twice, and translated miscellaneously 12 times.
Qualet. It means to be slight, be swift, be trifling, be of no account or trifling, to be swift, slow one’s self swift, to appear trifling, to be to trifling, to be insignificant, to be lightly esteemed, to make despicable, to curse, to be cursed, to make light, lighten, treat with contempt, bring contempt or dishonor, to shake oneself, move to and fro.
There are several scriptures where this phrase is used. You can see those.
Genesis 8:21. And the Lord smelled a smoothing aroma. Then the Lord said in His heart, “I will never again curse the ground.” So this is the word ‘curse’ that we are used to.
This is the one time when the word may have double meanings. If you look down in the next section where it says ‘qualet’ it is best translated, abuse or to treat harshly or injuriously. That is the best translation. It is the general term for punishment, misfortune, disaster, and harm. In some cases it can actually be the word ‘curse’. In other cases it can be a material misfortune. We still have not found our word that specifically means curse. Do you see that? Even in this particular case, you can see where it may actually be rendered best ‘abuse’.
Leviticus 19:14. You shall not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind, but shall fear your God. I am the Lord.
Now here it may be better translated ‘abuse’ or ‘treat harshly’ and not ‘curse’. Do you see the difference? You shall not abuse or treat harshly. Now what happens if you were to do that? There will be a result that could go down the generational line, but it is not a curse. It is amazing to me how the Bible confuses what I believe. It is very disheartening.
Isaiah 65:20. No more shall an infant from there live but a few days, nor an old man who has not fulfilled his days, for the child shall die 100 years old, but the sinner being 100 years old shall be accursed.
That again may be better translated as ‘to be treated harshly or abused’.
We have many other scriptures listed there that we are not going to go over. In the power point presentation, the scriptures are actually listed.
I want to go if you can down to the scripture Proverbs 26:1-2. This was a shocking revelation to me. Every single time I have given this seminar I have had this verse come up. This is the first time I can give you a definitive answer to what it means. It took this long in my life. I must tell you that I did not read it anywhere else either except in this primary source material. One of the things that I want you to look at is the context because often in the Hebrew they would repeat, it was called parallelism where they would say something and then repeat it again. Here are the two verses.
Proverbs 26:1-2. As snow in summer and rain in harvest, so honor is not fitting for a fool. Like a flitting sparrow, like a flying swallow, so a curse without cause shall not alight.
This is where ‘curse’ is mistranslated. That is not what it says. This is so good. What is the definition of the word? Abuse, to treat harshly, injuriously, or disgrace. What is being talked about in verse 1? Honor, right? So here is the parallelism.
“As snow in summer and rain in harvest, so honor is not fitting for a fool.” Right? So what is the opposite of honor? Dishonor. “Like a flitting sparrow, like a flying swallow, so ‘qualet’ or dishonor, or abuse, or treat harshly, without a cause shall not happen to you.”
It has nothing to do with a curse. Thank You Lord. We are going to stop here and take a break and then we will look at the fourth Hebrew word.
Session 2 of 4
Some years ago we met at a little church in our area and we wanted to take a group through generational deliverance. We did that and we recorded it under what we called Removing the Curses. In light of our current conversation, it probably means I need to change the title. What we actually do is do generational deliverance with a group. Our intent was that people could take this and give it to a friend or family to do a general generational deliverance. I have had people report back that they have had to pull over to the side because when they were playing it in the car the power of God came and started doing deliverance. We just want to make this available because we have found that it is very helpful as a general introduction to generational deliverance. You just pray along with me and with those that are leading the prayer time. So if anybody has a better idea for the title, let me know. I will probably have to change it now since it does not really work with what we are talking about.
A couple of more insights about the Hebrew word ‘qualet’. I have learned that I do not pronounce Greek or Hebrew words because there is always someone who is more of an expert and then they want to correct me, so I do better with a transliteration. Transliteration is where you take the sounds of one language into the English language, which I am still working on at this point.
Qualet means “slightness as to provision, speed, circumstances.” It is to be in a position that is less than deserved. It is a lowered position. It is rapid take away. A blessing would be in an exalted position or rapid addition, which is where we want to be. Right?
The final word ‘qabab’ is a primitive root with eight occurrences. It is translated as ‘curse’ seven times and at all once. It means ‘to curse, to utter a curse’. So here we now have the actual word that means curse. This word connotes the act of uttering a formula designed to undo its object. This word may well be a lone word since it appears either on the lips of, or is implied to, gentiles or persons of mixed parentage, or in poetic passages.
The most frequent use of our root relates to the instance involving Balaam and Balak. The magical belief is present in Leviticus 24:11 where the man of mixed parentage may have used the name of God as a magical formula. Elsewhere our root is used apart from any magical connotation and has the uttering of a formula. This is from The Old Testament Word Book which is what OTW means. We are speaking here about a word that actually means to utter a curse.
Now, coming back from Europe, one way to fill time is to listen to movies. I don’t know how many movies you watch in nine hours, but it is a lot. It is about four or five movies plus several television shows. One of the movies I watched was the remake of Penelope. I think Penelope may have been an older movie, is that right? It is a modern version anyway. There is a curse placed on the family line that the firstborn daughter would look like a pig. It is actually a curse. The reason was is because something happened in terms of a relationship back then. I cannot remember the details now. Another thing that happens in airplanes is that you are so exhausted you cannot remember all the details of the movie. The curse could only be broken by someone breaking the curse of her own kind and what happened is that she had to agree that she was good looking. When she accepted the way she looked, then her face turned back to normal. The whole story is built around a witch’s curse.
There is another novel called The Pillars of the Earth which is quite an amazing book about a cathedral builder in the Middle Ages. The book is a little raw in places. The book actually starts where a man is being hung and a woman curses three men. The whole novel, which is several hundred pages, is about the working of those curses against those three men through the book and how all their lives fall apart. That would be our Hebrew here, ‘qabab’.
Let’s look at the passage Leviticus 24:11. “The Israelite woman’s son blasphemed the name of the Lord and cursed; and so they brought him to Moses.” There is the curse and this would be our word that we are looking at.
In the New Testament there are four words also for ‘curse’. I would like to look at those and give you the definitions.
The first one is ‘kataraonai’ which is translated as ‘curse’ six times, ‘to curse, doom, imprecate evil upon’.
Matthew 26:74. “He began to curse and swear, saying, ‘I do not know the Man!’ Immediately a rooster crowed.” That was Peter.
Luke 6:28. “Bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you.”
Romans 12:14. “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.”
James 3:9 (talking about the mouth) “With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men.”
The second word is ‘epikataratol’ which is transliteration of the Greek. There are three occurrences. It is translated as ‘cursed’ three times, ‘a curse, exposed to divine vengeance, lying under God’s curse’.
The third is ‘katarah’ which is translated as ‘curse’ three times, ‘cursing’ twice, ‘curse’ once, execration, imprecation.’ (Imprecation again is the uttering of a formula, a curse.)
The final word is ‘anathamosio’ which would be the word that we get the word anathema from. Four occurrences and is translated as ‘curse’ once, ‘binding with curse’ once, ‘bind with an oath’ once, and ‘bind under a great curse’. To devote to destruction, to declare oneself liable to the severest divine penalties.
These would the Hebrew and Greek words for ‘curse’. There are some other words that are very interesting to me that are related to the word curse.
One is the Hebrew word ‘laanah’ which is wormwood. It is a plant ranked with gall having very bitter juice. It is from an unusual root which is supposed to mean ‘to curse’. It is connected to wormwood. I believe it is in Revelation where wormwood is given to one of the evil beings.
Another Hebrew word is ‘mar’ which is the word ‘bitter’. Its opposite definition is ‘to bless’ which means it is in the area of disfavor or curse. It may mean that in its translation as bitter it carries with it the idea of a curse.
Another word is devourer, akal. It means ‘to eat or consume’. In Aramaic it means ‘to take pieces’. The devourer does not cause an increase, but a decrease because he devours.
Now we want to look at some more practical applications to our biblical study. We now have a framework about what the Bible says about curses and blessings.
HOW ARE BLESSINGS AND CURES PASSED DOWN TO FUTURE GENERATIONS?
Of interest to us especially is how blessings and curses, and now I have added disfavor, are passed down to future generations.
IDOLATRY
First of all through idolatry.
If you look at Deuteronomy 5:9, “You shall not bow down to them (talking about idols) or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of their fathers to the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me.”
Then there is our famous passage Exodus 20:4-5. “You shall not make yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me.”
We are going to talk about the whole issue of number of generations that sin can go down, but I want you to notice that it is in the context of idolatry that disfavor and curses go down. I personally believe that you can take any issue in your life and you can eventually go back and find some case of idolatry that is the root.
For example, I suffer from hay fever and allergies. I would dare say that somewhere back in my generational line that I have not been able to take care of yet, there is someone who worshipped agriculture, grains, and trees. I am particularly allergic to oak trees. Oak trees were very much worshipped by the Druids. Do you see how this all works?
In the idolatry the curse is placed and then we suffer from that. I think you can find anything, anything at all. Do you understand that generally when we talk about idolatry we are talking about human sacrifice? It is not just the idea of worshipping; it is the idea that there is a blood covenant. The word covenant actually means ‘to cut’ so when the cutting takes place, like with Abraham, the animals were cut and he walked between them, it was ‘to cut a covenant’ so it means to cut in terms of sacrifice. This I believe is the generator.
If that is the generator, then how do these sins go down the family line? They go down as an iniquity. The sin goes down, and in this particular case the word sin is ‘awa’ and it literally means ‘to bend, twist, or distort’. It is translated as sin, iniquity, or guilt.
Let me show a very interesting passage in Isaiah 6. This happens a couple of times in the Bible. I was always taught this is Hebrew parallelism, but I believe that in this particular case it is not parallelism, but actually the Lord is telling us two different things.
This is in the vision of King Uzziah dying, Isaiah sees the Lord high and lifted up, and he sees the temple. He sees the altar of incense. A coal is taken and one of the seraphim flies and applies it to his mouth.
Then the seraph says this in verse 7, “He touched my mouth with it and said: ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity (awa) is taken away, (the generational sin) and your sin (this would be your personal sin) is purged.”
So it is the twisting. There is a bending that takes place, a bending in the family line, a bending in the DNA.
I like to share this story. It is probably the first time Brian has been here when I have told this. When Brian was 2 or 3, I had what I had the called the faucet of good and evil in the backyard. I told Brian as a 2-year old, “Now, Brian, do not go out and touch that faucet again.” So, of course, the first thing he did when he went outside was he went and touched the faucet, because of the iniquity that came down on his mother’s side. That is not true.
You see, there is a twisting. You don’t need to tell your children, “Yes, go ahead and do that.” What is the first thing they learn? “No.” Why is it always “no”? Because there is a twisting that goes down ever since the original twisting which took place with Adam and Eve.
Numbers 14:8. “The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. He does not leave the guilty unpunished. He punishes the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and the fourth generation.”
Deuteronomy 5:9. “You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate Me.”
William Wilson in his Old Testament Word Studies gives this definition for ‘awa’. “Iniquity, vanity, trouble. This word seems to have special reference to the nature and consequences of sin, especially idolatry: and it stands in opposition to the solid good and happiness which attends on true religion. To turn the wrong way: applied to the distortion of the heart, or actions, from which is right to that which is wrong.”
The word “iniquity” applies to the original depravity of man, (so there is that twisting or bending), by which he has turned aside from the image of God and the love of holiness. To act in a deceitful, tricking, insidious manner, bad and dishonest, dealing in secret or under some cover, unfair usage, unrighteousness in judgment.
Going back to Exodus 20. The verse actually says, “I will punish the generations in the future of those who hate Me.”
The word ‘hate’ is not to be interpreted in the way that we use the word ‘hate’. It expresses an emotional attitude towards persons and things, which are opposed, detested, despised, and with which one wishes to have no contact or relationship. It is therefore the opposite of love. Hate separates and keeps distant. It is ill will and aversion towards God. It is saying ‘no’ to God. You say, “Well, I don’t hate God”. But, if He tells you to do something and you say ‘no’, which is sin and we all sin, then that is to hate God.
SEXUAL IMMORALITY
As I was doing generational ministry, I started making an observation. I would ask people to go to a dream or a memory and very often they would go back to an inappropriate touch in childhood. It could be incest, molestation, rape, sexual activity, sexual activity out of marriage. I started seeing a pattern. The pattern had great impact on people in the generational line on the people I was praying for. I noticed an interesting thing. If there was nothing like that which had happened, it was like deliverance was almost a nonissue. I came to believe that the generator of sin is idolatry in the family line. The conduit is all sexual activity outside of marriage.
It is like if you can picture Hoover Dam. At Hoover Dam there is the water that comes over, there is a generator, that is idolatry, it is generated. How is it connected to the family? That would be the wires, the electrical wires, and each pole would be a generation, so it keeps on going down the family line.
There are some interesting scriptures and then one profound scripture.
Acts 15:20. “Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, (so there is your idolatry) and sexual immorality.” It becomes clear that we have the two issues there.
Deuteronomy 27:15-26. We have a long text here. We will just read the first part of it. “Cursed is the man who carves an image or casts an idol – a detestable thing to the Lord, the work of the craftsman’s hands– and sets it up in secret.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!” It goes on and talks about other things and then you see, “Cursed is the man who sleeps with his father’s wife, for he dishonors his father’s bed”. So now we get into some sexual activity. The next one talks about bestiality, the next one talks about incest. “Cursed is the man who sleeps with his mother-in-law”, again sexual evil.
Proverbs 5:1-10. “My son, pay attention to my wisdom, listen well to my words of insight, that you may maintain discretion and your lips may preserve knowledge. For the lips of an adulteress drip honey.” Now he goes through and he talks about all the bad stuff that happens in adultery.
In fact, in another passage it says that there is a curse or an arrow that goes into the liver in adultery. I have prayed for several men dying of liver cancer that have committed adultery. You may want to watch for that.
The really, really interesting account is in Numbers 22. I can remember in my Baptist days that I would read through the Bible in one year. When you do that, you have to read in a hurry, especially in the Old Testament, because you have to do six, seven, eight chapters. I remember several times coming to this passage in Numbers 22 about Balak and Balaam. I would get finished and I would wonder what that was all about. I did not have a clue. I did not understand this. This was in the days before I knew anything about curses and blessings. I just did not understand it. Let’s look at this because it is an extremely, extremely fascinating passage in light of what we are talking about.
Numbers 22. “The children of Israel moved, and camped in the plains of Moab on the side of the Jordan across from Jericho. Now Balak the son of Zippor saw what all Israel had done to the Amorites. And Moab was exceedingly afraid of the people because they were many, and Moab was sick with dread because of the children of Israel. So Moab said to the elders of Midian, ‘Now this company will lick up everything around us, as an ox licks up the grass of the field.’ And Balak the son of Zippor was king of the Moabites at that time. Then he sent messengers to Balaam, the son of Beor at Pethor, which is near the River in the land of the sons of his people, to call him, saying, ‘Look, a people has come from Egypt. See, they cover the face of the earth, and they are settling next to me! Therefore, please come at once, and curse these people.”
This would be an imprecation wouldn’t it? It would be a statement or a formula to bring disaster upon the children of Israel.
Now remember the story, Balak came and he realized the importance of a curse. He is a pagan king, but he is convinced that if he can get a prophet of God to curse Israel then it would work to his benefit. Of course, you know the story; God says to Balaam, “You will not do this.” He goes and tells Balak and Balak says, “Yes, you will.” He goes back to God and He says, “No, you won’t.” And pretty soon we get to the story and the donkey finally tells him to shut up.
We get all the way to the end of chapter 24. Chapter 24:25. “So Balaam rose and departed and returned to his place; and Balak also went his way.” So the story is over, right? No, because you get to chapter 25. “Israel remained in the Acacia Grove, and the people began to commit harlotry with the women of Moab. They invited the people to the sacrifice of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel was joined to Baal of Peor, and the anger of the Lord was aroused against Israel. Then the Lord said to Moses, “Take all the leaders of the people and hang the offenders before the Lord, out in the sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may turn away from Israel.” So Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Every one of you kill his men who were joined to Baal of Peor.” And indeed, one of the children of Israel came and presented to his brethren a Midianite woman in the sight of Moses and in the sight of all the congregation of the children of Israel, who were weeping at the door of the tabernacle of meeting. Now when Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose from among the congregation and took a javelin in his hand; and he went after the men of Israel into the tent and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel and the woman, through her body. So the plague was stopped (that is key word) among the children of Israel.”
Now go to the end to Numbers 31:14. “Now Moses was angry with the officers of the army, with the captains of the thousands and captains over hundreds, who had come from battle. And Moses said to them: “Have you kept all the women alive? Look, these women caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the Lord in the incident of Peor, and there was plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man intimately.”
Now look at Revelation 2:14 and we will put all this together. This is the church in Pergamos. “I have a few things against you, because you have here those who hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling stone before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit sexual immorality.”
So what in the world happened? Here was the great revelation. Balak asked Balaam to curse Israel and God said, “No” and Balaam said, “No, I can’t, but let me give you some help here. I can teach you how to let Israel enter into the curse.” How? Idolatry and sexual immorality. So he counseled Balak how to do it, which resulted in the plague and their almost destruction. See how that works? I believe that we have scriptural support here for the curse being passed down.
I have prayed for some people who have not had any sexual relationship except for their wife, and many times deliverance is almost a non issue. I am not saying that there are not bad things that have come down, because it seems like there are always is. But, the amount that comes down is so astronomically different.
I prayed for a young man. He was an extraordinary man who went through MIT in three years. As a teenager he solved a problem in math in high school that had never been solved in the history of the world. He was smart. When he was back East before he moved back to Southern California, he was in a park and a homosexual man came up and just touched him on his shoulder. At that point, his life went to total chaos. He eventually had to go home. I think he had already graduated by this time. He was hospitalized several times. He went absolutely crazy. His body started falling apart. We are talking about a guy who used to run miles and miles and miles. We are talking about a young man. His life went into total physical, mental, and social decay.
A counselor that we knew had recommended that he come up and receive ministry. We took him through deliverance several times and it was extremely, extremely difficult. I kept on thinking what was it with that incident since we kept on going back to that homosexual touching him. It was not a sexual touch. I wondered what in the world was this all about. You understand, we had gone through several hours/many hours of ministry. After he did that ministry, he started having a memory. He had a memory of his father molesting him as a baby. All of a sudden it all came together. When that homosexual touched him, it activated something that had already happened earlier. It was that activation that was uncovered because of all the deliverance. That activation resulted in the memory being released and us getting back to sexual touch.
I cannot tell you how many times, numerous times, so many times, people come for ministry. They are a mess, but they do not know why they are a mess, and almost always a memory is uncovered of a sexual touch they did not remember. It became the point in which their life started falling apart. When you start going back, you realize that is when your life started falling apart. Why? Because of all the stuff from mom and dad, it was like there was this connect, and all of the stuff like when wires are put together, and all the stuff from mom and dad came on this innocent child because the Lord says that the enemy has a right to three or four generations.
You say, “I don’t think that’s fair.” Well, you know what; the Lord did not ask our opinion. This is the way the universe is set up. Whether or not we like it, it does not matter. Isn’t that right with law? I took Business Law in high school. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. You say, “Well I didn’t know about that.” It doesn’t matter whether you know about it, it is the law. You have violated the law and you cannot say you did not know about it. That is not a good excuse in a court of law. That is not looked upon as something to excuse you. “Oh, I’m sorry, you didn’t know about that. Well, then you can go.”
BY NOT BEING CANCELED
Finally, I have noticed that the curses go down if they are not cancelled. Last time we talked about the fact that some curses are the ‘awa’ the iniquity, the disfavor can literally go down forever. They are called ‘ everlasting curses’. For example, David was told, “The sword will never depart from your house”. If you are a thief, we are told in Proverbs that discontentment or disfavor will never leave your house. That is a never word. Of course, now because of the Blood of Christ, we can now appropriate the Blood of Christ to break those curses.
Now here is the good news. Do you want some good news? Let’s look at Exodus 20. In your notes it is incorrect reference. It should be Exodus 20:6. “But showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” Thousands of generations, that is the good news folks. The blessings keep on coming down. So whatever blessings were placed in your family line will always be there.
So what do we need to do? We need to get rid of the garbage dump so that we can expose the blessings.
I am reminded of a really old joke that proves a point. If you have heard it, then just laugh and treat me like I am saying something you have never heard before. It proves a point.
There were these twins. The one twin was so negative and the other twin was so positive. The parents wanted to bring the twins more into balance and so they put the really, really negative twin into a whole room of toys and he only sat in the corner and cried. They put the other twin who was very positive into a whole room of manure. This kid was so happy and he got a shovel and manure was flying everywhere, everywhere, and everywhere. Finally, after a half an hour, the parents got really disconcerted about this and they said, “What are you doing in here?” He said, “With all this manure there has to be a pony in here somewhere.”
That is what we want to do in ministry. We want to remove all the manure to expose the pony. We could say if we were a little crude, “We are not going to take this crap anymore.” Did I say that? No, I didn’t say that.
EVERLASTING CURSES
Here are some everlasting curses that I was alluding to.
Proverbs 17:13. If a man pays back evil for good, evil will never leave his house.
How long will it leave? Never. Friends that is longer than three or four generations.
Deuteronomy 23:1-2. No one who has been emasculated, or crushed, or cut may enter the assembly of the Lord. No one born of a forbidden marriage, nor any of his descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, even down to the tenth generation.
There is a curse that does not allow, or disfavor, because I am not sure which Hebrew word it is, there is a disfavor that continues for ten generations which incidentally is longer than four. We have dealt with many, many men who find it difficult to go to church because they are illegitimate. So that sense of not belonging when you come to community is there. In Argentina, I forget what the percentage is, but I think it is way over 50% of the children born are illegitimate. There is a massive problem, especially in men, of attending church or fellowshipping with believers. There is a sense that they cannot go into the house of the Lord which comes down the generational line.
1 Samuel 2:31 regarding Eli and the sons of Eli. “The time is coming when I will cut short your strength and the strength of your father’s house, so that there will not be an old man in your family line.”
That is longer than four generations. That is a curse of premature death.
Jeremiah 23:40. “I will bring upon you everlasting disgrace, everlasting shame that will not be forgotten.”
Jeremiah 25:9. “I will summon all the people of the north and My servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon,” declares the Lord, “and I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants and against all the surrounding nations. I will completely destroy them and make them an object of horror and scorn, an everlasting ruin.”
This is longer than four generations.
2 Samuel 12:10. This is the one I was talking about, about the sword never departing.
2 Samuel 3:28-29. “Later, when David heard about this, he said, “I and my kingdom are forever innocent before the Lord concerning the blood of Abner, son of Ner. May his blood fall upon the head of Joab and upon his father’s house! May Joab’s house never be without someone who has a running sore or leprosy.”
There is a curse of everlasting infirmity.
I have shared this same thing before and I will share it again. As you are dealing with people and the Bible, they will say it was in the Old Testament and it is not in the New Testament. If it is in the gospels, then it is not after the cross. If it is in the Book of Acts, that is a transitional book so you don’t base what you believe on a transitional book. Then you come down as I say to one verse in Jude you may believe in. Otherwise you write off the entire Bible.
It is interesting to me how everybody is so selective and we all believe in the Bible. You see, it is, “I believe in the Bible, but…” Then we have our stipulations and we eradicate anything in the Word of God that does not agree with our presuppositions, which is not the way you should interpret scripture, because scripture should determine what you believe. You should not base what you believe upon what you believe and then superimpose it upon the Word.
People say to me, “There is no evidence of generational curses in the New Testament.” Well, there is in Matthew. “Well, that is before the cross, not after the cross.” We can take care of that right away. Let me show that to you anyway because this is an amazing scripture.
Matthew 23:33-36. “Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell? Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute them from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berehiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Assuredly, I say all these things will come upon this generation.”
That is the curse of the murder of the prophets coming against them. Do you see that? All the way from the beginning of time down to the present those curses come in the New Testament and Jesus says it. He says, “They will all come against you”.
Now let me give you another way of understanding this. If I go back 100 generations and I find there is a sacrifice, then that curse can go down the family line how long, according to scripture? Four generations. Say there is a sacrifice repeated in the next generation. It can go down another four generations. We are now at five generations. This can keep on going on down and down. Literally we have found that in some people it goes back several hundred generations.
In my own personal life, I have found in ministry that I cannot get much past either 425, maybe 450 generations, and it is like it is empty after that. It is just a strange thing, like there is nothing back there. I cannot say that that is all the generations there are, but it would appear that it may be the case. You can go back that far. There are many people that we pray for that we do not even believe there was a believer in the entire line. This is an amazing period of history we are in, where we are seeing numerous, I would say thousands upon thousands of first generation believers. This is very exciting. This is an indication of the move of God that is coming.
SEVEN INDICATIONS OF A CURSE
What are the seven indications of a curse? Again, this is from Derek Prince, Curses and Blessings.
Mental and emotional breakdown.
Repeated or chronic sickness.
Barrenness, a tendency to miscarry, or related female problems.
We have found so many cases of miscarriages going back to sacrificing of the first-born child. The enemy then claims a right to take the potentially first born or the first born.
Breakdown in marriages.
(Incidentally this is all found in Deuteronomy 28:20-48. I believe they are showing up on the screen as we are talking.)
Family alienation.
You will be surprised how often you find generation after generation of divorce, generation after generation of rivalry by siblings. Many times you will find that a sibling has murdered another sibling and that curse of antagonism goes down the family line so that brothers and sisters are always warring against each other, there is always alienation of relatives.
Continuing financial insufficiency.
I think that is probably one of the biggest areas in our family line that the Lord has been breaking off. A lot of this incidentally is tied to Masonic influence, but also incorrect use of money, embezzlement, ungodly taxation. It is amazing how many things can really impact finances that come down as a curse against finances. It is like unpeeling an onion. You get to one layer and then there is another layer and then there is another layer and another layer and another layer. I believe that in our lives, especially Donna and I, we have seen a breaking of these curses taking place.
Being accident prone.
This is an amazing thing. We have had several people who have 10, 14, 15, 16, 17 automobile accidents. We have seen curses that took place. Donna has had a curse on her or disfavor on her where she trips all the time. It has gotten remarkably better. I think thanks to Jana and some ministry there. It is just amazing. I have just watched her all the time; she has broken her toe I cannot even count how many times. She is always tripping over things. We believe it is a curse that has come down. You see patterns of things like this, then it is a clue that you need to find out what the generational problem is and take care of that.
History of suicides, unnatural, or untimely death.
We are talking here about premature death or attempts at death. You will find some children that are extremely sickly or they go through absolutely horrific accidents, automobile accidents, or falling out of trees. It becomes clear that there is an attempt of the enemy to try to take the generation out. Why? Because the enemy does not want what is in your family line to continue. He does not. He wants to take you out. The more threat you are, the more I think he attacks.
In your notes you have the whole section there from Deuteronomy 28. We have some other scriptures here that also talk about cursing. Deuteronomy 29:18, Jeremiah 9:15 and so on. We will just let you read those in your notes as you have time later.
There are some interesting passages in the Word of the God when you look at the Bible theologically; theology is when you put the Bible together according to subjects. The Bible is not written like a textbook. It is written relationally. There are stories. There are emotions. There is feeling. There are teachings. Its intent is not to be a book like a study book. When you put it together, you start seeing patterns and you see some interesting things.
EXAMPLES OF THE EFFECTS OF GENERATIONAL SIN
I want to take you through an example of the effects of generational sin in the life of Cain and his descendants and then in the life of the Benjamites.
CAIN
If you look at Cain, you remember that Cain sinned, right? What was his sin? He killed his brother, Abel. You look down the generational line, and what comes next?
Genesis 4:23. This in the line of Cain. “Lamech said to his wives, so now you have a rebellion against you, you shall leave father and mother and cleave to your wife.” This is rebellion right here. In the line of Cain, the first of act of rebellion is murder and now you have more rebellion-taking place. “He said to his wives Adah and Zillah, ‘Listen to me; wives of Lamech, hear my words, I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me”.
Now the sin of the generation of Cain now goes down seven generations. The seventh generation is Lamech, but there is a seventh righteous generation who is Enoch. Enoch is the seventh in righteousness and Lamech is the seventh in unrighteousness.
Then you have descendant of Cain who was Ham. He sees his father’s nakedness and it is more than likely that he had homosexual affair with his father. Ham becomes the father of Canaan. So you know the whole problem with Canaan. You see the rebellion that goes down? Then you have Cush who is Ham’s son. Cush was the father of Nimrod.
Nimrod was mighty hunter before the Lord. It actually means he was a mighty hunter of men. He was probably the first Adolf Hitler. Nimrod builds Babylon, the Tower of Babel to reach up to the heavens. We believe that Nimrod was responsible for the whole cult of astrology, the whole cult of trying to do everything apart from God. He was probably the father of all the mystery religions that led to the paganism of Egypt, Greece, Babylon before that, Rome, and now the New Age Movement. He is the father of all this and he is in the line of Cain. Do you see how this twisting goes?
BENJAMITES
Another twisting that is very interesting is Benjamin. Now let’s look at the effects of generational sin in the Benjamites.
Judges 1:21. “The Benjamites, however, failed to dislodge the Jebusites, (the inhabitants of current day Jerusalem) who live in Jerusalem; to this day the Jebusites live there with the Benjamites.”
So you have here disobedience to the Word of the Lord. What is the effect of that disobedience?
Judges 2. “The angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said, ‘I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land that I swore to give to your forefathers. I said, “I would never break my covenant with you, and you shall not make a covenant with the people of the land, but you shall bring down their altars.’ Yet, you have disobeyed Me. Why have you done this?”
Judges 2:10-13. “After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what He had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord.”
So here we have direct result of the rebellion, the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord. The effects of the earlier idol worship were now perversion which caused the men to desire sex with a Levite man.
Judges 19:19. “Although we both have straw and fodder for our donkeys, and bread and wine for myself, for your female servant, and for the young man who is with your servant; there is no lack of anything.” And the old man said, “Peace be with you! However, let all your needs be my responsibility; only do not spend the night in the open square.” Why? “So he brought them into the house and gave fodder to the donkeys, and they washed their feet, and they ate and drank. As they were enjoying themselves, suddenly certain men of the city, perverted men, surrounded the house and beat on the door. They spoke to the master of the house, the old man, saying, ‘Bring out the man who came to your house, that we may know him carnally!” They wanted to have sex with these men. This is now the depravity that is boiling in the Book of Judges with the Benjamites.
Judges 19:25. The Levites concubine is raped.
Judges 20. The tribe of Benjamin would not participate in dealing with this sin. In other words, they would not take a stand because of the rebellion.
1 Samuel 9:21. We have this interesting phrase, “In Saul, who was from the tribe of Benjamin”.
We are dealing here now with a generational curse of rebellion against the Word of the Lord.
Do you see where we are going?
1 Samuel 13:7. This is to me the most terrifying scripture in the Word of God. Remember the story that Samuel has said to Saul that he was to go away for seven days and when he arrived he was to sacrifice? Those are the clear orders. So what does Saul do?
Verse 6. “When the men of Israel saw that they were in danger from the enemy that was coming against them, (which was the Philistines talked about in the first part of chapter 13) the people hid in caves and thickets, and rocks and holes and pits. Some of the Hebrews crossed over the Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead. As for Saul, he was still in Gilgal, and all the people followed him trembling. Then he waited seven days, according to the time set by Samuel. But Samuel did not come to Gilgal; and the people were scattered from him.” So Saul panics. “He says, ‘Bring me a burnt offering and I will sacrifice.” This is the scary part. The sacrifice is done and Samuel is there and he says, “What have you done?” That means that Samuel did show up by the end of the seven days.
This is the scary part to me. Saul missed it by seconds. In his impatience and in his rebellion against God, he did not wait and he lost his kingdom. Now it is true that he reigned, but you know the reign was a series of falling apart, wasn’t it?
1 Samuel 15:20-23. Saul is disobedient again. Now he is starting to go into a time of insanity. David is actually brought along to play his instrument to soothe Saul because he is starting to lose his mind.
1 Samuel 18:10-11. He attempts to murder David out of jealousy. “Saul has killed his thousands and David his ten thousand.”
1 Samuel 28:27. Saul now engages in occult activity. He wants to use the witch of Endor to conjure up Samuel.
2 Samuel 1:4. Saul commits suicide.
Now you think that is the end and then I discovered another passage.
2 Samuel 16:5. David is driven out of Jerusalem by Absalom his son. It is a humiliating thing. He is the King of Israel and he is fleeing for his life. He has turned his kingdom over to his son literally. As he is leaving Jerusalem, he is cursed by a man. “Now when King David came to Bahurim, there was a man from the family of the house of Saul, whose name was Shimei, the son of Gera, coming from there. He came out, cursing continuously as he came. And he threw stones at David and at all the servants of King David. And all the people and all the mighty men were on his right hand and his left.”
Verse 11. “David said to Abishai and all the servants, ‘See how my son who came from my own body seeks my life. How much more may this Benjamite? Let him alone and let him curse.”
There is the final result of rebellion isn’t it? In the line of Benjamin, a descendant of Saul, cursing the King of Israel. See how the curse goes down?
One more example.
Matthew 1. I want you to look at Matthew 1 in a little bit different way. Is that okay?
Matthew 1:1. “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham. Abraham begot Isaac.” Now this is all very good and Abraham was a wonderful man of God. Abraham walked with God. Abraham loved God, but Abraham had a sexual problem. He gave his wife up to someone else to have sex with and he had sex with other people. Right? Now this is a little bit different way of looking at it, but I want you to see the sexual sin that runs down this family line.
You have this issue of sex. You come down to Judah and Judah had sex with a woman who was not his wife. Then you come down to Perez begot Hezron, Hezron begot Ram, Ram begot Amminadab, Amminadab begot Nahshon, Nahshon begot Salmon, Salmon begot Boaz by Rahab (Rahab is a prostitute – see the sexual problem there), Boaz begot Obed by Ruth, Obed begot Jesse, and Jesse begot David. (David had his own sexual problem.) David begot Solomon and Solomon was a sexual addict. He was. He had 300 wives, 700 concubines. That would qualify today as a sexual addict. Then you start going down and you get into the kings and you see all sorts of really bad stuff. Idolatry, and idolatry often involves sexual prostitution and temple prostitution. See it, running down the whole family line? It is very interesting.
IS GENERATIONAL BONDAGE FAIR?
Ezekiel 18:25-29. “Yet you say, “The way of the Lord is not just.” Hear, O Israel: Is My way unjust? Is it not your ways that are unjust? If a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits sin, he will die for it; because of the sin he has committed he will die. But if a wicked man turns away from the wickedness he has committed and does what is right and just, he will save his life. Because he considers all the offenses he committed and turned away from them, he will surely live; he will not die. Yet the house of Israel says, “The way of the Lord is not just.” Are My ways unjust, O house of Israel? Is it not your ways that are unjust?”
You see, God has established moral law. When we operate within the moral framework, then we have blessings. When we operate outside of it, then we reap the consequences of the sin.
Now what about Numbers 23:23? I actually read this in a book by an author I really respect, but he is way off on this phrase. It is in the book, I read it, I liked everything else in the book, but he is really off here. His contention is that there is no such thing as curses that can come down the generational line because of this verse. Now let’s read the verse. It is in the context of Balak and Balaam. It is the end of the account and Balaam says, “There is no sorcery against Jacob, no divination against Israel. It will now be said of Jacob and Israel, ‘See what God has done!’
What is the context? The context is that Balak has asked Balaam to curse Israel and we get through this whole story and we come to the very end and finally Balaam says there will be no curse made against Israel. That is what it says. It does not say, ‘There is never going to be a curse made against Israel’. It does not say that. Does it? No.
Session 3 of 4
EXAMPLES OF GENERATIONAL SIN
We want to continue to talk about examples from the Word of God on generational sin and evidence of that.
Leviticus 26:39 (which is in your notes). Those of you who are left will waste away in the lands of their enemies because of their sins; also because of their fathers’ sins they will waste away.
Numbers 14:33. Your children will be shepherds here for 40 years, suffering for your unfaithfulness, (so there you have the generational issue passing down to the children.) until the last of your bodies lie in the desert.
1 Samuel 2:30-33. Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, declares, “I promised that your house and your father’s house would minister before Me forever.” But now the Lord declares: ‘far be it from Me! Those who honor Me I will honor, but those who despise Me will be disdained. The time is coming when I will cut short your strength and the strength of your father’s house, so that there will not be an old man in your family line and you will see distress in My dwelling.
1 Samuel 3:13-14. For I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about. His sons made themselves contemptible, and he failed to restrain them. Therefore, I swore to the house of Eli, ‘the guilt of Eli’s house will never be atoned for by sacrifice or offering.’ (Now the good news is that it can be atoned for by the sacrifice of Christ.)
1 Kings 14:9-11. You have done more evil than all who lived before you. You have made for yourselves other gods, idols made of metal; you have provoked Me to anger and thrust Me behind your back. Because of this, I am going to bring disaster on the house of Jeroboam. I will cut off from Jeroboam every last male in Israel, slave or free. I will burn up the house of Jeroboam as one burns dung (that’s really pleasant isn’t it?) until it is all gone. The dogs will eat those belonging to Jeroboam who dies in the city, and the birds of the air will feed on those who die in the country. The Lord has spoken!
Job 21:19-21. God stores up a man’s punishment for his sons. Let him repay the man himself, so that he will know it! Let his own eyes see his destruction; let him drink of the wrath of the Almighty. For what does he care about the family he leaves behind when his allotted months come to an end?
That is a tragic thing. Why would you not care about those you leave behind?
IDENTIFICATIONAL REPENTANCE
The interesting thing about all this is how do you break this? The principle that we have discovered is called identificational repentance. That is where you identify and repent for those in your family line. This is something that was done by Nehemiah and Daniel. Both of these men who appear to be innocent of anything in the sense that they were not culpable for the sins in their own lives, but they took responsibility for the sins of their ancestors. That is called identificational repentance, where you identify with others that are in your generational line or are in the country.
For example, we have the terrible curse that came on America because of slavery. I was not a slaveholder, but there have been times that we have identified with those that were Anglo-Saxon who were cruel and were slave owners of blacks from Africa. That is identificational repentance. The Scripture is clear about this. Let’s look at some scriptures from both the Old and New Testament.
1 Peter 1:18. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver and gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers. (So it is not by those perishable things that you are redeemed, but it is by this identificational repentance.)
Leviticus 26:40 is extremely clear. We have run into the same argument that it is Old Testament not New Testament. Get over that. “If they will confess their sins and the sins of their fathers, their treachery against me and their hostility towards Me … then I will remember My covenant.”
This is very clear. We have gone through a period of time and I am not sure when that started, maybe you know Pastor Patty, where there has been a lot of repentance going on corporately. There will be conferences and there will be people repenting for everything. People repenting for what happened at the holocaust, repenting for what happened to the Japanese in the United States, people repenting for what the Chinese did to the Japanese. This has been going on all over the world for a long time. Is it possible that all of this was a foundation that was laid for the revival that is coming? It is very conceivable that is what has been going on. I have felt recently that we have about got this repentance thing done.
(Jeff) We had a school in London a couple of weeks ago and this issue came up. We weren’t planning for it to come up, but the issue came up for England to have an opportunity to repent for all the countries that they had subjugated, which was quite a list. The interesting thing was that there were three pastors there from India. It was some of the things that God had put into place for repentance to occur. There were people from all over the world from other places, but I thought that was interesting. That was a very powerful experience for those three pastors.
Nehemiah 1:5-7 and 9:32-35. Then I said: “O Lord, God of Heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant of love with those who love Him and obey His commands, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer Your servant is praying before You day and night for Your servants, the people Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites…” (There is the identification and also Nehemiah 9.)
Jeremiah 3:20. But like a woman unfaithful to her husband, so you have been unfaithful to Me O house of Israel,” declares the Lord. A cry is heard on the barren heights, the weeping and pleading of the people of Israel, because they have perverted their ways and have forgotten the Lord their God. “Return, faithless people; I will cure you of backsliding.” “Yes, we will come to You, for You are the Lord our God. Surely the commotion on the hills and mountains is a deception; surely in the Lord our God is the salvation of Israel. From our youth shameful gods have consumed the fruits of our fathers’ labor. (There is the identification again going back to the fathers.)
Jana Green and I were talking again and Jana made a profound observation about another Benjamite. Do you want to come up and share that Jana? This is really good. Remember what we established as the generational issue of the Benjamites? She remembers someone more contemporary than the Old Testament.
(Jana) When Paul was talking about Saul and his disobedience, I thought that was repeated. I thought of Saul in Acts who became Paul. It was Saul who was persecuting the Church. Acts 9:15 says, “But the Lord said to him, ‘Go, for he is My chosen instrument to bear My name before the gentiles, the kings, and the sons of Israel.” This guy was a redemptive spoke so to speak for all the things that Saul’s persecution and the Benjamite curse that kept coming down. The other thing on that was Philippians 3:5. “He was circumcised on the eighth day of the nation of Israel of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the Law a Pharisee, as to the zeal, a persecutor of the Church, as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless.” That is what Jesus came to do, He fulfilled the Law. So even though the repeated sin kept coming down, there is a redemption on it that we need to recognize.
(Paul) So there is the rebellion again and persecution of the Christians.
GENERATIONAL BLESSINGS
Let’s look at some good stuff again. Generational blessings go down. We mentioned the Exodus passage already about showing love to a thousand generations of those who love Me and keep My commandments.
Psalm 112:2. His children shall be mighty in the land; The generation of the upright will be blessed.
Psalm 103:17-18. From everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love will be with those who fear Him, and His righteousness for the children’s children of those who keep His covenant and remember to obey Him.
Jeremiah 32:18. You show love to thousands, but bring the punishment for the fathers’ sins into the laps of their children after them. O great and powerful God, whose name is Lord Almighty.
Here is an example of generational blessings in the New Testament.
Paul says to Timothy. 2 Timothy 1:5. “I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother, Lois, and your mother, Eunice, and I am persuaded now that it is in you.” There is a generational blessing in three generations.
NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN THE GENERATIONAL LINE
Let’s look at the number of people in the generational line from which we receive the stuff. When it is the bad stuff, I call it the ‘toxic waste’ that flows down from the generational line. I asked Janelle Cox, Brian’s wife, who was a math major in college, to calculate for me the number of people in the generational line.
We got this:
5 generations back, there are 62 ancestors.
10 generations back, you have 2,046 ancestors.
25 generations back, you have 67,108,864 ancestors.
For those of you who are mathematicians, let me explain to you that I do understand that if you go back certain ways you start having common ancestors. In other words, you can have the same ancestors. So, the numbers may not be quite as high.
There is a very interesting article which if you would like to get it, I will get it to you. The article was written by a news journalist. I think there are two articles. The article says basically that he could guarantee mathematically and by statistics because he had interviewed this professor from this college, that all of us have Jewish in our background, we have royalty in our background, and we probably have any and every race in our background. It is the most amazing thing.
Cynthia Harbor was just here. Dave and Cynthia Harbor have a ministry in North Pole, Alaska, which is a suburb of Fairbanks. I was up there ministering and I was ministering to their son. I got this word of knowledge. We had been going back in his family line. I need to say that they feel like they are called to Alaska. For me, that is the only way I would ever go. We are talking about a call with caller ID that says God on it that I can call the number back and still get God. I may still want a second and third opinion. They have actually been prophesied over and they were told that they have a right to the land. I thought that was nice, but I wondered how you get a right to the land. So we were going back and going back so many generations and I got the word ‘Captain Cook’. I have studied history and I don’t remember everything, so I looked up Captain Cook and I did not know this, but Captain Cook had been to Alaska.
This is what I think happened. Their ancestry is English, so the English under Captain Cook went to Alaska and somehow one of the sailors met an Eskimo or one of the native people, took her back to England. The generations we got was the exact time that Captain Cook was there, it was just amazing, I could not believe how amazing it was. In fact, I can’t remember the ship’s name now, but it is actually in one of the Scandinavian countries now and it is still there. The Manifest is there. If you could do some research, you might actually be able to find the name of his ancestor. It is difficult of course when you have name changes. Do you see what happened? He is a descendant of a person who had legal right to that land and that is where they end up living. They lived down here, but they ended up going up there. Isn’t this amazing?
When I went to Australia for the first time, I left the house. We got to LA-X to Bradley Terminal and I said, “Donna, you have my passport.” She said, “No, you have it because I gave it to you. I put it on the bed in our bedroom.” I said, “I did not pick up my passport on the bed.” What had happened is that we found out later it had fallen off the bed, it was not there, and she assumed I picked it up. I have two passports because I was born in Wellington, New Zealand and I have a New Zealand passport. I had to use my New Zealand passport. Because I had to use my New Zealand passport, New Zealand and Australia are tied together in many ways, and I did not have to pay the visa charge that they charge everybody else because I am a New Zealand citizen. When I got to Australia, I walked right into the country right through customs because I had a New Zealand passport. Why is that important? Because I also have Australian ancestors. My grandmother/great grandmother was a gypsy Jew who came from Australia her parents having been sent to prison in Australia. I walked into Australia with legal right. See how this all works?
We never know what kind of right you might have in certain countries. When we were in England there was one point when I received all the generational blessings from the land of England. I just told you about the Bradnox side, which is my mom’s side. On the Cox side, we believe that one of my ancestors during the 1700s was the king’s physician. He was a Cox. First of all, I knew about some of this and then someone actually got a word of knowledge about a king’s physician who had misdiagnosed one of the children of the king and was sent to the colonies as a punishment. He was sent here and that was the line that came down. When I was in England, I said to the Lord, “I want to receive the blessings on the land from my line.” I actually felt something pouring into me.
I think it was James Goll that told me that I would go places to receive anointing that is on the land. Many times we have seen that. You should pay attention to that. The Lord does these things and you think it is just by accident that you end up in places. It is healing.
Go back 50 generations is 2.252 x 10 to the 15th power which is 10 with 15 zeros. That is a lot of people. Figure that one out.
This is what is not so humorous, but people that are racists and prejudice do not understand that they are coming against some people that are probably their ancestors. You have the whole movement of the Moors or the Muslims that crossed the Mediterranean into Spain. None of us who are English have to go back very far, or any of us that are from Europe have to go back very far, and we are going to find Arabs in our family line. You will find Chinese. Do you know how many women had affairs with English sailors, Hong Kong and the children that were born? We have ancestors everywhere. You could be related to me and that would be a great honor.
(Brian?) Al Capone dominated the organized crime world from 1925 to 1931. When he was convicted in 1931 by the federal government, it wasn’t for the bootlegging that he undertook, it wasn’t for the murder or for the gambling, it was for tax evasion out of all those things. The federal government could not convict him until they found a legal right to do so in the court of law. Let’s take a look at a slightly different court.
Job 1:6. There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord and satan also came among them.
Let’s take a look at who is in attendance. We have the sons of God who are created beings. We have angels and demons and you can tune in for Servants of the Most High to find out some more details of who else would have been in attendance. We also unfortunately have satan there. In this text he is referred to as the ‘accuser’. We have witnesses, we have an accuser, and God is the Judge. Webster defines a court as an official assembly for the transaction of judicial business. So, God holds court.
What this means is that the enemy cannot undertake any of the attacks against us until God has decided that the enemy has legal right to do so. It then begs for us to go through and start to take a look at some of the legal rights that the enemy is going to try and claim. To do that, we are going to go to the root of what would generate not only blessings, but also disfavor and also curses.
Let’s start with Christ. Something I wanted to point is that there are lots and lots of references in the Bible for everything we are going to talk about today. In my youth group, I do something called a Sword Drill. Of course, the Sword is your Bible. What we would do is have them close it and then I would read the reference. The first person to turn to it would stand up and read it and then they would get a piece of chocolate. In the interest of time, we will not be doing that today. We will just let you look them up yourselves. I will get you some chocolate later.
Let’s start with Psalm 115:12-15. So the Lord has been mindful of us. He will bless us. He will bless the house of Israel, He will bless the house of Aaron. He will bless those who fear the Lord both small and great. (We are getting the idea that He will bless us.) May the Lord give you increase, more and more, you and your children. May you be blessed by the Lord who made heaven and earth.
Here is an example in Psalms where the Lord is ready to bless in many and abundant ways. I think this is a very good way for us to start.
Mark 11:13-14. And, seeing from afar a fig tree having leaves He went to see if perhaps He would find something on it. When He came to it, He found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. In response, Jesus said to it, “Let no one eat fruit from you ever again.” (The disciples heard it so He had witnesses.)
Mark 11:20. We see that after they went to the temple and they kicked out the money changers and came back, they noticed that not only was the fig tree not bearing leaves, it was flat out dead. It was completely withered. Here is an example where Jesus cut off the favor from this tree. That was a tree that was prospering because it had leaves. Not only did it not bear fruit, it was completely cut off and withered. We see examples of that in our lives when we have something that comes against us. The cut off of favor can cause us to wither until we receive healing from Christ.
Let’s take a look at another example of how Christ is involved with blessings.
Galatians 3:13-14. “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law having become a curse for us. For it is written, ‘cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree, that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the gentiles in Christ Jesus that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.”
Now this, of course, is the most fundamental of the blessings that we have access to through Jesus Christ. For the wages of sin is death. We all have sinned so we all have the ultimate curse upon us. But, it is because Jesus took the curse upon Himself that we are set free from this. That is why it is so wonderful that we have Christ as our first example of blessings to where everything else can become moot when we look to Jesus Christ for the resolution and salvation.
Let’s take a look at the next subject which is idolatry.
We are going to start with Deuteronomy 27:15. “Cursed is the one who makes a carved or molded image, an abomination to the Lord, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and sets it up in secret and all the people shall answer and say, “Amen!”
Deuteronomy 5:7-9. “You shall have no other gods before Me.” It’s pretty straightforward. Let’s look at the details. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation.” So, there it is again, “to those who hate Me”.
Jeremiah 44:8. “In that you provoke Me to wrath with the works of your hands burning incense to other gods in the land of Egypt where you have gone to dwell, that you may cut yourselves off and be a curse and reproach among all the nations of the earth.”
So what is an idol? The technical definition is that an idol is an object of extreme devotion. Now it can also be the likeness of something or it can be considered a pretender or impostor. Let’s look an example here.
I loved to do experiments in junior high and high school. My dad had a lot more hair before I got into junior high and high school and those are stories for another time. One of the things that I liked to experiment with was anything that had to do with solar energy. We got a little car with solar panels on it that would run on an electric motor. So we built it up. We would set it up outside in the sunlight and it would shoot off down the street. I would take that same car, the same solar panel inside and hold it under a fluorescent light and nothing would happen. That car was looking to the wrong source of light to get any type of infusion or any kind of strength. It is the same with us. If we look to anything besides God, or anything that diverts us from God, we just deflate and we are just going to sit there without any kind of energy or strength. That is why God was very clear in giving us examples to not look towards idols.
As my dad pointed out, there are all sorts of other activities that were tied in with idols. It was not just a little statue that we would bow down to. They had all sorts of immoral activities that they would center around that which was not pleasant at all.
Let’s take a look at the spoken word. Ephesians 4:29. “Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good and necessary for edification that it may impart grace to the hearers.”
As a parent, we learn very quickly that every word that comes out of our mouth has an impact on our children. Even in the simplest of correction where you think that you are trying to give them a little bit of guidance, a harsh word can just devastate instead of correct. God, of course, has a fundamental understanding of that.
Proverbs 11:9. “The hypocrite with his mouth destroys his neighbor, but through knowledge the righteous will be delivered.”
Psalms 101:7. “He who works deceit shall not dwell within My house. He who tells lies shall not continue in My presence.”
The words that we speak can very quickly drive a wedge or separate us from God. In fact, when we are doing prayer sessions and ministering to others, one of the recurring themes we experience and one of the most devastating is the healing that needs to occur and the bondage that has occurred because of words that have been spoken against the person we are praying for. It just comes up time and time again where they have been cursed by their parents, they have been cursed by their coworkers, or by previous generations cursing themselves or their families. We see it ‘oodles’ of times, for lack of a better word.
Let’s talk about self-cursing for a moment.
Proverbs 6:2. “You are snared by the words of your mouth. You are taken by the words of your mouth.”
We don’t have to think hard before we can get some examples of self-cursing. I would like for you to bring up some of your own. The one that immediately came to mind when I started reading this is the statement, “I’ll be damned.” Think about that for a second. “I should go to hell right now,” is what you are saying. That does not sound like something to lift up yourself. What are some other examples of self cursing?
“Shame on you.” “You’re bad.”
“My bad.” Even there is a new term that is the funniest thing when someone says it, you are taking possession of it, when you look at the definition of ‘bad’ it is pretty close to ‘evil’. It is not a very good thing to be saying.
“I can’t do anything right.” “Hope for the best and expect the worst.” (Declaring a philosophy that nothing good is going to happen). “There’s no guarantee.” “You are making me crazy.” (I think I have said that one to my children.) “I’m no good.”
We are going to talk about relationship to our parents, but that is often one that our parents have taught us. “Can’t you do anything right?” Then we own it and take it upon ourselves.
Proverbs 18:21. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue and those who love it will eat its fruit.”
As my children are getting older, they are now 14 and 12, the challenges are a lot more interesting at this age than they were when it was just a matter of them not unlocking the front door to walk outside. I am really watching to try and catch myself, as is my wife, to as we correct make sure of the words we use and the guidance, that we are not just simply putting them down and pointing everything they are doing wrong. Remembering that right here, death and life are in the power of the tongue. We can devastate very quickly and so we are working hard to make sure that we are building them up while still giving hopefully godly correction.
Let’s take a look at giving to others.
(Paul.) I remembered another passage that comes up very often that really should be put in the notes. It is mentioned a couple times in the gospels.
Matthew 7:7-8. “Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you.”
In this particular case, this is all about making judgment.
Verse 1 – “Judge not that you be not judged, for with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged, and the measure you measure with shall be measured out to you. Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck in your eye, and look there is a plank in your own eye.’
It goes on and says that we need to be honest in what we do and we need to ask for what is right. When you ask without the judgment, which is the words, then you have opened yourself up for the correct doors.
There is one other passage. It is the passage that talks about giving.
Luke 6:38. “Give and it will be given to you good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over it will be put into your bosom, for with the same measure that you use it will be measured back to you.”
How many times have we heard that in the offering? How many times have I said that in the offering? It is a great offering verse that is totally and completely taken out of context. It has nothing to do with money. This was a shocking thing when I found this out.
If you look at Luke 6:27, “I say to you who hear, ‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you. To him who strikes you on the one cheek, offer the other also. From him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either.”
Verse 32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you, for even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, …. But love your enemies, do good and lend hoping for nothing in return. Your reward will be great and you will be sons of the Most High God for He is kind and faithful. Therefore, be merciful just as your Father also is merciful. Judge not (there is judge again) and you shall not be judged. Condemn not and you shall not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven.” Then, give in blessing and it will be given back to you good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over. Or give in cursing and it will be given back to you in full measure and running over.
That is a perfect verse to segway into the next bullet point which is giving to others.
Deuteronomy 15:10. “You shall surely give to him and your heart should not be grieved when you give to him because for this thing the Lord your God will bless you in all your works and in all to which you put your hand.”
Deuteronomy 24:19. “When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it. It shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, the widow and the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.”
Now the term ‘giving to others’ is a very broad term. It truly means all types of giving. This is not just leaving some wheat in the field for someone who is hungry. This is also giving of your money if you have some to help another or it is giving of your time. What I think is interesting is that humanity has an intrinsic built in ability to give to others, but yet sin consistently gets in the way and selfishness.
I am involved in a group called Emergency Communication Services for the County back home. What this group does is work with the fire department for the county to be able to go close to a fire or any other disaster to provide communications for everyone who needs help to make sure they get the supplies, help, and first aid that they need. This group is small compared to others that you have examples of. This is a group of 70 people who all are supposed to have jobs that donate sometimes up to 40 hours a month, almost a full week of work, just to be able to be ready to help others. That is not even if there is an actual activation.
There are, of course, a tremendous number of stories from missions work to other kinds of volunteer organizations. Mankind understands that you need to help each other. Yet, imagine if we all truly were watching out to be blessing each other and helping. It would not be a matter of a few having to sacrifice a lot of time; it would be just part of the normal day-to-day activities. There truly are blessings that come when you help others in all manner of ways.
Let’s move on to obedience to God.
Proverbs 16:20. “He who heeds the word wisely will find good, and whoever trusts in the Lord, happy is he.” That is nice and straightforward.
Deuteronomy 11:26-28. “Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse. The blessing if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you today, and the curse if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God but turn aside from the way in which I command you today to go after other gods which you have not known.”
We have a choice. Children are, of course, the best blessing, but they are an extra blessing for anybody who speaks or ministers because they are an endless source of examples and illustrations. I must say that my father was always so kind. He would always ask permission before he would use us in an illustration all during growing up. My kids aren’t here, so I will ask permission when I get home. I think that actually my illustration is about me.
Just as with the faucet of good and evil, I had a choice to make and God was laying out a very simple choice. As the parent, the choice always seems very obvious and clear. In fact, I would tell my kids, “If only you would listen to what I would say, your life would be so much easier.” They just look at me with this blank face and then they will say it to their children. In fact, maybe that is a generational thing that we should break off. Let’s take a look at something else that I was doing.
As a very small child I was taught not to play with matches. I thought I was just the sneakiest guy at 5 years old to grab a book of matches and go into the backyard. The first consequence set up by God’s law was the physical consequence. I got a very big blister on my thumb. Thank God nothing worse happened. We have other fire stories that we will not get into. Less hair for dad. The first consequence was a big blister on my thumb. The second consequence came when mom saw the blister and I had to confess what had happened which caused blisters in other areas, but we won’t get into that. I did not play with matches again until I was much older.
As adults we do a pretty good job of following one set of God’s laws which are the physical laws that He set up at creation. We do not often drive off a cliff because we know we are going to succumb to the law of gravity. Why is it that there is a set of spiritual laws that so often mankind completely ignores? That is part of our goal today to convey the consequences of the spiritual laws. The more we have understanding, the fewer times hopefully we will be driving off of cliffs or driving into a wall to succumb to the spiritual laws.
Let’s take a look at praise.
Psalms 67:5-7. “Let the people praise You O God. Let all the peoples praise You. Then the earth shall yield her increase. God our own God shall bless us. God shall bless us and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him.”
I find this an interesting parallel to our discussion on idols. Through praise we ensure that we are putting our focus onto the Son, onto the true Source of all of our energy. In fact, growing up in a conservative American Baptist church we would do the hymns. And, as most children, “Oh, the hymns, I have to sing through these.” There was no praise often associated with it. Now we have an understanding of what true praise is where you are actually singing to God instead of about Him. You realize that some of them are remarkable. As we started to learn about the Vineyard type worship and what we call contemporary, I would look forward to worship because I would actually become rejuvenated before I really had understanding of what was happening. I would think, “Oh, if I can just make it to Sunday I can get to the praise time and I can get charged again.” Then as I matured I realized that I could praise anytime no matter where I was and then I did not have to wait week to week to become rejuvenated. Praise is a very big source of blessings and can be a wait to cut the block of favor away from you. Imagine, if you are spending time directly focusing on God, then it is all that more easy for revelation to come to you so you may have an understanding of something that spoke against you or any of these other things that we talked about so that you can take care of them. Praise is a very important component of dealing with any kind of curse or block against you.
Let’s take a look at relation to parents. Luke 11:28. “He replied, ‘Blessed are those who hear the Word of God and obey it.'”
When we talk about relation to parents, of course, God is our Heavenly Father and it really important to be listening and obeying Him.
Deuteronomy 27:16. “Cursed is the one who treats his father or his mother with contempt and all the people shall say ‘amen’.”
It is interesting how many different examples we get at how remarkable the tie is between us and our parents. In fact, my father was pointing out at the break that you can even look at your DNA testing and you can determine your ancestry. Obviously we get all our traits physically from our parents. We also gain physical traits and our inheritance. Our relationship with our parents and conversely our relationship to our children has a direct relation to how blessings and favor are passed down. Let’ take a look at one more.
Proverbs 20:20. “Whoever curses his father or his mother his lamp will be put out in deep darkness.”
(Paul) We had an intern who was at Aslan’s Place one time. He made a shocking observation tied to this passage. The observation was that perhaps it is the enemy that tries to annihilate the relationship between parents and children so that children do not honor their parents and this is the result. Then the blessings do not go down to the next generation. It is an effort to stop the blessings from coming down and Brian is going to enlarge on that right now.
So blessings are passed down and favor passed down from the parents. When we dishonor our parents, we put up our own barrier against our inheritance of blessings.
(Jana) This is an on the spot testimony. I have had a lot of generational deliverance done. My son came to the Lord soon after I did, but the relationship was never good at all. Every phone conversation we had lasted about five minutes, we would end up in anger, and it was who could hang up the fastest. This has gone on and it is such a habit now, “You just don’t understand.” Click. That went on for years until recently and we had all this work done. This is so very true. You are literally stuck in darkness, nor does he receive, nor do you communicate at all. I am just here to tell you that because of that identification, because of taking care of that. I am here to say that my son and I now have a relationship.
(Jana’s son) We do have a relationship and it’s a process. It has been difficult, it has been hard, it is still hard. I just want to thank Paul Cox’s ministry and generational deliverance. Since my mom has been with Paul Cox she has been trying to have me come out, but you can’t receive that from a parent, from someone who neglected you, you don’t even understand. It is just that God reveals slowly things and it is just a process. But, after doing generational deliverance, it’s better and it’s getting better. Things that the church cannot teach you. You go to church and you can build relationships, but you don’t have that intimacy with people sitting down with you. They tell you that you just have to forgive or that God will do it. That sounds all good, you feel good for a second, but then you go home and that is not how you feel. So sitting down and having the generational deliverance, it has unlocked all kinds of healing.
(Mimi Lowe?) I just want to share something. I just got an email maybe yesterday. I prayed for a lady in England. She said, “My heart is so broken. My son will not talk to me and even when he does talk to me he hurts me so much.” She said, “I’m not allowed to see my grandchildren. I can’t phone him. I’m not allowed to talk to him. I have to wait for him to tell his wife to call me to give me permission to go and visit my grandchildren.” It was really bad and she was really hurting. So we prayed into the generational line. I got an email that her son called her and she said that for the first time they were having a conversation. I just took the walls down that came down generationally between the parents and children.
(Brian) That is something that we see so often. There will be a generational inheritance of something bad that blocks healing from occurring. You can have a person who says that they have been in counseling for years, and years, and years and now they have come to the ministry here and have finally made some breakthrough. In fact, we have had counselors that say, “We can do this in seven years or you can go to Aslan’s Place and we will get rid of a lot of this.” Something interesting with that is that often times as we mentioned the onion layers/peels, we will peel away all the garbage and then there is healing that takes place and then sometimes other things are revealed. It is all the more important that as parents we understand that if we can at least make sure we are not adding on to it and that we bring God’s glory into our children’s lives, then He can shine the light on anything that they need healing from. The more that we do that as parents, pretty soon we are not going to have to talk about generational deliverance because it can only go down three or four and if we can eliminate that, we’ll be clean.
(Jana) It also works the other way around. My father and I are communicating. You might be in the middle.
(Brian) Let’s go on to the next point which is sex. God created the act of sex as the means of propagating His image on earth. When we mess with sex, we are messing with one of the fundamental concepts of His creation and it is not a good thing. This can be laid out and the consequences and what God isn’t happy with in three different references. Let’s take a look at those.
Proverbs 5:15-19 Drink water from your own cistern, And running water from your own well. Should your fountains be dispersed abroad, Streams of water in the streets? Let them be only your own, And not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed, And rejoice with the wife of your youth.
Before we get into the concepts of all the other abnormalities that can occur with sex, intercourse is between a man and a woman under a covenant with God, no other way. That is laid out right here. If we stray from that, then woe be unto us for everything that we can open ourselves up to.
Deuteronomy 27:20-23‘Cursed is the one who lies with his father’s wife, because he has uncovered his father’s bed.’ “And all the people shall say, ‘Amen!’ ‘Cursed is the one who lies with any kind of animal.’ “And all the people shall say, ‘Amen!’ ‘Cursed is the one who lies with his sister, the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother.’ “And all the people shall say, ‘Amen!’ ‘Cursed is the one who lies with his mother-in-law.’ “And all the people shall say, ‘Amen!’
You really get the point that God wanted to get this really clear on what is supposed to happen.
(Paul) As I told you, I like to read novels and also history. I was reading a novel and in the novel the writer just mentioned that the Celtic kings, we are talking about every Celtic king in Europe which included the British Isles, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, all the Celtic kings in all these little villages, they would copulate with a horse publically at their coronation which is bestiality. Now the odds of that coming down in all of our generational line are very high. You see how this curse/disfavor can come down in the family line. God only knows what kind of stuff that can create.
(Brian) That is also illustrated in Leviticus 18:22-26 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. Nor shall you mate with any animal, to defile yourself with it. Nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it. It is perversion. ‘Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you. For the land is defiled; therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants. You shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations, either any of your own nation or any stranger who dwells among you
Another interesting thing about straying from God’s intention … Like my father, my wife is a history buff, specifically for Europe, and I would say even more so with the United Kingdom. She will tell me stories from the documents that she reads about the depravity that was in the royal line. They were marrying off their sons and daughters to their sisters’ sons and daughters at 7 or 8 years old. Not only that, then with the inbreeding there were lines of royalty that would be so deformed that their jaws didn’t work anymore. There, of course, is a physical manifestation of the curses. Then you can just read and study about the brutality of that and you can see why there is so much depravity and why they call it the Dark Ages. There is just no end to the sin that was occurring.
Let’s switch over to physical objects.
2 Samuel 6:11. Here is an example of where a physical object carried blessings. The ark of the LORD remained in the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite three months. And the LORD blessed Obed-Edom and all his household.
Acts 19:1-12 And it happened, while Apollos was at Corinth, that Paul, having passed through the upper regions, came to Ephesus. And finding some disciples he said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” So they said to him, “We have not so much as heard whether there is a Holy Spirit.” And he said to them, “Into what then were you baptized?” So they said, “Into John’s baptism.” Then Paul said, “John indeed baptized with a baptism of repentance, saying to the people that they should believe on Him who would come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus.” When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke with tongues and prophesied. Now the men were about twelve in all. And he went into the synagogue and spoke boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading concerning the things of the kingdom of God. But when some were hardened and did not believe, but spoke evil of the Way before the multitude, he departed from them and withdrew the disciples, reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus. And this continued for two years, so that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks. Now God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them.
We are actually having examples of objects like this carrying God’s anointing even today on those who are working in the gifts. It is exciting to see that this is yet another example that this did not stop at the end of the Bible. God’s power and His manifest anointing is working even today in all the same ways.
Years ago my wife received a bottle of perfume from somebody as part of a Christmas present. As with most of us when we have some geography to cover, by the time we get home from our Christmas rounds everything gets unloaded to the table in the dining room if it made it out of the car and we all shuffle off to bed. That particular night was a very fitful night. Believe it or not, it was one where we did not call you at two in the morning. We actually started to learn that we could actually pray and find out what was going on ourselves. Both my wife and I started to have a picture in our minds of the person who had given that particular gift. I threw it out into the garage and we had a peaceful night’s sleep. It was very clear that there were curses that were placed on that perfume. Later on we found out reasons why. It wasn’t a nice gift. We had brought it right into our house. Let’s take a look at an example where in Acts some individuals had some insight of curses that were tied to objects.
Acts 19:19-20 Also, many of those who had practiced magic brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted up the value of them, and it totaled fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed.
They had such a fundamental understanding of the curses that were tied to these documents they did not care how much they were worth, they were getting rid of them. This is something else to consider. We underwent a similar prayer time when we received an inheritance of books and other objects from a relative of my wife’s. We went through every book and found some of them that we just flat out tossed regardless of the subject because we could tell through discernment that God revealed they were not things to be doing.
This is something that I encourage you to do. Prayerfully consider objects. How many here have had a bad feeling about something they have received? How often do we have a bad feeling and we just brush it off and move on. That could be the Holy Spirit revealing that you could have a little more freedom if you just take care of it. That does not mean to say that anything that has something ungodly tied to it has to be destroyed immediately. Prayerfully consider if it can be cleansed. That is up to you and God.
(Paul) This is not an internet story, this is true. We had a lady that we knew and she had purchased a former New Age health store in Half Moon Bay outside San Francisco on the Pacific Coast. Every day she would walk in there and she would pray blessings on the entire store.
One day this Buddhist man came in and bought some shampoo. Some days later she received a very condemning letter. The letter said, “What are you trying to do to me? Every time I take a shower and wash my hair, my hands go up and I say, “Hallelujah”. Every time I go by a church, my hands go up and I say, “Hallelujah”.”
What happened is that just in her speaking blessings over the store, the Lord contaminated the shampoo with blessings.
We have great stories. Dale Shannon, a friend of ours, teaches at a junior college. She will periodically go into her classroom and speak blessings over the desks. She says that she has changed the entire mood of the classroom by doing that. I know of another story of a mother who was having difficulty with her teenage son and every night she spoke blessings over his pillow and that caused a change in attitude of her son.
On a more negative basis, I was just remembering Brian when you were talking about objects, that we had someone that came for ministry. They were incredibly gifted. All of a sudden they went like that … and said, “What is that?” so the Lord did that. I walked over there and there was an object on our bookshelf in the ministry room that I had not put there. Someone else had put it there and it was totally contaminated. This has happened several times at Aslan’s Place where someone will say, “What is that?” I will say, “I don’t know what that is. I don’t know where it came from.” Then it goes in the trash outside. I concur with Brian that it is really important. You will be surprised how things can sneak in your house and you don’t even know where they have come from.
(Brian) Let’s take a look at how an attitude towards God’s people can affect this.
Genesis 12:1-3 Now the LORD had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, From your family And from your father’s house, To a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
I believe that this also can translate into our attitude towards our brothers and sisters in the church because we are also God’s chosen people through Jesus Christ. When we are behaving in ill manner towards our brothers and sisters, we are imparting a curse or blocking favor to them and we are not doing much help to ourselves either. This is something else to be aware of.
Again, growing up and going into some of the churches that I have been in, you can watch sitcoms and see who is the gossipy lady, she is someone in the church, the gossip woman who always has something bad to say about someone else. Unfortunately, that is the truth. Why? Because the enemy knows that is a really good way to undercut God’s movement within a church. When you come against God’s people, and by extension also coming against Israel, they are still God’s chosen people; it is a very dangerous behavior to undertake.
Let’s take a look at the land.
Leviticus 18:24-30 ‘Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you. For the land is defiled; therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants. You shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations, either any of your own nation or any stranger who dwells among you (for all these abominations the men of the land have done, who were before you, and thus the land is defiled), lest the land vomit you out also when you defile it, as it vomited out the nations that were before you. For whoever commits any of these abominations, the persons who commit them shall be cut off from among their people. ‘Therefore you shall keep My ordinance, so that you do not commit any of these abominable customs which were committed before you, and that you do not defile yourselves by them: I am the LORD your God.’ ”
This is the last section and it really wraps up with God declaring the zoning rules for the planet. The Bible tells us about a very big conflict that occurred up in heaven where satan thought that he could be just like God. He got kicked out and took a third of all heaven with him. Now he is trying to take away God’s Kingdom here on earth. Not only do we have zoning rules, but we have a land battle occurring all over the planet. We see evidence of it consistently as we pray or when someone tries to start a church. If they did not prayerfully consider the location for that church, how many times have we seen them just deflate like a balloon very quickly.
We prayed for a gentleman who was having severe lung problems. He had many doctors, the typical story with a desire for healing. As we prayed, we found that there were ties to Indians in his land. What had happened is that in the spiritual realm his physical body had been anchored to the earth which the Indians worshipped. The enemy was using it to siphon out energy and just take it away from him. Truly in the physical he had no energy. He was dying. When God cut off those connections and actually the generators and everything that we were perceiving along with it, he was healed within a couple of weeks. This is an example of where the enemy has his zoning book and has it out in front of him all the time. He is looking for rights that he has to the land. The more activities that people have undertaken through land worship, Indians, and everything else, we have freely given the land to the enemy instead of advancing God’s Kingdom.
Back up and look at the Lord’s Prayer. “Thy Kingdom come, Your will be done.” That is the opposite. How many times have we said that? Are we really understanding that we are asking God to advance His Kingdom? This planet is supposed to be our inheritance and we are freely giving it away through our actions. Now some of these are abominations that are stated, but how many of us have actually given our homes that we have over to God for protection?
We learned the hard way when we would move into a new house and more of those 2:00/3:00 in the morning phone calls because no one in the house can sleep until we actually walked around the land, gave it to God, and actually anointed the doors. Even then we would play worship music, bring praise into the home, so that our children could actually sleep until all the gunk had been cleaned away. Now we have a wonderful peaceful home I am happy to say.
(Jana) This happened just before I got connected to Aslan’s. I went to the school. I was telling my friend about setting my head on my fire more than once in my lifetime. As we were doing this, we were going to spend the night at this little retreat place, and sure enough right after I told the story, I did the exact the same and lit a stove that did not have a pilot and did the exact same thing I told her about and set my head on fire. She put me out. I looked at her and I said, “What is that? I did it again. That is ridiculous.”
The next day the school started. I was sitting there and Paul somewhere in the middle of the school said, “Does anybody have any questions?” I said, “Nothing that pertains to anything, but what does it mean if you keep setting your head on fire?” He said, “That’s bizarre. Let’s do a generational deliverance.” What we found is that there was something to do with the Spanish Inquisition which he did not know that I had in my generational line and persecution by fire and burning at the stake.
To tell you this, as Brian was speaking about praying over the land, I just always had this underneath fear of leaving my house that it might burn down. So I used to always pray like this, “Lord, bless this day. My house belongs to the Lord. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and Lord, don’t let my house burn down.” This is how I would pray on a daily basis. Not only that, I had multiple surgeries with laser ablation. I have been burned, like at least three times I set my head on fire. I never put it together. So when we did this whole thing and now I don’t have that fear of fire, I don’t have that need, and I don’t burn myself near as much.
(Brian) That’s an interesting thought. Again, my wife has talked about history and how the church would burn heretics. Heretics are anyone that goes against the teaching of the Catholic Church at the time. In addition, in even more recent times they would burn witches. How many of these people were someone acting in gifting that were actually burned because of their godly use of the gifts that were misinterpreted. That is yet another possibility for that discomfort.
(Jana) Let me read this real quick. This is a scripture the Lord gave me this morning. Habakkuk 2:16-17. “…utter disgrace will come upon your glory. For the violence done to Lebanon will overwhelm you, and the devastation of its beasts by which you terrified them, because of human bloodshed and violence done to the land and city, and of all who dwell in it.” I also realized that you are going to reap what has been done to the land as well.
Session 4 of 4
(Brian) There is an angel with a message here so we are going to ask Mimi to come up. Thank you Mimi.
(Mimi) It’s time. It’s time. This is your time. This is your time for freedom, freedom, deliverance. For I have come to bless you. I have come to bless you. To unlock the prison doors, to set the captives free. Open up the gates, open up the gates, open up the gates and let the King of Glory come in. For He wants to come in, to come in, to come in. And the King of Glory will bless you, bless you, and bring you into a land of freedom. It is time, it is time, it is time for you to cross the Jordan. It is time, it is time, it is time, it is kairos time to cross over, to cross over. Take hold of My promises. Take hold of My promises. They are yours, they are yours. It is for you. Take hold of them. I have not abandoned you. I have not rejected you. My word is true and it is for you. Believe, believe, believe that I am the God of breakthroughs, the God of breakthroughs, for I will break through. Is there anything too small or too big? For I care about the smallest detail of your life.
FINAL WORDS
IS IT POSSIBLE THAT I WOULD NEVER NEED TO SUFFER?
(Paul) We want to look at some final words, really which is a statement. It is a statement that has been asked me many times based upon what we have just talked about. Is it possible to get to a point where we would never need to suffer?
Now suffering in the Bible is an interesting concept. Someone actually did a doctoral study on the word and the concept. You see, we have in our Protestant tradition determined that suffering is anything that I go through that is unpleasant. That might be sickness, a bad marriage, family difficulties, natural disasters.
In reality, the word suffering is pretty much isolated to this concept. It is suffering because of what I do for Jesus Christ, because of my commitment to Him. So when you enter into persecution, which I say generally is stronger from inside the church now than outside the church, that is what suffering is.
1 Peter. For Christ suffered for you and set for you a perfect example and He wants you to follow in His footsteps. That is suffering. Anything outside of that area of suffering I believe is fair game to take care of. Yes, let’s try to found out the roots of sickness, or cancer, or heart disease, or mental anguish, or depression, or anxiety, or phobias.
We have had so many interesting stories like in the area of phobias. I think I have shared before that we had a lady who could not take showers. We found out through generational deliverance that her ancestor was tied to the front of a Viking ship and because of that rushing water there was a murder. When we took care of that, the issue was dropped. So many interesting accounts of phobias that you can find a generational or an inner healing root for that issue. The problem now is that she stays in the shower too long.
In fact, Mimi come and give the illustration that we just had of this woman who was afraid of her mother going on a vacation.
(Mimi) This is a friend of mine. She just found out recently that her grandmother and grandfather went on a vacation and went on a boat. Her grandmother committed suicide so the grandfather came back alone. Therefore, her mother was grief-stricken. She was overcome with grief and shock. My friend now understood why she was always terrified when her mother went on holidays because she believed she was not going to come back. She never put the pieces together until she found out that her grandmother had committed suicide. Then it answered the question as to why her daughter and her granddaughter are both afraid of water. That is the generational stuff that came down.
(Paul) Let’s look at three verses here.
1 Peter 3:14. “But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed.” Isn’t that interesting? So you can suffer for what is right, but you are blessed. “Do not fear what they fear; do not be frightened.”
1 Peter 4:14. “If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.” In the suffering there is blessing. I’m not talking about sickness, I’m not talking about insanity, I’m not talking about financial difficulties. That is not suffering in terms of the Bible.
James 1:12. “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him.” There again is the blessing when you suffer under trial. These are trials tied to the Christian life.
WHAT NOW?
What we would like to do is illustrate a generational deliverance. But before we do that, I want to ask the question, “Okay, so what do I do now?” That is a good question. What you do now is that you find someone to pray with you and try to find the generational root for what is going on in your life.
We are currently at Calvary Way Church in Libertyville, Illinois. Fay is here so Fay would you stand up? Fay does ministry here. Turn around and greet everybody. We also do ministry at Aslan’s Place. Mimi is in the Toronto, Canada area, but she also comes to Aslan’s Place and travels with us. Jana is at Aslan’s Place. We have several prayer ministers at Aslan’s Place.
You can go to our website www.aslansplace.com and if you are not in the Southern California area or it is not convenient for you to go there, then you can find other places where there are people that are connected with us. We do not run the show with these people. We are connected by heart and by relationship and they do generational deliverance also.
Our friend Cynthia Harbor and Davis do the ministry in North Pole, Alaska so if you want to go to Alaska for ministry you can do that. We welcome you to do that.
Obviously in this kind of meeting, and since we are on a DVD and there are many of you here, it is absolutely impossible for us to deal with everyone. I am assured that as we have talked about these things, you are aware of things in your life that you cannot get over. Perhaps it is depression or anxiety or some physical issue and you wonder if maybe there is a generational root that can be handled that can stop the onslaught that is coming against you.
Here is the better news; you can stop it from going down to your children and to your grandchildren. My children’s first line of defense is that when something happens they call and say, “You need to take care of this”. And I laugh, ha-ha, but I do want to do that.
Frankly, I understand that because of the business I am in, the enemy is taking unfair advantage of them. It is not fair. I cannot get mad at them because of the work I am doing. In fact, we might as well take care of it. It is annoying, it is not fun, it is fatiguing, because you wonder, “Is it ever over?” It is better, isn’t it? It is better. We are continuing to get better, but the enemy never gives up. I know he zeros in on our grandkids now. We are now at three generations and the next one is the fourth. Do you see the pressure that is going to be there?
I once did a funeral. I have done lots of funerals, but this was a most unique funeral. There were 60 people there and they were all relatives. That is all that were present. Four generations. I looked at that and I said, “This is it.” It was like the Lord spoke to me and said, “This is why it is four generations. Because you can look, if you are a little kid, you can see there are all the problems in my family, so you know exactly what you have to deal with.” It’s true.
You find alcoholism, it goes right down the family line. Certain types of schizophrenia go right down the family line. Certain kinds of illnesses go right down the family line. Sometimes divorces go right down the family line. It is just amazing how many things go down. More and more you see the media picking up on this, because God is revealing it to the Church and to the world.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Now, before we illustrate generational deliverance, my son and I are sitting here. Are there any questions that you have? Maybe we could have someone carry the mic.
Q. In dealing with generational deliverance with your children and you have had divorces or a divorce in your family and the ex is not following God and those things keep going on, how do you handle those situations?
A: (Paul) It is interesting that 1 Corinthians 7 says that the believing wife sanctifies the unbelieving husband. I believe also the children. You have quite an arsenal of power available to you in prayer. Prayer will make the difference and your love will make a difference. If you love, forgive, and do what you can and you pray, this will have an enormous impact on the children. Of course you understand, I am a realist, I deal with a lot of people. Divorces can be very, very difficult. There can be a lot of antagonism and sometimes you cannot control that. You cannot control what the other person is doing. You can control how you respond. You can control what you do. You can set an example for the kind of person that Christ would have you be. You can pray privately and ask the Lord to block anything negative that might come from the spouse.
(Mimi) Just to give you some hope here. My daughter is adopted. From the time she was about 16 it seemed that she was very lethargic. She would get up in the morning and she would watch TV and that is pretty well all she did. She would go to work, come home from work and watch TV. Saturday she would get up and just watch TV. She didn’t do anything, didn’t go out. She was very, very unmotivated. I didn’t know if she was depressed or not. Then the Lord gave me an idea. I thought, “Okay, I’ll try it”. Because she is adopted, I didn’t know anything about her side of the family, the birth parents. So I repented on her behalf of all of her ancestors. I just named everything. Laziness, being lethargic, being not motivated. I just did everything because I did not know what it was. I asked the Lord for a picture and I didn’t get anything, so I just ran through the whole gamut. It worked. I did it twice and it worked. After that she was more motivated. She was up and about. I said to her, “What happened to you?” She said, “I just feel like doing stuff now.” I didn’t tell her that I had prayed for her because she does not believe in this stuff, believe it or not. To this day she does not believe in this stuff. I thought that would be encouraging for you.
Q. I just want to make sure that I understood this right. You said earlier I believe that blessings on a person or their generational line remain forever; it is just that they are covered up by all the other things. Is that correct? So as you work on uncovering and receiving from the Lord the deliverances and so forth, you also ask for revelation on what your family blessings are?
A: I believe so. It says that they go down for thousands of generations.
Q. I had a question about the CD you showed that leads you through prayers for deliverance. I would like to try that with some nonbelieving relatives. Is there any caution? I have had some deliverance counseling with Fay. Because these are my relatives and we have the same generational things that come down, what would you say that I could do with that?
A: The caution I have is that there is the passage that says that if you sweep a house clean then they can come back seven times stronger. I believe that pertains to a nonChristian because as Christians, if we sweep the house clean, then who fills it? Holy Spirit. But, if you sweep the house clean, then I believe there would be a window that the person would be very vulnerable to becoming a Christian. The danger would be if in that time that they do not respond to the Lord, they could end up being in a worse position.
I have believed that we might be entering into a time of deliverance evangelism, where there would be a deliverance and people would say, “Oh, I can accept Christ”. We actually had a case in Switzerland where we prayed for a pastor’s wife and her sister was an atheist. After generational deliverance with her, her sister called her the next day and became a Christian. We have seen those kinds of things take place.
(Jana) We had a woman bring her daughter in. Her daughter openly said, “I just don’t believe in Christ.” So, I said, “Well, here is what we will do, we’ll work on you.” So we had a session with the mother. I think it was six months later, the daughter came back and she accepted Jesus. Her whole mindset was different too.
(Brian) I can attest to that deliverance type evangelism. In our youth group we had a young man who came for the first time. He was very withdrawn. He came just with his friends. It was one of the first times that we were teaching on discernment and God provided a door that the youth were walking through and receiving some giftings.
It was just so fun, as you know. You teach on discernment (this is a side story) and they will have this look of doubt on their face and they will walk through and they’re like, “Whoa, there is something there,” and one just like freaked out in a good way. It’s like, “You’re actually telling the truth, something is really there.”
But, the boy was just following the line. I was there with Peter McKay. When it came time for this young man, he just stood there. Peter and I looked at each other and we could tell and the boy said, “I’m hearing, ‘this is not for me’.” We said, “Well, would like it to be?” We led him to Christ right there. Praise God! He walked through. His demeanor was different as he walked through and he is now walking in God’s power and has been pretty much to each group afterwards and he is going to be advancing God’s Kingdom.
Q. I have a question on that. I have a son-in-law that says he does not believe in God. My daughter is obviously related, but he is not related, so how do we work that?
A: 2 Corinthians 10:4. “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.” I love what Dutch Sheets has said about this passage in Intercessory Prayer. He said that he believes, and I concur with him, that this is a verse for us to pray for others, that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God.
So the key is that you pray probably for 40 days. Ed Silvoso has a wonderful teaching of hammering away at 40 days. It is interesting that The Temptation went for 40 days. Is it possible that the enemy is only allowed to sustain warfare for 40 days and then after that there is victory? The difficulty is that you are also at a vulnerable point because there is a lot of attack.
I can tell you so many stories where I have prayed against something and all of sudden you start seeing and the people do not know and they still do not know. But, the confusion over the mind is literally broken apart. The stronghold that you mentioned, the stronghold in the mind is taken apart and then the Lord is able to penetrate with truth. This is a spiritual battle. I do not believe it is a battle of the mind or argument. Rarely are you going to argue anybody into the Kingdom. But you know what, you can pray them in. You can pray and say, “I come against everything that raises itself up against the knowledge of Christ” in that person. Every day you hammer away, hammer away.
(Lady with the question) What I usually pray when I pray for them is, “The Word says, ‘it is written’ that you can call those things that are not as if they are, so I call them all saved and I say well Lord, in this context that we cover them with this …..
(Paul) I would say also speaking in tongues. I ask the Lord to give me a tongue now and as I speak about this person and this issue and then go for it in tongues. Then you know the Spirit is praying through you.
Q. What would you say to somebody who says that all of this is covered by Jesus, His death, His resurrection, and the Blood at Calvary?
A: I would have them get our seminar Biblical Basis for Spiritual Conflict because we talk about that specifically. I guess the simplest sarcastic answer I give is, “If that is true, then none of us would die physically because that is also a curse, death is a curse, then why do we not die?” Once you have a crack in the argument, then sometimes the whole thing will fall apart.
The reality is, and I think someone was sharing this, what answers do you give people that have been Christians for decades and their lives are totally miserable, they are not finding victory, there is so much hopelessness, there is depression, whatever the issue is. You can give no answers for these people.
What kind of compassion is that? Where is the compassion of Jesus Christ in those situations? I tell you, the compassion is not, “Well, if you just attended church more, if you just prayed more, and certainly if you just gave more, then everything would be alright.” Then the final answer is, “It is your fault”. That is nice, so what fault is it, what have I done, find the fault. Any of us can find fault.
We have dealt with some people that their lives are so horribly miserable and they love Jesus, they know His Word, and let’s be honest. It’s time for us to be honest and say, “I don’t have an answer for you. Maybe this is the answer.” Let’s don’t say, “I don’t have an answer for you, it must be your fault.” Then you walk away and you go to Starbucks and have your coffee and everything is fine, thank you, and you have left wreckage on the street. I’m going to start preaching here. Churches are leaving wreckage everywhere because they do not give an answer that works.
(Brian) By the same token, churches are trying to say that God is causing it. They say that therefore that must have been intended to happen, but that is not the ministry that Jesus led on earth. He did not come and temper and punish people by causing them to be sick.
(Paul) Brian has a man that he has worked with that believes this. He keeps on saying that, “God caused it”. Where does that answer help either? Imagine you say that to a parent. The children and teenagers watch this and say that this is the God I’m going follow then. It is a great evangelistic opportunity. Yeah, right, “I’m going to follow that kind of God.”
Any other questions?
Generational Deliverance Demonstration
Bonnie, I am going to have you change places with Brian. Thank you, Brian.
What we want to do is we want to illustrate how we would tackle a generational issue.
Incidentally, let me just say up front, we never tell anybody, “This is going to work.” We never tell anybody, “Now you are healed.” Because, the evidence is proof that something has happened. If nothing happened, then nothing happened. If something happened, then something happened. Right?
The reason why I get a little worked up about this is that I have prayed for more people who have been told that they are totally set free and they are some of the most demonized people I have ever worked with. They sit and my head is swirling and after I pray for them I am exhausted. Sometimes I cannot even sleep. You know, these people are totally healed. I am thinking, “Well, which part of totally were you healed?” It is not the part of totally that I know.
We have done this enough, and not just me …. We were in London for two weeks and our hosts, Paul and Jan Knight, we met after we went to the cruise. We came back after 10 days and had dinner with them. They started sharing all the stories. The stories of Jana, Mimi, and Barbara, and Dale who did personal ministry sessions. All the stories of people that are better, of lives that are changed. All the people now because of the school and they are now going and doing this with their friends and their relatives. You see, it is interesting that in my entire experience we never had to advertise. In fact, my mother-in-law one time said to Donna, “What do you do, send out flyers?” You know the very best advertisement, word of mouth.
We did a conference last December outside Dublin, Ireland. The real reason that we went is that I needed more miles to get to the next level. I called my friend in Ireland and said that we really needed to have a trip. He said, “Why don’t you come over? We’ll take care of the trip and you can preach a couple of times and we’ll have a closed meeting.” This was the key word. Everybody started calling because they were afraid they were not going to be able to be included in a closed meeting. He expected 15 or 20 people and we had over 60 there because the word got out that it was closed. We have a new idea here for advertising. It works a lot better than pushing. Tell everybody that the meeting is closed. I don’t know how we got off on that.
Bonnie, we want to be a blessing to you. Lord Jesus, we welcome Your presence. Lord, I just love the word that you had for us that You do want to bring down prison bars. Lord, not only for those of us who are here in this room, but for those that are listening on DVD and CD. Lord, You want them to experience the freedom. Lord, it is not just for the few, it is for Your Church. Lord, You want Your Church cleaned up so that a Holy Bride will be presented to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, a Bride without blemish. Isn’t that a great picture? Cleaned up from all the mess of the family line. Lord, I thank You for Bonnie and I just invite Your Holy Spirit to come and to give revelation and understanding.
Bonnie, we ask you first of all if there is an issue that you wanted us to specifically listen to from the Lord. Sometimes we ask the Lord to take you back to a dream or memory, but I feel like in this particular case, since we are dealing with specific things, is there something that came to your mind?
(Bonnie) Yes, I have been battling taking my place in many areas of my life as I have stepped into a place of leadership here at the church. I have also been in a place of leadership in my job. Recently that has been very threatened.
(Paul) Explain more to me how that works practically.
(Bonnie) There is a tendency in me to defer or step back and not really want to step in and be in that place of leadership. In my job I was the second in command to my boss. When my boss left, they didn’t have anyone so I stepped up and did the job for about six months and trained my new boss who is now currently treating me like a worker bee.
(Paul) So it’s an issue of you stepping into a leadership position and feeling good about that. Is that a good way of putting it?
(Bonnie) Yes.
(Paul) Now we are going to ask the Lord. You are our prayer team now. This is not a passive thing. You are our prayer team.
Lord, how many generations back is this fear of leadership empowered in the family line? Ask the Lord. Can we have someone write down the numbers?
Brian got 14. Did you hear a number? I heard 14 as well. Yes, 14 seems to be an important one. 10, 40, 42, 36, 85 (85 is strong isn’t it Fay?), 133, 78, 50, 19, 67, 68. Ok, I think we have enough numbers. What is our highest number? 133.
Lord, what country or area of the world was this 133 generations back which is about 660 BC? 586 BC is Babylonian captivity so we are right before that aren’t we?
Yes, this is strong. Did anybody get a country? Did you hear a country? I got Europe/Asia somewhere. Germany. Hungary. France. Scotland.
Lord, what happened?
Brian got, ‘abuse of power’. By whom Lord? Government.
Lord, can You give us more specific details? Abuse of God given power, God given authority.
Lord, what was the nature of the abuse? I think it was for personal gain, to better themselves.
In the Name of Jesus Christ, and by the power of His Blood, I renounce and repent for all generational abuse of power, especially trying to gain power for personal advantage.
I renounce and repent for all generational pride and arrogance, all self-aggrandizement, and I break all evil generational ties from before time to 133 generations back. I demand all that evil leave and go to the feet of Jesus.
Lord, would You break all specific curses that came against my ancestors by those around them who felt betrayed, enslaved, or oppressed by my family members that resulted in actual curses against them and against them as leaders?
Lord, would You break all curses that came against my ancestors from those that were demoted because of the advancement of my ancestors?
All anger and rage leave. All victim spirits leave. Victimization leave, abuse leave. Revenge leave. Retaliation leave. Revenge and retaliation leave. Control and manipulation leave. Mind control leave. Domination leave.
What is our next number down? 85. I continue to break all evil generational ties to 85 generations.
Lord, what happened 85 generations ago?
I am seeing a Viking ship.
Lord, what happened? This could be the Viking period because the Vikings I think went to 600 AD. This was the 500s. Excuse me, the Vikings started in 600 or 700.
I am seeing fire too.
This is earlier? The 1600s would be 400/300.
I renounce and repent for all murder in my family line for the sake of getting position. There it is.
I renounce and repent for all generational death covenants and for all ancestral worship. Death assignments leave. And for all those who went into the second heaven to get information, fame, or fortune. There you go, from the enemy.
What is our next number down? 78. To 78 generations.
Lord what happened there?
I am seeing like a European or French building that looks kind of like a government building.
What happened there Lord?
I don’t know if that is anything with the Revolution.
How many generations back is this? 78. That is about the 400s, so that is earlier than that.
The Spanish, Germans, English, French, what does it have to with leadership?
I renounce and repent for all those in my family line who lorded themselves over others and subjugated the peasants and women.
Lord, would You break the consequences of all oppression of women, especially women as leaders? That was big.
Lord, would You break the consequences of all subjugation of women?
What is our next number down? 68. To 68 generations.
I renounce and repent for all generational misuse of authority.
Next number down. 67. To 67 generations.
Next number down. 50. To 50 generations. There is something there. That is about 1000 years ago. What happened 50 generations ago Lord?
Something on the eyes. Do you want to see what you can feel there? Lord, how is this tied to leadership? Yes, right there, there is something there. It is interesting, when you do that, I get a pain in my side. Abuse of prophetic …
In the Name of Jesus Christ, I repent for all abuses of prophetic giftings for personal gain. I command all evil with that to leave and go to the feet of Jesus.
Next number down. To 42 generations.
I have a sense of the Celtic or druidic.
I renounce and repent for druid and Celtic evil and for those that led others into evil and called it good. Whoa!!
I really feel sleeping now, like death or mesmerizing. Okay, turn that into a prayer for her.
Lord, I confess, repent and renounce for all death rituals, for all hypnotic rituals. I repent for all séances, necromancy, divination, astrology, fortunetelling, seeking information other than from the Lord.
I repent for all leaders in my family line who sought help from diviners, astrologers, shamans and for all the leaders in my family line who employed others to professionally curse their enemies.
Next number down. 40. To 40 generations.
I renounce and repent for all generational witchcraft and sorcery.
Next number down. 36. To 36. Whoa!
I sense some sort of violence or violent act.
Lord, would You break the consequences of all violence of leaders in my family line, for all murder, murder by the sword?
Lord, I renounce and repent for all generational sacrifice of infants, especially for the sake of gaining power.
Next number down. 19. To 19 generations.
Mind control leave.
Mimi sees a sword over her head. Mimi, would you come and take it down.
Lord, if David is in my family line, would You break the curse of the sword always being in my family line?
There is wrong rod of authority.
Lord, would You remove all ungodly rods of authority?
Next number down. 14. To 14 generations. Lord, what happened there?
Anger and rage leave.
I am seeing another ship again, but this is like … (this would be in the 1700/1800s) a sailing vessel, like a discovery.
I renounce and repent for all generational torture and torment perpetrated by my ancestors against others. Torture and torment leave. Especially women and children.
Lord, would You break the consequences of all drownings and remove any generational fear of water, fear of swimming? Leviathan leave.
Next number. 10. To 10 generations. Next one? That’s it. Okay to the present and to a thousand generations all that evil will leave and go the feet of Jesus.
Now, Mike V. Can I pick on you? Can you come here? Mike is a leader, a leader who has released his wife into ministry. Can you stand in for all men? Face her. We are going to have you repent, if you are willing, for all men in the family line who subjugated women and did not release them into ministry. Then I would like to ask you if you are willing as a man and as a man who is leader, to release her into the call of God on her life. That includes not just in the context of the church, but also all leadership potential. It includes the church, but also outside the church.
(Mike) On behalf of all the men in your generational line for a thousand generations, I repent for any subjugation, denial of your person, stealing of your personhood, anything that belittled, demeaned, made you less than the person that God created that person in the line to be. I ask your forgiveness on behalf of all of those people in the generational line. Will you forgive me for that abuse and that mistreatment? (Yes, I forgive you.) On behalf of all the men in your generational line back for a thousand years, I bless you, I bless leadership in you, I call you forth to be the person that God created and wants you to be, come forth in the Name of Jesus, come forth in the Name of Jesus, come forth and be what God created and intended you to be in the Name of Jesus. We seal that in Jesus Name.
(Paul) That was good. Thank you. That was good. Thank you Bonnie, you can be seated.
Lord, we thank You.
(Brian) I had one other response that has been egging me on here. Actually, in response to your question about how to answer those who say that this was all handled at the Cross. In Mark 28:19, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations baptizing in the manner of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things I have commanded you and lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age.” Jesus didn’t leave disciples. He sent apostles. They did not just preach the gospel; they did everything that Jesus did, including healing and including deliverances. It did not stop at the Cross.
Lord Jesus, we only want to be involved in truth, not our truth, not what we think is true, but what is true. Lord, Brian and I stand here as someone raised in the Church that really denied the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We thank You so much that You have taught us what is the full truth of the gospel and Lord that You are helping us to understand more and more how to set people free. Lord, the result of that is that they become more and more in love with You, are able to hear You clearly, to experience You in a more intimate way. Lord, wherever this DVD and CD go, Lord may it be blessed in Your Name and may it carry the good news that Jesus has come to seek and to save those who are lost and to set them free and to allow the Kingdom of God to have full expression in their lives.
All the people said, “Amen!”