CONCERNING CURSES

In this second article ( the first one was concerning " repenting for the sins of the nation" ) we want to look at this idea that "curses" from the past – whether from the person’s own life or from previous generations - can keep Christians in bondage and deprive them of the blessings of God and of their inheritance in Christ. From the start, let us make it clear that we are talking about someone who has been convicted of their sin, repented, turned from their sin and believed on the Lord Jesus Christ for their salvation. They have been born again and filled with God’s Spirit. They have been brought into the New Covenant, in and through Jesus Christ. No more, no less. Christians – as described in the New Testament ( NT ) – such Christians as the apostles were writing to.

What then, do the apostles write to Christians in the NT? How do they deal with the various church and personal problems that arose among the Lord’s people? How do they diagnose such problems and what council and instruction do they give? For any modern teaching dealing with counsel and instruction to Christians must be based on, or find support from the apostolic writings or from the teachings of Jesus.

So, what do the apostles say and teach concerning this idea of past curses hindering the lives of Christians - or of churches or of countries? Well, they say nothing. Absolutely nothing. No. Not one verse about it. They don’t even mention it or touch on it. It doesn’t arise in their thinking! Where are their exhortations to Christians to investigate their lives and make sure there is no curse at work, if they find difficulties in their personal or spiritual walk? There aren’t any such exhortations! Yes, Paul speaks about "curse", but in a completely different context - namely, about Christ having "delivered us from the curse of the law". We will look at this a little later. But nowhere does the NT even mention that curses from the past can, or are hindering the spiritual or personal walk of Christians, or of churches or of countries.

But what reason can we give for this? This modern teaching is very specific, detailed and extensive, and would represent an essential and necessary part of our deliverance in Christ, if it were true. Books have been written about this and of course we should expect some apostolic foundation for this new teaching, some biblical basis. But why then, do none of the apostles even mention such a thing in their letters to the churches? Were they ignorant of such a vital truth? Are they responsible for leaving not only the Christians of their day but also of many succeeding generations in ignorance and therefore deprived of true liberty in Christ? Have they left multitudes in bondage and darkness down the centuries because of their failure to recognize and teach this doctrine? Certainly there was much idolatry and occult practice in NT times, so why don’t the apostles warn the Lord’s people that any problems they have may be due to some curse from the past? Why don’t they exhort them to investigate their lives to see if they or their ancestors have been involved in something evil – and many of them would have been - and to confess these things and repent, and then proclaim their freedom in Christ? Where do they suggest this is relevant either for individuals, churches or countries? If these things are true, it is a very serious matter. We cannot be left in ignorance; we cannot be left in bondage! But nowhere is such a thing mentioned, let alone taught. It is no part of the Apostolic or NT teaching to the churches. Nowhere in the NT do Jesus or the apostles apply the curses of the OT covenant between God and Israel to those who have been brought into the Kingdom of God through the new birth, as these modern teachers do.

Well, is it that Christians in NT days had a "cleaner" and more "thorough" conversion, and that once converted, the saints didn’t have any problems, and so didn’t need this kind of teaching? But of course this is not true, as the Scriptures themselves show us. People got saved or responded to the Gospel message as individuals or by the thousands at one time. Maybe the heart condition of some of them was not right or having started well, they didn’t continue to walk in the obedience of faith and love. As it was in those days, so it is today. People are basically the same and they respond in their various ways to this salvation that God offers them. And as it is today, so we read in the NT, namely, people and churches had all sorts of different problems – sin, carnal behaviour, wrong attitudes, bitterness, contentions, etc. Just read Corinthians or Galatians for example. Well, if God’s salvation is the same today as it was then, and if people, their responses and their problems are also the same today as they were in NT times, then why, oh why, did Jesus and the apostles not teach the saints or churches (or even unbelievers!) that curses from the past can keep the Lord’s people in bondage or darkness – like we are being told today? Why did they never indicate that our present problems as the Lord’s people are, or could be due to curses from the past? This dare not be a matter for human guesswork. It is so serious in its implications that we must be able to clearly identify this teaching from the scriptures, especially from the NT, as this is the full record of our redemption and salvation in Christ. But it is nowhere to be found there!

This should be enough to warn us that there is something very wrong with this teaching and that we should not receive it into our hearts! It is an addition to the Gospel. Even if people believe they can find verses in the Old Testament ( OT ) to support this idea, yet we must realize that everything that is needed for our salvation, deliverance and godly life is incorporated and revealed in the NT. The OT prefigures this salvation and deliverance in various ways and this helps to further illustrate and explain what is taught in the NT. But, if we teach something as vital for our salvation or deliverance as Christians, and we can only find some texts in the OT in our attempt to support it, without it being taught or mentioned at all in the NT, then our teaching is contrary to the Gospel of truth. It is wrong; it is a deception and we are deceiving others by teaching it. It opposes the preaching of Christ and Him crucified. It is an addition by man to the Gospel of God, like we find in the letter to the Galatians. Obviously, there is no contradiction between the OT and NT, but a progression and a fundamental change has taken place because of Calvary.

As with most errors, and particularly modern ones, this teaching is not derived from the Bible. Men start with their own an idea or system of thought, and then interpret the scriptures according to this system; and they will bend and change the meaning of any scripture they use until it does fit in with their system of thought! And this is what they do with this doctrine.

There is nothing they can use in the NT to support their doctrine, but let us look at how they would interpret the few NT scriptures that they quote. James 3:7-10 and Rev. 22:3 are frequently quoted to show that curses and cursing still exist today. So far there is no problem. But then they go on to say that because curses still exist, then Christians themselves must recognize that they might be, and probably are influenced and hindered in their lives by curses. But the scriptures make no such "jump" in thought. This is simply not taught by these two texts. These two texts tell us that curses still exist today and people are doing what they shouldn’t do, namely cursing others, and that in the new heaven and earth there will be no more curse, or we could say judgement for sin and rebellion. However, these verses make no connection between the problems in the lives of Christians, and curses that may have been put on them or their ancestors, as though these are, or could be the cause of their problems! Nowhere in the NT letters are curses considered or even remotely mentioned as the possible cause of any problem or spiritual bondage or affliction in a Christian’s life (or in the life of a city or nation). James does not say, " Look. People are cursing, so you see, curses still exist and so your life might be hindered by a curse. And if you’ve got a continual problem in your life this might very well be the effect of some curse from the past. So you need to investigate your ancestry very closely to discover the probable root of such a curse in your life and seek deliverance from it." It is nonsense to teach this from James. He is plainly telling us that our language should not be sweet and bitter, foul and pure, blessing and cursing. This is clear, healthy teaching, exhortation and rebuke concerning our conversation! But as I mentioned above, they will use any text they can, and then bend, change and stretch the meaning beyond what it really means.

Perhaps somewhere, one of these writers quotes Jesus where He says "…bless them that curse you…", ( Luke 6:28 ), but in the material that I have read I haven’t discovered a single place where these writers refer to this verse when trying to support their ideas about curses. And perhaps it is not surprising. This teaching of Jesus doesn’t "bend" too easily to conform to their system of thought. James tells us that people are still cursing and that they shouldn’t. The modern teaching tells us that if people are still cursing, then lives of Christians could be harmed by this. But Jesus doesn’t say, " If someone curses you, be very careful. It might have power over you. Are you sure you haven’t sinned? You might already be under the power of such a curse in your life and you must make sure you get free of it." No. Even before Calvary Jesus tells people what it means to live according to God’s will and God’s nature. If someone curses you - bless them! Amen. That’s all. Just bless them! That’s His teaching. Christ doesn’t fill our minds with superstitious and false thoughts about what evil thing might befall us if people curse us. Nothing can harm us if we are followers of that which is good (1 Peter 3:13). This is a rare reference to curses in the NT given by Christ Himself. Surely, it has something significant to teach us. It is the only reference in the NT that tells us what to do and what our attitude should be if someone curses us! So, why do these modern teachers totally ignore what Jesus Himself says about what we should do if people curse us?! Why don’t they teach what He teaches?

So there it is. James 3: 7-10 and Rev. 22:3 - that is their "evidence" from the NT which they use to show that Christians today can be, and are in bondage, darkness or illness because of curses from the past, and how we need to "trace" or discover these curses from the past, which maybe go back hundreds of years!! Dear reader, what do you think? Do you believe that these verses teach us these things? Is this the teaching of Jesus and the apostles? Can you find this teaching in the NT anywhere at all? It is interesting that probably the most popular and influential book that propagates this error worldwide does not even try to give any NT evidence to support this teaching. Although he quotes the verses from James to show the power that words can have, the writer doesn’t quote anything from the NT to prove this idea that curses from the past can and do harm to the lives of the Lord’s people. Right from the beginning of this book and chapter after chapter he quotes from the OT when trying to prove his ideas. On the one hand, this is wisdom on his part since there is no such support in the NT, but on the other hand, it only highlights the fact that his teaching has nothing to do with the New Covenant, nothing to do with the Gospel of truth, which is the Gospel of our salvation. He uses OT scriptures and develops them in his own way to produce a most unhealthy and unbiblical teaching of superstition that can only oppose and undermine the Gospel of Christ and Him crucified.

This should settle the matter for us. We could and should now reject this teaching, since it finds no support in the NT, and Jesus Himself advises us quite differently to these modern teachers, as does Paul in Galatians 3. However, for the sake of those who have been influenced by the other arguments of these writers, I will proceed to look at those other arguments and the consequences of such teaching. But I also very much hope we will gain some helpful biblical instruction in the process.

I know of Christian friends in Tanzania who are at times the subject of curses from the local witchdoctor and evil charms are placed in or at their homes. But this has absolutely no power over them. It cannot touch them or harm them, and they rejoice in Christ Jesus their saviour and in the victory and peace that He has given them! Oh yes, of course there is a devil and there are evil spirits too, and they can influence and harm the lives of those who don’t believe. But for those who are in Christ, they have been delivered from all the power of darkness and the wicked one cannot touch them (Col. 1:12, 1 John 5:18). They have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. Praise God! What superstition and what a denial of the Gospel it is, to imply that those in Christ can be harmed by other peoples’ curses.

But now, more recently, I have heard from Christian friends in that same country that they have now been taught that if they are injured while working in the field, that this is / could be because of a curse! This teaching is just received without any searching of the scriptures, so that it is being accepted for the cause and explanation for all sorts of mishaps and troubles. Because the teaching comes from well-known authors from the West, it is simply accepted and applied to any and every situation in a way that is causing confusion, fear and heartache, and putting terrible burdens on people. And this is not just because people are misapplying the new teaching, for as we shall see shortly, the very way in which these ideas are taught in these books results in people feeling or believing there is a curse behind most things.

I know of another Christian person who got ill and the pastor told them that it’s because of a curse on them. How did the pastor know? Well, because he had been on one of the seminars that are so popular today and that are supposed to bring "good teaching" and "revelation" to African pastors from the West. That’s how he "knew". And so this poor sick person, who had to live with this thought that she was under a curse, was prayed for over the course of a month to release her from this curse – but to no avail. In the end she started to get better when she went to the doctor and got some medicine. ( I’m not saying we shouldn’t pray to the Lord for healing, but this is just one of many cases that highlight what damage, physically, mentally and emotionally this teaching can cause.)

What a heart-break this is; to see saints who had been set free from the power of the devil and the influence of witchcraft, who rejoiced in the liberty and victory that they had in Christ, to now have doubt and fear sown into them again, to be baptised as it were back into their old ways of superstitious thinking that belonged to the witchcraft culture that they were in bondage to before they were saved - and all this in the name of new "Christian" revelation! Paul says with the same kind of amazement, "I marvel that you have so quickly departed from Him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another Gospel – which is not another but there would be some that trouble you and would pervert the Gospel of Christ." What a terrible state to bring the Lord’s people into, that when anything goes wrong in any way in their lives, they think that some dark mysterious force from the past is affecting them and has power over them. These teachings are causing trouble and are bringing people into bondage and they are not according the grace or Gospel of Christ or the wonderful redemption that is in Him.

I was preaching on one occasion and someone came up to me afterwards to say that the ministry had touched on a serious problem this person had in their Christian walk. But then the person said they didn’t know whether they could really do anything about it because some months earlier someone had told them that this problem might be due to a curse that went back 500 years! I knew this person and could see what serious confusion and delusion this modern teaching causes – and actually keeps people out of their wonderful inheritance in Christ, since it doesn’t really deal with the root of a person’s problem, and it keeps them in an unresolved and unliberated state because the person is forever searching and guessing as to how many curses are at work, what kind of curses they are and from what period in history they come from! Or whether their problem is because of a curse at all! This is not an exaggeration, as we shall shortly see. It is having this kind of effect on some people because the teaching itself promotes this kind of thinking.

I have a friend who received this teaching into her heart. She is a Christian who is very zealous to please the Lord and wants to live in a way that will commend Christ to others, so she is particularly grieved if she fails in any way to be as Christ unto others. She wants to be free of all carnal behaviour. But complete success evades her. ( Perhaps others can identify with her! ). Solution? To trace her genealogy to see if there might be some curse from the background. Why? Is it because the Bible tells her to do this somewhere? Anywhere? No. Well then, is it because the Holy Spirit convicted her or showed her there was something from the past hindering her? No. She was doing this because she had gone to hear one of these preachers who promote this teaching on curses. They quote from Exodus 20: 5, where it talks about God visiting the iniquities of the fathers to the third and fourth generation. This new teaching tells us that this involves a lot of people. Namely, your father and mother each had a set of parents, and each one of those had their own set of parents, and if you follow this through to the fourth generation, this results in a genealogy of 32 people from whom you descend. And you are asked in the most popular of these books, whether you can really be sure that none of them was involved in any form of idolatry or occult. Because if they were, then God’s judgement still rests on you and/or the devil has a right to afflict you! Do you see how these ideas sow doubt and fear into men and women’s hearts, contrary to the Gospel of peace? So my friend had drawn up her genealogy on paper, tracing her genealogy back to four generations in order to see if she could discover any occult connection in their lives. She was hoping to discover some curse from the past, to do with one of her forefathers, that was preventing her from entering into her inheritance in Christ! After going through the scripture with her, she was able to see that this teaching had no biblical foundation. Having read these teachings, I can see how someone might not only do what my friend did, but how these books actually lead you into this kind of thinking and action.

Now let us consider what these modern teachings say that lead people to think and act in these ways. Why all this searching, uncertainty and confusion that only generates fear and bondage.

Firstly, according to this teaching, what are the signs that a curse is at work in a person’s life?

Secondly, how can we definitely know if a curse is at work and identify what kind of curse it is.

Thirdly, how is it possible that curses can affect a Christian?

Well, they cover nearly every problem that a person can have. Some of the major ones that they list are the following: Mental or emotional breakdown; break-down in marriage or other family problems; recurring or serious illness; financial needs. Now although it is said that one or two of these problems doesn’t necessarily mean a curse is at work, the more of these problems you have, then the more probable it is that a curse is at work. However, as one reads these books it soon becomes apparent that any kind of ailment or problem could be due to a curse - lack of success in business or any aspect of life could be due to a curse, as well as: poverty; barrenness; oppression; depression; a sense of failure; rebellious children; feeling up one day and down the next; never achieving real success; and a sense of frustration – you can never really achieve what you want! All these above "indications" of a curse they get from Deut. Chpt.28, and apply them to Christians today! Well, there is hardly anything that is not included! And they write in such a way, that it is easy to feel that whatever problem you might have, is due to a curse from the past. They admit that curses are not the cause of every problem, but it is difficult not to get this impression when you read their material. One writer states that although not every problem is caused by a curse, nevertheless, the "reality" is that Christians often need deliverance from curses – and this he says is even true of experienced and mature Christians! This is a terrible deception. In terms of what Jesus suffered and died for, this is a lie. There is a total lack of balance in these teachings that don’t even mention what other reasons there might be for these problems. And so it is in the most popular of these books. Not one indication, for example, as to what else might cause problems in a marriage, apart from a curse!

What scriptures from the NT do they give us then, to support this idea that curses could be the cause of any one of these problems that they list? They don’t give us any – because there aren’t any! They teach what the NT doesn’t even mention in any way, and what council and instruction the NT does give regarding problems that might arise in the Christian’s life, this they don’t even mention in the material that I have seen!

What scriptures in the NT do they refer us to, in order to help us truly know if a curse is at work? Surely this cannot be a matter of guesswork or uncertainty. It is too important a matter to be left in the dark about. Our feet need to be on solid ground! We must be able to pray with confidence if we are to pray effectively.

Well, they don’t refer to any NT verse to help us identify if there is a curse at work in our lives! But how can I then know with biblical certainty if my problem is due to a curse? And if I can’t know it for certain, how can I pray with confidence and power against the curse? So why don’t they give us any NT examples of Christians who had problems because of curses. They don’t, because there are no such examples in the NT! Why don’t they refer to the scriptures in the NT that tell us how to identify if a curse is at work in our lives? They don’t do this because there are no such scriptures in the NT! Why don’t they give us examples from the writings of the apostles to the Lord’s people of how curses, that were causing problems in their lives, were broken. They don’t do this because no such verses exist! (Certainly, in places like Ephesus people were delivered from their involvement with the occult and witchcraft – Acts 19:10 and 8:9. But these are examples of people hearing the Gospel and being converted to the Lord. But what we are considering in this article is ministry to the Lord’s people.) When writing to the churches and addressing all the different kinds of problems in churches or in individual Christian lives, the apostles never mention or indicate, let alone teach, that a problem might be due to a curse from the past. It doesn’t come into their thinking! For them, as it should be for us as the saints of God, they see the problems as lying somewhere else.

Everything I have said here also applies to the idea of curses upon countries, which has really been dealt with in the first article. But let me state again, that there is not a single NT example, there is no scripture or teaching, not a single verse that indicates that any kind of curse is hindering the work of God in any town, region or country. Nor is any kind of regional or local problem said to be due to a curse! Nor does Jesus or the apostles pray, or teach us to pray, against any such curses over towns, regions or countries. It is simply not taught nor done. We are not exhorted to search out national or regional "curses" and to pray for "release" from them. (There were things that related to Israel from the OT, but that is quite different and belongs to the covenant that they had with God in the OT.)

How do these modern books then help us to establish with certainty if a curse is at work in our lives? They don’t. They can’t. Depending on the seriousness of the problem, they constantly use such language as, " it is likely", "it could be that…", "perhaps", " if you believe that a curse is affecting you…", "it is very likely that …", " most probably", " you need to seriously consider whether…". And even more seriously, if not more threateningly, they tell us that God does not hold us guilty for the "fact" that our ancestors brought a curse on us, but that He will hold us guilty if we don’t use what He has provided to give us release from a curse! What legal bondage and deception is this to put on the people of God!

One of the scriptures they love to quote, is Proverbs 26:2, which tells us that a curse doesn’t happen without a reason. This is clear and simple. If there is a curse, of course there is a reason for it. But they use this verse to make us think that whenever there is a problem, then this "could" be a curse, and "if you decide" it is a curse, then you ought to "find out" where it came from, that is, what caused it. This teaching of theirs does nothing to help us to identify if a curse is at work in our lives; it only encourages people to think that there "might be" a curse behind every problem! Something goes wrong and they want you to think, "Oh, dear. What’s the cause? Nothing happens without a cause! Is the cause of my problem a curse?" And so they encourage unbelief and superstition in the hearts of the Lord’s people.

But again we ask, how can we clearly know if a curse is at work in our lives? Their answer is, that in the end, after all our considerations, only the Holy Spirit can give us a completely accurate diagnosis! The Spirit Himself must show us! This is their answer. This is how we are to know with certainty – the Holy Spirit must show us. But this can become a very subjective matter! All sorts of considerations and factors may influence my perception and conclusions. And if I have a serious personal problem, am I in a proper state to be able to receive such supernatural knowledge from the Spirit? Must I then find someone who has the "spiritual gifting" to discern curses?

This is truly amazing. Can it be possible that God’s Spirit will witness to something that is not taught in God’s word? But of course they are forced to tell us that the Holy Spirit must show us, because nothing is taught in the NT about this. So you, or someone else, must decide if the Holy Spirit is showing you in a definite way that a curse is at work in your life! And that’s not all. If you believe the Spirit is showing you that there is definitely a curse over your life, then you must also try and discover the cause and nature of that curse! Because when you discover the cause of the curse, then you will be able to take the right action against it!!! What a madhouse of error and confusion that can only lead people into deception. It seems that we cannot effectively deal with a curse without supernatural knowledge by the Spirit concerning the cause of the curse – where it came from and what kind of curse it is! Is this not a form of cruelty? To tell people their problem is due to a curse but it’s up to you or someone else then to discover by prayer and supernatural gifting where it’s come from and what it is? And, my dear reader, it is cruel bondage! No wonder the people I mentioned above, who were trying to deal with supposed curses, got into such heartache and confusion – ever seeking but never really coming into anything of God! Praying, searching, looking inwards, looking backwards to past generations, wondering, questioning, getting others to pray, asking others for their insights or to exercise their special spiritual gifts of discernment – feeling at times they might be getting somewhere, getting some relief but never into the true liberty of Christ. Now, these books do offer model prayers of release from curses, but they continually teach how you need to identify the curse and its source first.

Now in what I am saying, I am not exaggerating. Indeed, a real-life example from one of the most popular books on curses supplies one of the best illustrations of this, and this illustration also provides one of the best examples of why this article has been written. Let me mention, if I may, the testimony of a person mature in years and also regarded as mature in the Lord and involved in ministry. Over 20 years ago, she says she had pains in a part of her body. Her husband, who has been involved in international ministry for many years and who is the author of that best-selling book on curses, immediately believed this was due to a curse. He prayed and the pain subsided and his wife thought that would be the end of the matter. But several years later she had a far more serious problem in the same area and needed medical attention. She writes that it appeared that there were still curses on her body and maybe on her life. She tells us that for the next few years – until the writing of the book – she was still struggling with her health. We are told that during this time the Spirit "revealed" many different kinds of curses, from her own life and from her ancestors. She and her husband also got thousands of Christians to pray for her and also they have had supernatural direction through words of knowledge about these curses. Even so, she confesses that renouncing all those curses has been a long process; and later in the book we are told the battle against these curses is still going on, as she seeks complete deliverance, with her and her husband using the scriptures several times a day to declare their freedom from curses! We should not be surprised if some of our African brethren along with us think that they are being returned to some kind of witchcraft culture of fear, uncertainties and charms and spells against curses! What a tragedy all this is. That mature people could be so deceived by the devil and brought into bondage to such superstitious thinking and useless praying! Here we also see that even their own teachings fail to bring them into true blessing and liberty. While a problem still exists, they automatically believe a curse is still at work and they are left with this unedifying and unbiblical thought that a curse is hanging over them for years!

These things sadden and grieve me deeply. How can anyone believe such things? I am not writing these things just to run down others or because I have a cold concern for "correct" doctrine. No. It is because people I know and love have been affected by these ideas and it has caused confusion, deception and heartache. People, the Lord’s people, are being brought into an endless labyrinth of confusion and deception like we have just read about in the story above, and some have asked me to put into writing those things that I had ministered to them. Of course it is very grieving to see people robbed of the truth as it is in Christ; to see the Gospel so attacked and corrupted. Christ has done much more, and brought us into much more than these modern teachings recognise. Worse than that, these modern teachers bring us into a darkness and bondage that was never designed by God for us!

Firstly, we see that any problem, whether serious or not, is quickly and easily interpreted as being due to a curse. In other words, people who receive this teaching into their hearts are ready to see a curse behind any event in their lives, as does the author himself in the book when considering his wife’s problem. Certainly the more serious events can be taken to be due to, not one, but many – almost endless – curses. As people go down this road of thinking, little or no room is given to any other possible cause of the difficulty. And if a difficulty lasts for years, then they believe this is because they haven’t discovered all the curses that are at work in their lives, so they go on digging around in the past for possible causes! This allows a fearful and superstitious mentality to develop in the heart of the person, which is quite different to the hope, peace and joy that are our inheritance in Christ, who has redeemed us from all the power of the devil and from the spirit of bondage which produces fear. What a terrible way to live – that every time there is a mishap or problem you think that some dark force or judgement from the past is striking your life!

Secondly, because biblical truth, instruction and guidelines are ignored, the soul is inevitably thrown into a state of guesswork and ( endless? ) speculation as it tries to discover the nature and source of the curse. As there are no scriptural examples or teaching for this kind of process, the person is again inevitably left to personal "impressions" and "revelations" of the Spirit, whether their own or someone else’s. The great danger now is, that because they ignore God’s own Word on these matters, and because they choose to believe ideas that are not according to the Gospel, they make themselves susceptible to deceiving spirits as they search and wait for answers through impressions and gifts of the Spirit. Not being grounded on the word of God but believing a lie, they now fall prey to a deceiving spirit. This spirit then only strengthens and confirms them in their delusion and deception – giving them all sorts of feelings, impressions and "revelations" and bodily sensations. Then one is caught in this terrible cycle of "blessings and curses", just like in the tragic story above. Indeed, in this story we are told that over this long period of time, the Holy Spirit with great patience and thoroughness revealed to her the sources of these curses, step by step, and it seems this process was still going on!

Yes, these matters are very serious and I don’t say these things lightly. What is happening here is what we find in 2 Cor.11. It is the devil’s deception. The Lord’s people leave that wonderful, powerful simplicity that is in Christ; they leave His word and follow after other things, which results in them falling victim to another Jesus, another Gospel and another spirit. And it is happening today among God’s people as it did even in NT days. Yes, they are the Lord’s people, but serious deception has got in.

Thirdly, this story makes it very clear that this teaching is not just meant for the unconverted or those who want to respond to the Lord’s offer of salvation, or for those who have never really understood the implications of the Gospel, or for Christians who are living carelessly and who perhaps get involved in wrong things. No, it is by no means limited to such people. On the contrary, this story makes it abundantly clear that what they actually teach is this - namely, that any Christian can be, and probably is affected by some curse from the past. You can be mature in years; you can be a mature experienced Christian – even with a world-wide ministry; you can be serving the Lord and zealous to live a holy life; and yet for all this, curses from the past can bring bodily affliction on you, can cause problems and bondage in your spiritual life and difficulties in your circumstances. What superstition is this! What a denial of the power of the Gospel in the lives of the saints. What a return to a witchcraft mentality. To believe this teaching, is more of a "curse" than anything else, in the sense that it plagues the soul and brings it into darkness and bondage.

This now brings us to our third consideration:

These modern writers certainly think so. One recent book states that Satan uses the sins of previous generations nearly more than anything else to afflict both Christians and churches, as well as cities and countries – although there is not one verse in the NT to support this! This teaching is a monumental deception. Such a statement is geared to make a person see a curse behind nearly every problem or difficulty in their life.

How can this be so? Well, this book says that the "unforgiven" sins of our ancestors still have a legal right to affect and afflict the Christian – we still reap the consequences of their unforgiven sin! They quote only from the OT to try and support this anti-Gospel idea, mostly from Exodus 20:5 and parallel passages, which we will look at later. It further says that there is a difference between forgiveness and pardon, so that when God forgives us He cleanses us from the guilt of sin, but the "unforgiven" sins of our ancestors which have not been cleansed in the blood, are not "pardoned", which means the punishment for those sins is still in force and can still affect us and damage us – even to the fourth generation! Dear reader, it grieves me to even mention such terrible inventions and injurious deceptions which have no effect except to destroy the truth of the Gospel.

But we are now in the New Covenant; born again of God’s Spirit and washed in the blood of the Lamb. So how can this be? How can the sins of past generations affect a Christian? The book just referred to actually asks this question. And what answer do they give. Well, they say it is " a mystery"!!! They say they cannot explain why Christians today – even holy and dedicated people - can still suffer the punishment or consequences due to an ancestor’s sin! They actually say that they cannot explain why the cross of Christ does not cut off the effects of a curse when a person repents and is born again. That’s it! This awful teaching is based on a "mystery"; in other words, on something that God hasn’t revealed and on something that cannot be explained! They say, "it seems" that because of God’s laws, some ancestral sins still can damage the lives of Christians – however holy you may be living - until these sins or curses are "discovered" and prayed over specifically. And how are these curses diagnosed? How do you know if it is a curse at work and then where it comes from? Well, by the Spirit, they say. As I have said before, this has much more to do with superstition and occult practices than with our redemption in Christ. It is destroying the knowledge of God in people, which Jesus died to give ( 2 Cor: 4:6 ).

Although fearfully wrong and deceived, at least the writers of this recent book are more honest than other books that try and pretend that there is some biblical basis for this erroneous teaching.

We come now to the crucial Chapter 3 of the Galatian letter, which teaches us that we have been delivered from the curse of the law (verse 13). How do these modern teachers interpret this passage? Well, they acknowledge in clear terms that Christ’s work on Calvary is complete. He has provided the forgiveness of all our sins and He has delivered us from all the power of Satan. It is a full redemption and we can be free of the guilt and power of sin, including curses. This is wonderful. But, then they go on to explain that this doesn’t all happen at conversion when you are saved. Yes, God forgives you your sins and delivers you from the power of the devil when you’re saved by His grace, but the curses that are the result of your ancestors’ unforgiven sins continue to affect, hinder or damage your life. They can cause marriage break-ups, accidents and death in your life! Your salvation in Christ is not complete at conversion - when you repented of all your sins and turned to God - because this does not stop the consequences of the sins of your ancestors damaging you! Christ’s death at Calvary cannot affect your deliverance from the punishment or consequences of their sins when you are converted and born again! That’s what they teach. And of course it’s what they have to teach if they want to justify their inventions. How then do we get deliverance from these curses? Well, they say that after our conversion, as problems arise and difficulties occur (over years?), we have to discern if a curse is at work, and then we have to identify what kind of curse it is so that we can then deal with it by the cross.

So, the message of "Christ and Him crucified" is not enough to deal with sin and judgement when we repent and turn to God with faith in His finished work on Calvary! They say that the new way to complete freedom is Christ plus discernment and diagnosis of past curses through spiritual gifting! This is exactly the kind of error Paul was fighting against among the Galatian churches. To be fully saved, Christ and Him crucified is not enough – you need something extra, and that something extra is based on OT texts! In Galatia some taught circumcision as a necessary addition to believing in Christ as a means of salvation. These modern writers teach that the need to discern and diagnose past curses through spiritual gifts and discernment, is a necessary addition to believing in Christ, if you want to start entering into your liberty as a son of God. And they teach that you are not to blame for your ancestors’ sins, but that you are to blame if you fail to discern and deal with the curses that are the result of their sins! This is a cruel deception and they seek to justify this gross error by using Ex. 20:5; 34:7 and Deut. 28:45. So we are supposed to believe and receive this new teaching which has no mention in the NT, but is based mainly on two passages from the OT which relate to God’s judgements under the Old covenant.

Let me again say here that if anyone involves themselves in the occult, witchcraft or in anything evil, of course they are both sinning and giving the devil power over their lives – whether they be unbelievers or Christians. We are to have nothing to do with these things. God has called us to leave such things and to be holy. Also, if someone has responded in some way to Christ but doesn’t see anything wrong with these things and has been involved or still is involved in them, then of course they need further instruction and council. They have obviously never really heard the Gospel or understood it, and therefore would not be able to benefit from its power in their lives. All such people will need council and ministry, and deliverance from any evil involvement. But in all these cases, the way to liberation is through true repentance and true faith in Christ’s work on Calvary – this will break the power of any and every curse! Hallelujah!

But what we are considering in this article is the council and teaching that should be given to those who understand these things and want to live by them, having been born again not of corruptible, but incorruptible seed. But these writers make these teachings apply to all Christians, however mature or holy. It is one thing to say that some people need deliverance from the influence of curses when they turn to the Lord – which I accept – but it is quite something different to teach that those who are now in Christ are affected and hindered in their lives by curses from hundreds of years ago!

And one of their chief errors is that they make curses the cause of spiritual and other problems, or see them as the barrier to our obtaining our inheritance in Christ, keeping us out of the liberty and full salvation that is in Him. Whereas the NT identifies the causes as lying elsewhere – for example in carnal or sinful behaviour, in a lack of repentance or a lack of faith in Christ and His work on Calvary.

One of the most popular writers actually states this, and more – namely, that we normally come into the provisions of our salvation in stages. For example he says that some people never go beyond receiving the forgiveness of sins. ( But this does nothing to prove his point, it just raises further questions! ) He further states that someone might be wanting God to bless them with prosperity but that God is withholding that, because God’s first concern is righteousness. What does this mean? That prosperity is one of the provisions of salvation just like forgiveness and righteousness are? Then he tells us that the way, and stages that we come into the provisions of our salvation is a matter of God’s sovereignty! What? The fact that someone never knows anything more than sins forgiven – this is due to God’s sovereignty? All this is an invented doctrine to justify adding their teaching of curses to the message of the cross. There are just so many things wrong with this teaching at every step, that it is simply not practical nor profitable to investigate every point in detail.

So he has now invented salvation "in stages". We don’t come into all our inheritance in Christ when we’ve repented and been born again and received God’s Spirit. No. We "progress" into the salvation that God has provided, as we identify the curses from the past that are acting as a barrier to our full salvation! And this comes from the pen of an international bible teacher of many years. It is very sad and it is very wrong. Let me say, that because of half-truths that people hear, or because of ignorance for any reason, or because of unbelief, certainly people will have different experiences, and certainly they might not know all the fullness that God offers in Christ. But this is not because God isn’t offering this full salvation to people, it is because they have not heard the fullness of the Gospel or they have not believed it and obeyed it. The message of the cross is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes, and he who has believed has been translated from the power of darkness into the Kingdom of God’s beloved Son. Amen! God’s eternal and sovereign will is that we know all the salvation that is in Christ – today, through believing the message of the cross, by which we are made dead to the law, dead to sin, dead to this world and delivered from the devil’s power.

Let us consider what curse is talked about in Gal. 3. It is clear that it is the curse that God imposed through the law, and this fact is acknowledged by these writers. It is not the curse of the devil or of man. They also acknowledge that because of Calvary, God forgives us all our sin when we repent and believe, and that through Calvary we are delivered from the power of sin, the power of the devil and freed from condemnation. But although God cleanses us from our sin and the judgement it deserved, they teach that when we are converted Calvary does not deal with the judgement due to the unforgiven, unconfessed sins of our ancestors, as we saw above. The judgement due to us for our sin is removed when we believe in Christ. However, the judgement due to our ancestors’ sin carries on even after our conversion and Calvary cannot or does not deal with it until you recognize a problem in your life and decide that it is due to a curse, whereupon you must identify the curse that is both the consequence of your ancestor’s sin, and the cause of your problem. Then you can apply the benefits of the cross. They teach that these curses pursue us beyond our conversion because Jesus death wasn’t sufficient to deal with "ancestral" sins when we repent and turn to the Lord, and because of this nor was it sufficient to deal with the judgement due to those sins – not until you have identified them in your life and confessed them and specifically applied the cross to them! Those ancestral sins and their consequences are only and finally dealt with (and atoned for?) by your ability to discover and identify them in your life! This is what they are saying and what a terrible error and delusion it is! Though it is God’s own curse through the law, and though God sent His Son to die in order to deliver us from the law and its curse, these writers maintain that His Son’s death only allows God to forgive you your sin, but He allows the consequence of your ancestors sin to plague you because it hasn’t been confessed or forgiven. They teach, in effect, that God’s own curse through the law was not lifted by Him at Calvary! In other words, God will forgive us our own sin, but God’s curse is still on you because of the unconfessed sins of your ancestors! But why did Jesus die on the cross? It was to bear the sin of the world and the consequences of those sins. This teaching makes us bear the consequences of our ancestors’ sins. This teaching is contrary to God’s own words in Ezekiel 18:20 and Jeremiah 31:29,30. It is also contrary to the very heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and what He has done for us. God said that He would make a new covenant, and under that new covenant God declares that our sins and iniquities He would remember no more! ( Jer.31:34; Heb.8:12; 10:17 ). But these modern writers change God’s own covenant by saying that, "…oh yes, God does not remember your sins anymore when you repent and turn to Him, but He certainly remembers the sins of your idolatrous and sinful ancestors, and not only that, but He will still plague and curse you because of their sins ( because of Ex.20:5 and Deut.28:45! ) until you realize that any problems you have could be due to their sins, which you will need to confess before true deliverance can come! Of course they do not write in exactly this way but this is the true substance of their teaching. But what they teach wasn’t even true in the OT, as we shall see, for they misinterpret and misapply the whole idea of "the curse of the law".

As we have said, this is God’s curse which He proclaimed and established through the law. This curse is not some dark mysterious power out of God’s control. God’s curse is nothing other than God’s judgement against sin and disobedience. It is what He instituted according to His own purposes through the law, and it is by His own wisdom, grace, righteousness and sacrifice, through the death of His Son, that He Himself has found a way to deliver us from the curse of the law and its judgement! Praise His Holy name! God made Him to be sin who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him ( 2 Cor.5:21 )! There is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ ( Rom.8:1 )! How can we be condemned or cursed because of the sins of our ancestors? Jesus Christ, the Son of God was made a curse…..for us ( Gal.3:13 )! Jesus Christ was not made a curse for us in vain. He did not suffer all that sin upon Himself that we should continue to bear the judgement of our ancestors’ sins. He overcame it all – the sin, the darkness and the devil’s power; and I am blessed with all the benefits of His death and resurrection when I repent and turn to the Lord, believe the Gospel and receive His Spirit. I am now blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ! It is finished and it is done. And it does not depend on my psychic ability to "discern" ancestral sins from way back in history! How should we now bear curses after we have been justified, cleansed and sanctified, and been made sons of God! "If God be for us, who can be against us?…Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God who justifies …Who is he that condemns? It is Christ who died…who intercedes for us." ( Rom.8:31,33,34 ). God is for us. He has justified us through the blood of His Son and His Son is not condemning us but praying for us, having redeemed us from the curse of the law. In view of all this, how should God now allow or put His curse on us because of the sins of our ancestors?! Do not these modern writers blaspheme with their teachings?

As we have seen, it is true that these writers also acknowledge that these things are true - namely, that the cross of Christ has dealt both with sin and its consequences, which includes curses. They do teach this. But what is at issue here, is that they say that you do not benefit from Jesus’ death with regard to curses when you repent and turn to the Lord at your conversion. It is only as problems occur in your life and you identify them as coming from a curse (how?!) that you can apply the benefits of Jesus’ death. But the problem with this teaching is that it is not taught in the NT, and as we shall see, it does not really represent the teaching of the OT. Secondly, how can you identify if something is due to a curse. And thirdly, as we have seen in the case above, even when someone "identifies" curses in their life, it took them years of praying and she still didn’t get total relief from these "curses"! But why should it take years to get release from a curse after you have repented and prayed the prayers of release from curses that these modern books teach you? Why should you continue to suffer because of ancestral sins even after you have "identified" these curses and renounced them? These curses are the curses of the law which were imposed by God, so how is it that God chooses to leave you with these curses for years after you have repented for them and after Christ died to redeem you from the curse of the law? We have to say this teaching makes no sense. It has no biblical or theological foundation.

That same death on Calvary which grants us the forgiveness of our sins, that makes us free from sin, that frees us from the devil’s power and that makes us free from condemnation, this death – His death – also delivers us from the curse of the law, when we believe the Gospel of our salvation with all our heart! The sins of our ancestors have no power or jurisdiction over us ( 2 Cor.5:17-19; 1Peter1:18 ).

"If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things are passed away and behold all things have become new! And all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ…"

How can these modern teachers make past sins and the law with its curse, part of this new creation in Christ? The law has no power or jurisdiction over us – unless we ourselves choose to go back and live under the law, as they were being taught to do by false teachers in the Galatian churches and as these modern writers want us to do! But dear reader, don’t be entangled in the yoke of bondage again. Stand firm in the liberty with which Christ has made you free!

All this is clearly illustrated in the OT. If we look at Joshua chapter 3, we see how God brought them into the Promised land – into their inheritance. The priests were to carry the Ark of God into the midst of the river Jordan. As soon as their feet touched the edge of the river, by God’s power and ordination the waters that flowed from above stood still! (verse16). They stopped and stood up as a wall. And where did these waters flow down from? They flowed down from the city of Adam, which we are told was very far away! And they flowed down to the Salt Sea. (This is also known as the Sea of Arabah, which means Sea of the Plain, which refers to the plain of Jordan. It was the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, which were cities of the plain of Jordan that God destroyed by fire, brimstone and salt. It is said that the salt minerals of this judgement were washed down into the sea making it so full of salt that nothing could live in it. Today it is also known as the Dead Sea because of the salt.) The waters on the other side of the priests "failed" and were "cut off", and the river became dry ground (verse17). The priests that carried the Ark then stood in the middle of the river on the dry ground until all the people had passed clean over on dry ground. They didn’t get wet at all with anything that flowed down from (the city of) Adam. Not a drop of water touched them as the Ark of God stopped the tide for them! And Israel had to build a memorial for ever ( Josh.4:7 ) of 12 stones where the priests had stood in the midst of the river, bearing the Ark. This was to remind them of what the Lord had done in cutting off the waters of Jordan until everything was finished that the Lord had spoken, Josh.4:10.

Can you see, dear reader, how that a river of sin flowed from Adam down through the generations, bringing death and judgement on all. Can you see, that Christ, on the cross stopped the whole river of sin that Adam had introduced into the whole world right at the beginning, which lead to death and judgement, (Rom.5:12). Jesus stepped into that terrible river of death for us (Hebrews 2:9,14) and hung there for three terrible hours while He bore our sin clean away – until it was finished. Jesus was "cut off" from God that He should cut off that tide and flow of sin, death and judgement that has been flowing down the generations from the time of Adam. In Adam all die. In Christ shall all be made alive! He cut it all off and brought us clean over at the cross, with Himself (Rom.6:3-5; 2 Cor.5:14,17,18; Eph.1:3; 2:5,6). We have been crucified with Christ, buried with Him, made alive together with Him, raised with Him and are made to sit with Him in heavenly places, where God has brought us into our inheritance and blessed us with all spiritual blessings. Praise His holy name! There’s nothing about curses here!

Let us be clear that Jesus hasn’t just dealt with the individual sins of individual people, but He has dealt with the whole power and law of sin that caused everyone to sin. Jesus has dealt with it all, root and branch. He hasn’t just forgiven us our sins, He has set us free from the law of sin and death which made us captive to sin, Rom.8:2; "for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death."

But the writer of the most popular books on "curses", teaches you can be more easily delivered from curses that result from sins in your own life, than from the curses that result from the sins of past, idolatrous generations! He says that the curses that result from your own sins can be represented by the side or lateral roots of a thick, deep, main root, which goes deep into the earth. But this strong, main root, which is much more difficult to get out, represents the generational curse with all its sins, that goes back hundreds of years! He would be right if he agreed with scripture that the root of sin goes back, not just many generations, but right back to Adam and what Adam did. What Adam did, infected the whole human race with the very power or law of sin that made them subject to death. This is the root and the power of sin that had made everyone a slave to sin, Rom.6:17. And it is this root that Jesus dealt with on the cross, which had infected the whole human race since Adam, and had made everyone a sinner, Rom.5:12; 6:6; 8:2. If you read Romans chapter 5 from verse 12, you will see that it was Adam who brought sin, death and judgement upon all mankind. But it is Jesus who has not only forgiven us our sins, but who has freed us from the power of sin and saved us from its judgement! The scriptures teach that people commit sins and that because of the cross we have forgiveness of those sins. But more than this, the scriptures teach that Christ has delivered us from the dominion of sin, which was the thing that made everyone sin! This is the comprehensive and complete salvation that Christ has purchased for us. But it is under attack from these new teachings!

This author has invented a "new category" of sin – not the sins you had committed in your life, for which Christ has obtained free forgiveness; nor the dominion and law of sin and death brought in through the disobedience of Adam, that has enslaved all mankind, including you, before God saved you, and from which Christ has delivered us. No, now there is what they call the "generational curse" and comes from the sins of your ancestors! And we are told, as Christians, we need deliverance from these generational curses. But unlike the forgiveness of sins, and deliverance from the dominion of sin, which we obtain when we turn to the Lord in faith and repentance and are born again, this "deliverance" from ancestral curses can happen at any time in your Christian life - as problems appear! He teaches that this "generational curse", gets past the cross of Christ at our conversion and pursues us in our lives until we discover its effects in our lives! They say there is no immediate and complete forgiveness for ancestral sins when we turn to the Lord. Those curses still work to plague our lives until they are discovered and confessed! Surely, this is another kind of Gospel! This is darkness. This is bondage. This is superstition.

( In the case of this author’s wife, she got serious trouble in her legs and health some years after having no real trouble at all, and after having been prayed for to be released from a curse in her legs. She writes that when she got trouble the second time, that she then needed release from many curses, including "generational curses". Now, if these curses are based on God’s law in Deut.28, then it must be God’s curse. And if it is God’s curse, then why was she not troubled with it continuously from the start of her conversion? Or from the start of her life? Why did God not make it clear to her, or to us in our lives, that there is a curse at work? If God has done everything to redeem us from sin and its judgement, then why has He left this matter of curses so in the dark, with things appearing or striking us at any time? Why was there a gap of some years before she had the serious problems? Do curses (or God) choose when to plague people? Do they play games with people? "Now you see me, now you don’t!" Do they just come and go, not according to any law, but just as they please? If it is God’s curse, why was it being applied as an illness at one time and not at another? Surely a curse is a curse, and its affect would be continuous and apparent from the start! And if it is God’s curse, surely He would want us to be free of it, especially since the curse is not because of our sins but our ancestors’ sins; and particularly since Christ, His Son, had died to redeem me from the curse of the law? Why all this mystery and guesswork? This seems like a terrible and cruel game that is being played here. But the author of this game is not God! This has nothing to do with the Gospel and its teaching, and much to do with the culture of witchcraft and its teaching! And of course nothing like this is taught in the Bible at all.)

To read Romans chapters 5 to 8 is to discover that Jesus has dealt with sin at its very root, the very tide and flow of sin has been dealt with at the cross, not just from many generations, but right back to Adam who started it all and introduced it all. Our old man has been crucified with Christ (Rom.6:6) and we are no longer "in Adam" but "in Christ". That tide and flow of sin, death and judgement exists in Adam, not in Christ, who has cut us off from Adam and that river of sin. Jesus has brought us not just forgiveness of sins but also freedom from sin and its dominion; but this modern teaching has now invented a new category of sin, called generational sin, from which they say we need "deliverance" as Christians. This is a most serious error and deception.

As we saw in the book of Joshua, so in Exodus we read of Pharaoh together with his army pursuing after Israel who were crossing the Red Sea. They had been saved from judgement by putting the blood of a lamb on their doorposts, as God had told them to. Now, Pharaoh represents the devil and his power, but he couldn’t pursue God’s people through the Sea, which God had opened up when Moses lifted up his rod. Israel passed clean over but it was right in the midst of that same sea that Pharaoh and his army were destroyed! Heb.2:14; Acts 26:17,18, Col.1:13; 1 John 3:8. This event shows us how God has delivered His people from the devil’s power and from his bondage and slavery. "We have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father!" Rom.8:15. But this teaching is bringing people back into bondage and fear! Pharaoh’s power could not pursue Israel through the sea to capture them and bring them into bondage again. Pharaoh couldn’t even hold onto a hoof, Ex.10:26! On the contrary, the Lord so favoured His people that they were able to spoil the Egyptians by getting their silver and gold, Ex.12:35,36. But by their teachings, these modern teachers want to make us a spoil for the devil’s power and interference and for generational curses, and to rob us of our inheritance in Christ. Having started by saying that these curses are God’s curses through the law, nevertheless these writers then forget this fact, and say that not only do curses have dominion in our lives because of ancestral sins, but the devil also now has "a right" to trouble us in our lives because of those ancestral sins! Is this not blasphemy against the work of Christ on the cross? No such thing is taught or mentioned in the NT, and properly speaking it is not taught in the OT.

Please let me illustrate how far into deception this teaching brings people. In one modern book that promotes this teaching, the writer tells this story: there was a church in the United States that had had several pastors, all of whom had been married. But the wives of four successive pastors had died of an illness that had weakened their bodies, or they had been killed in an accident. This writer and his wife were counselling in this church and discovered that about five pastorships back, the wife of the then pastor had jealousy and rivalry in her heart, and so the writer decided that the four subsequent pastor’s wives had all died because of the sin of that earlier pastor’s wife! And the writer also points out to his readers, that those other four pastor’s wives were quite innocent, but they had nevertheless suffered and died because of the sin of that first pastor’s wife! He concludes by saying that those other four wives had reaped the generational sins of the first woman! Of course he prayed to "cut off" any further effect of that generational curse. They say they did this by repenting and praying for forgiveness!

Such is the depth of deception that this false teaching is bringing people into. It is the teaching of occultism and witchcraft, not of the Gospel.

The scriptures do not teach that "generational sin", or its "curses", or the power of the devil can overcome – legally or spiritually – what Jesus did at Calvary. It shows and teaches the opposite. They cannot "get past" the cross of Christ and pursue, plague or have dominion over those who are in Christ and are living in the benefit and blessing of being one with Christ in His death and resurrection! Towards the end of this article we shall look at the reasons why Christians have difficulties in their lives and again we shall see that curses are never even mentioned as the cause of a problem.

So we have seen that it is God’s curse. Secondly, it is God’s curse through the law. It is the curse of the law. The law was given to Israel through Moses as an essential part of the covenant between God and the people of Israel. The law applied to that covenant. While that covenant lasted, God’s people were to live by it, to live by its standards and to be a holy people. The person who didn’t continue to keep the whole law would be under God’s curse, or we could say, subject to God’s judgement, Deut.27:26. We know that the law could tell us what we needed to do and how we needed to be, but it could not empower us to do or to be these things ( Rom.8:3,4; Heb. 7:18,19; 10:1 ). We could not really live according to God’s righteousness in our own strength. The efforts of our flesh were futile in fulfilling His righteousness because of the law of sin and death in us. To live under the law is to discover that you fall short of the glory of God, far short, and that you cannot fulfil the righteousness of God ( Rom.3:10,23 ). To live under the law is to discover how strong the law of sin and death is in your life. And of course, this is one of the main purposes for which the law was given – to convict men of their sin and to reveal to them that they are guilty before God ( Rom.3:19,20 ). And they needed to know this if they were to be led to true repentance and to be saved from their terrible condition ( Gal.3:22-2). For this sin in us, which the law convicts us of, is the thing that separates us from God and keeps us in spiritual death. God illustrated this to us clearly by not allowing anyone into His presence in the Holy of Holies upon pain of death – except the high priest once a year, where he prefigured Christ. And because of this sin, the judgement of God rests on every soul of man – "…cursed is everyone that doesn’t continue in all the things that are written in the book of the law to do them". Paul quotes this verse from Deut.27:26 in Gal.3:10. You will notice that in verse 26, the curse that God pronounces is not for a specific sin ( as is the case in the preceding verses ), nor does this verse mention a specific kind of curse or punishment, such as illness or disaster, as in following chapter. No, this is a fundamental truth that God is expressing here, namely, to show that men are sinners and under God’s judgement for sin if they do not keep his righteous commands continually. As James tells us ( James 2:10 ), if someone keeps the whole law, yet transgresses in just one point, then he is guilty of breaking the whole law! God’s standard of righteousness is complete and total and there is none that can live up to it by trying to keep the law! So that verse is true of every one that has ever lived – no one has ever truly fulfilled the righteousness of God in their lives, outside of Christ, whether they were living by the law or not ( Rom.2:12 ). This is the great and fundamental meaning of this verse in Deut.27:26. Not only will it reveal men to be sinners, as the verses in Romans above show, but it also declares God’s judgement on that sin. Now, we have stated that God gave the law to Israel, which is quite true. But in terms of keeping God’s righteousness and being righteous, verse 26 in Deut.27 exposes all men to be sinners and under God’s judgement. As we have said, the law only reveals man’s inability to keep God’s righteousness in his own strength. The "law" cannot gives us righteousness nor make us righteous ( Gal.3:21,22 ). But God, in His great mercy and grace has found a way to justify us and to make us righteous and partakers of His holiness, Gal.3:24; 2Cor.5:21; Heb.12:10. Praise His Name! He has given us His Spirit and made us His sons so that we can now boldly come into His presence ( Gal.4:6 ). But how is this done and fulfilled? It is by a new and living way. It is through Christ because of His death on Calvary, and it is of faith that it might be by grace ( Rom.4:16 ). The law, as a means of making us righteous was ineffective, so God has given His own Son to provide a better way and a better covenant. And it is in this New Covenant that we receive abundance of grace and salvation ( Eph.2:7,8 ). But the Old and the New cannot operate together, side by side ( Rom.7:1-4 ). We cannot follow and believe in Christ, and follow the law of the Old Covenant ( Gal.3:3 ). This is confusion. This is to make Christ of none effect in our lives and to deny the faith ( Gal.2:21; 3:4; 4:11,20; 5:2-4! ). Now through the New Covenant in Christ we are made dead to the law as a means of attaining righteousness. Since the law could only convince us of our sin and strengthen sin in us as we tried to overcome it, Christ has delivered us from the law ( Rom.7:4-6; Gal.2:19 ) that we might receive His Spirit by faith and be set free from the law of sin and death ( Rom.8:2-4; Gal.3:14 ). Nowhere do Christ or the apostles commend the law as a means of receiving forgiveness, being set free from sin and its judgement or attaining righteousness before God. On the contrary, the use of the OT law in this way only results in failure, sin and condemnation ( Gal.5:16-18; Rom.3:19 ). So in Christ, God has done away with the old, and established the new. Paul challenges those who want to be "under the law" ( Gal.4:21 ) and shows them from the events in the OT itself, that God has done away with the law as a means of blessing us and that it can only bring us into bondage. Faith in Christ is the only way and the only means of receiving forgiveness and freedom from sin and its condemnation – no application of the law can do this. Therefore, we are no longer under the law. Christ has redeemed them who were under the law to make them God’s sons ( Gal.3:25; 4:5 ). Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law – that is, we have been redeemed from the judgement of God that was due to us because of our failure to keep God’s righteousness. The law could only expose us as sinners and condemn us as such. Christ has borne our sin on Calvary and delivered us from condemnation. Hallelujah!

This is what the letter to the Galatians teaches us. Indeed, according to Paul’s teaching, who is under the curse of the law? Galatians 3 tells us clearly – it is those who are of the works of the law, Gal.3:10 ! Those who live under the law and want to follow the law and seek righteousness and deliverance through the law – they depart from faith and the power of God’s salvation; they end up in sin and failure; they end up under God’s condemnation, that is, under His curse! Therefore Paul warns them in the strongest terms and urges them not to return to the law nor to put themselves under it. To return to the law is to put oneself under God’s judgement! It only brings you into bondage and condemnation, Gal.4:21-31.

Can you see how these modern writers stand everything on its head and actually teach the opposite of the scriptures? For this is exactly what these modern writers and teachers are doing. They are bringing people back under the tenets and condemnation of the law! Because of verses like Ex.20:5 and Deut.28:45, they teach that the curse of the law still applies to those in Christ today because of ancestral sins. Paul says, "No. The curse of the law only applies to those who want to live by the law instead of through faith in Christ. Those who live by faith in Christ are redeemed from the curse of the law." No part of the law nor any ancestral sin can afflict them if they are in Christ! But these teachers say, "No. Curses still apply to Christians, even mature ones, and we are delivered from the curse of the law only, and not until we identify the ancestral sins which act as a curse in our lives and which are the cause of our problems, and then apply the cross to them! And this process could last years, if not most of our lifetime!" This teaching is in contention with the Gospel!

This teaching does not deliver us from curses – it would bring a curse on us by opposing the truth and Gospel of God! They directly contradict the clear teaching of Galatians. The very verses that declare us free from the curse of the law, they misuse to support their own ideas – and without knowing it, bring the curse of the law down upon us as a consequence! Furthermore, this teaching wants to turn us into some kind of psychic or occult mediums where we have to develop the ability, "in the spirit", to discover what sins occurred perhaps hundreds of years ago by one of our ancestors! God’s answer is to believe in the full salvation that He offers us in Christ!

Now, as I have said, these writers freely confess that we are justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, but their whole teaching then goes on to declare that the law and its curse still applies today to Christians after they have truly repented and been converted. Because of what the law says in Ex.20:5, Deut.28:45 and Lev.26:40, they teach that it is only as we discover the effects of ancestral sins in our lives that we can begin the process of deliverance through "spiritual gifting and discernment" and repentance for ancestral sins. In other words, they proclaim Christ plus the law. Paul says this is a denial of the faith and a departure from Christ!

Let me say here, that insofar as the law was a reflection of God’s own righteousness, goodness and holiness, there is an enduring quality about the law. Not in the ceremonial, outward aspect, but in terms of the righteous nature of God, which God wants to fulfil in us and for us to be partakers of – not through the keeping of the law but through faith in Christ, Rom.3:31; 8:3,4; 2Peter1:4. That’s why Paul says in Romans 3:31, through faith in Christ we establish the law. He is not here talking about the outward or ceremonial things of the law, like circumcision (which he warns them against); he is here talking about that righteousness which the law was supposed to bring us into but couldn’t (Gal. 3:21). In these chapters in Romans as well as in the Galatian letter Paul is expounding how we are justified and how the righteousness which is required by the law is fulfilled in us – and it is through faith as we walk and live in the Spirit. It is not through any application of the law!

These modern writers apply the law in a way that has no NT or even OT validity, as we shall see. We have already seen that Paul quotes Deut.27:26 in Gal.3:10. We have also already noted that this is a fundamental verse relating to God’s absolute righteousness and His judgement on even one failure to keep His commandments. There is no reference to a specific sin here as in preceding verses nor is any particular curse or judgement mentioned for this failure as there is in chapter 28. This verse is a reference to the fact that God’s judgement is on any who sin; and it is because of this that Jesus came – to deal with the power of sin in peoples’ lives and its judgement over them. When these modern writers refer to Gal. 3:10, they miss the point of what Paul is teaching. He is quoting from Deut.27:26, but they say this verse includes the curses of Deut.28:45 and this is what they then concentrate on – all the different types of curses in chpt.28, and tell us this is what Paul is referring to in Gal.3:10! They tell us that a Christian can be afflicted with any of these curses in Deut.28 because of the sins of their ancestors! All types of illnesses, calamities, disasters, defeat, failure in business, family and marriage breakdown and insanity can plague and afflict you because of ancestral sins! That’s what they teach from Gal.3:10! My dear reader, is that what the apostle Paul is teaching the Galatian churches? Is he writing about outward plagues and judgements that can come upon Christians because of ancestral sins; how you must be careful to identify these plagues and curses in your life, repent for those ancestral sins and then apply the benefits of the cross of Christ??? Does Paul use Deut.27:26 in this way or to teach these things? No. Not at all! As we have abundantly seen, Galatians chpt.3 as well as the whole letter, is teaching us about faith, justification, righteousness and living in the Spirit and in the liberty of the sons of God, as opposed to the works of the flesh and living under the law, which brings judgement and failure. These are the great fundamental issues of the Gospel. But as we saw in the previous article on repenting for national sins, these modern writers misinterpret the Gospel and do not really understand the New Covenant and what it is all about. They love to concentrate on outward, carnal things. Even so their interpretation of the Bible is carnal and focuses on outward things. But the Kingdom of God is not in food and drink (outward things), but in righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Rom.14:17). Jesus came to bring about a fundamental spiritual change in us whereby we are born into God’s Kingdom, justified, cleansed and set free from sin and its judgement; but these teachers concentrate on the outward things of the law, thinking that this will set us free and bring us into the righteousness of God and into the Spirit of God. Even as the false teachers in the Galatian churches were wrong (Gal.3:1-3), so these modern teachers are sadly and dangerously mistaken.

What a terrible falsehood and deception this is, as though God is allowing or sending these plagues or afflictions on His people today like some kind of "mysterious, unknown curse" from the past, which we have to discover and identify and then repent of and apply the cross to. This false teaching is in serious danger of corrupting the true image and nature of God. They almost represent him in the style of some kind of witchdoctor, who mysteriously allows curses to plague us because of hidden ancestral sins, and this then leads us into fear as to whether any difficulty or problem that may occur in my life might be due to some curse for which atonement must be made. But this is what my African brothers and sisters have been redeemed out of. This is exactly the atmosphere and culture that put them in fear and made their lives a misery before they heard and believed the Gospel of their salvation. This is cruel superstition! And now these modern teachers want to baptize them again into this atmosphere and culture of fear and superstition - all in the name of Christian revelation!

Let us now consider what the curse of the law is, as portrayed in the OT, and we shall see how they misrepresent even the Law of the OT.

These modern writers try to support their ideas concerning curses mainly from two passages of scripture. Perhaps the most significant of these is Exodus 20:3-5 (and its parallel passages in Exodus 34:7; Numbers 14:18; and Deut.5:9). From this passage they want to tell us that the judgement or consequences of the sin of one parent (which they call a curse) is carried over to succeeding generations (up to four) with the result that those generations are plagued or afflicted with this curse – this includes people today who are converted and living as Christians in Christ! ( Please refer to the first article for further exposition of this passage.) They invent the term "generational curse" from this passage.

Firstly, in this verse from Exodus 20:5, God says that the fathers’ sins are visited upon them that hate Him. So it seems that those in Christ today are counted among those that hate God, according to the interpretation of these modern writers! Since the scripture says that God visits the sins of the fathers on the children of them that hate Him, and these modern writers teach that Christians suffer because of, and are visited by, the parents’ sins - even if they are living holy lives! But such Christians are not those that hate God, so these writers need to explain how they can apply this verse to Christians for whom Christ has also now died!

Secondly, as we have already noted, this passage doesn’t say that God will punish the 3^rd or 4^th following generations, but that He will visit them with their parent’s sin. Ezekiel 18 supports this meaning by clearly stating that the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, but he shall be judged for his own sin; though the implication is also there that the son can be ensnared by the father’s sins and follow in his fathers evil ways – and so the fathers sins are visited upon the children. But if the son turns to the Lord in repentance, then the son will not suffer because of his father’s sins. His repentance clears and justifies him completely before God without him needing to repent for his father’s sins – this was simply not required and indeed it could not be! This is the clear teaching of Ezekiel and it goes hand in hand with the passage in Ex.20. In fact, through Ezekiel, God was rebuking the Israelites for complaining and maintaining that the children suffer because of their parent’s sins. Those Jews who were in the Exile were saying that they were suffering for their fathers’ sins, but God said, "No. Each one will suffer for his own sins!" ( In Isaiah 65:7, God makes it clear that His judgement came upon them because they had sinned, together with their fathers. They had not turned away from their fathers’ sins and so they reaped God’s judgement, which of course is the meaning in Ex.20:5). But these modern writers oppose God even more in these days of New Covenant grace by saying, "Yes, the children do suffer and bear the iniquities of their fathers – even after the children themselves have repented and turned to the Lord!" Thus their teaching is based on two fundamental errors.

It is contrary to both New and Old Testament teaching. In the OT, children who do not turn away from the evil ways of their fathers can be ensnared by and suffer the consequences of their fathers’ sins. However, the whole of the Bible shows and teaches us that upon repentance, a person (or the people of Israel in the OT) is cleared of guilt, is pardoned, is freed from his parent’s sins, is cleansed and is justified by God. In one’s own relationship with God, one is not hindered by, or suffers from, the sin or guilt of parents or ancestors. This is consistently shown in the Bible both in teaching and by examples. The idea that past curses can afflict a person in their walk with God after they have truly repented is not found in the Bible. Or can you find one such example?

Of course in another sense, certain actions have their inevitable consequences. For example, if parents neglect to look after their child or feed him properly, then that child could fall into serious ill-health or the child may fall into bad company. And as we saw, the parents own evil ways can ensnare the child in the same sins. Evil in society also can act as a snare to the people who live in it. Also, if a person divorces and marries again and then is converted to the Lord, that person cannot always undo all the practical consequences of their previous actions. Though these things are so, yet if any person in any of these or other situations turns to the Lord in true repentance, then they are completely cleansed and set free before God who will not hold their past against them nor the past sins of their ancestors – they are justified and completely cleared by God in their relationship to Him. Whatever inevitable practical consequences they still may have to bear from their past actions, in their spiritual walk with God they are not hindered or plagued with curses from the past after they have truly repented. In their walk with God, curses cannot pursue them beyond true repentance. Praise the name of the Lord!

Perhaps it is worth mentioning what some Bible commentators point out, namely, that in ancient cultures such as Israel, as with certain cultures today, it is not unusual for families to hold together and live together, either in the same dwelling or nearby. So it would not be unusual to have three or even four generations of a family living together or very close to one another. This might explain the significance of God counting up to four generations for the evil of the father. The father might very well be alive and have an influence over all the children right down to their great grandchildren. Consider the case of Korah who opposed the Lord and stood at his tent door with all his family, ( Numbers 16 ). Surely, those that we have known in our own childhood and lifetime are the ones who have influenced us the most, and perhaps this helps us to understand the meaning of Ex.20:5.

The only apparent exceptions to what I have written above has to do with God’s dealing with His chosen people in the OT. Israel were His chosen people and they were represented by one physical nation. As well as consisting of individuals, God also dealt with them as one people who were corporately responsible for their actions in history. This is quite different to the church today, which is comprised of people out of every tribe and nation. Please refer back to the article on Repenting for the Sins of the Nation, where this point is further illustrated, where I refer to the sins of Achan and Saul. We could also mention the rebellion of Korah, or the wanderings of Israel in the desert, where the children had to wait to enter the Promised Land because of the unbelief of their parents. But all these examples have to do with God’s unique dealings and judgements on Israel as a nation, even though some of these sins were committed by individuals. But none of these examples change what we have been saying or what is taught in the whole Bible. Namely, that when someone truly repents then they are completely pardoned and set free so that the past has no hold on them as they walk with the Lord. And this is also clearly illustrated in the history of Israel. We also see that Daniel too was carried away captive because of Israel’s rebellion against the Lord, although he himself was guiltless. But the sin and rebellion of his generation and of previous generations did not in any way hinder, obstruct, damage or afflict his personal relationship with the Lord, or his spiritual walk with God. On the contrary, he is an example of someone who is blessed, righteous and loved of God.

If you want to use the Law in this way, surely what applies to Christians is what we find written in Ex.20:6, where God promises His mercy unto thousands of them that love Him. Here we have a contrast between God visiting the sins of those that hate Him, to up to four generations, and God extending His mercy to a thousand generations of them that love Him! Truly, His mercy rejoices over His judgement. This figure of a thousand indicates that it is His eternal blessing that is on them that love Him – nothing of curses! But these modern teachers put the "curses" that belong to unrepentant people who hate the Lord, onto Christians today! This wasn’t even true in the OT, where those who repented and love the Lord are blessed with God’s eternal mercies, even as these verses in Ex. 20 show us!

But what do the scriptures say? Paul tells us that we have been blessed (not cursed) with all spiritual blessings (not curses) in Christ, Eph.1: 3. If God be for us, who can be against us? And who is he who condemns us now? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s chosen ones? (Rom.8:31-34). Perhaps this modern teaching is in danger of doing this very thing! But God is for us, and it is Christ who has justified us and intercedes for us. How should the Father and the Son bring the judgements due to dead people on us, when we are in Christ?

We need to distinguish the two covenants and we need to know which people the scriptures refer to. Because these modern teachers fail to recognise not only how the law and its curses apply, that is, under what circumstances, but also to whom they apply. These teachers apply the law and its curses to all people – Jew or Gentile, saint or sinner – over all time! Before we go any further, let us now look at this.

God’s warning in the first commandment in Ex: 20:3-5 is against those that commit idolatry. These modern teachers say that it is therefore particularly because of this sin that curses come upon succeeding generations, whoever these people are – Jew or Gentile, saint or sinner. Not content with this, they go on to teach that almost any sin that a person commits can bring curses on succeeding generations!

But let us look at what God says in verse 5. He says to the Israelites, "…the Lord your God…" God is emphasising the fact that He is their God and they are His people – through His choice of grace and love as He told them in Deut.7:6-8; 10:15, and by the fact that He redeemed them out of Egypt by the blood of a lamb. And this is how God introduces the giving of the Ten Commandments in verse 2. "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me…" God is here giving the basis and reason for the commandments that shall follow. He is their God by virtue of His choice of them and by virtue of having saved and redeemed them! He has made them His people; bought them, revealed Himself to them, saved them and blessed them with His presence and with His word. He tells them that they are a special people over all the people of the earth. Because of these things He expects them to be faithful to Him, for He tells them that, "...the Lord your God is a jealous God". They are His and He is jealous for them, for His own. They are His and therefore they need to behave like His, that His name should be sanctified and glorified and not profaned among the other nations. God is jealous that His own Name should be honoured. He will not allow influences among His people that will turn an individual or the community of Israel away from Him. ( This may help to explain some of the unique judgements that came upon Israel, such as with Korah’s rebellion, where all of his household perished, Deut.16 ). In view of what He had done for them to make them His holy people, which He hadn’t done for any other nation, they would also be subject to His unique corrections and judgements, which wouldn’t apply in the same way to other nations. In other words, both these blessings and the judgements of God were unique to Israel, and God established His Covenant with them and gave them the Law at Sinai which confirmed these blessings and the curses or judgements as part of His Covenant with them. God Himself makes this point clear in Amos 3:1,2 :

"Hear this word that the Lord has spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, you only have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities."

We know that God never changes. But some things do change. Very much and quite significantly. There is a difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. In the Old Covenant there was a difference between Israel and the other nations. But the mistake that these writers make, is to take (or corrupt!) verses from the OT that related specifically to Israel and the unique covenant between God and them, and apply them to all people for all time. Has God then promised all other nations the land of Canaan as an inheritance as He did to Israel? Did he redeem other nations out of a land of bondage, save them by His mighty power and reveal His glory and word to them? Does everyone then need to be circumcised in order to be saved today? If not, why not? Well, for the same reason that we should reject this modern teaching, which cannot distinguish between the Old and New Covenant, between Israel and the nations, between flesh and Spirit and between the world and the church!

To other nations God had not revealed Himself as He did unto Israel, and to whom much is given, much is required. Whereas we have seen that Paul could say that God could wink at the time of ignorance among the nations, from Israel He expected much, much more, insofar that Jesus wept over Jerusalem – He came to His own and His own received Him not. God had greater expectations from them as His own people, and insofar as they refused Him, greater would be their judgement. Even as their privileges were unique and belonged to no other nation (except that others could join themselves to them), so His judgements and punishments would be unique because of the covenant He had established with them.

We have seen how God chose and spoke to His people Israel in Ex.20. But how can Gentile nations be expected to worship the Lord "their" God and not turn unto idols, when they were already worshipping idols in their ignorance, and generally didn’t know God or His commandments; they hadn’t had His law revealed unto them nor had they entered into a covenant with Him! How could they break a covenant that they had not been brought into and about which they were ignorant? They were not partakers of the unique blessings, how should they be subject to the unique judgements that were meant for Israel?

The truth of this is brought out by Paul in his letter to the Romans; Rom.3:20; 4:15; 5:13; 7:7. Here we see that sin is not imputed where there is no law. Although he knew the law as a Pharisee, yet it was on this principle of genuine ignorance of God’s will that Paul received mercy and forgiveness so freely. He states this in 1Tim.1:13,

"…who was before a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious; but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief." He hadn’t been deliberately or consciously rebelling against the Lord. He wasn’t aware that he was opposing the Lord, Acts 9:5, and the revelation to his heart that it actually was so, must have come as a terrible shock to him. And because of this, he freely received God’s mercy and pardon and was not treated as someone who had deliberately violated God’s will.

Jesus also makes this point, in Luke 12:47,48. "…unto whom much is given, of him shall much be required." Those who know God’s will and don’t do it shall suffer a severer judgement than those who broke God’s command in ignorance.

This truth is also made clear when Paul is preaching to the Gentiles in Acts 14:15-17, where he says about God,

In verse 17 he doesn’t say that they are being plagued with God’s curses because of their ancestral idolatry. On the contrary, he makes it clear to them that God has actually blessed them with natural things, giving them rain and food. In Acts 17:30, where he warns them against idolatry, he could have told them about God’s curses coming upon people who practice this and how they needed to repent and be freed of generational curses, but he doesn’t take the opportunity to do this. Instead he says,

Paul does not apply the curses of the Law of Moses to these situations. It is not part of the Gospel message to the nations! Not here, not in the Acts, and not when writing to the saints in his letters. He does not warn them or teach them that the curses of the OT apply to them. How different is NT teaching to these modern errors!

So we see from all these scriptures, that where people don’t have the law or know the law, when they act in genuine ignorance of God’s will, then God does not impute to them those sins that they commit in ignorance of His law, Rom.4:15; 5:13. (Though actual sins need to be atoned for, but this was provided by God through the death of His Son, to everyone who believes.) Nor do they suffer God’s (providential) judgement in the same way as people who knew God’s will and were in a covenantal relationship with Him, as was the case with Israel. Let us remember, that it was Israel’s repeated rejection of God’s special or unique offer to them that resulted in free salvation and the blessings of God coming to the Gentiles, Rom.11:11,12,15. So, Israel’s judgement for rejecting God’s special covenant with them resulted in our blessing. Dear reader, can you see how different the relationship between God and the Gentiles ( who were not in covenant with God ) was, compared to Israel, who were privileged to have received a unique covenant with God?

So it is no surprise when Paul says, "whatsoever things the law says, it says to them who are under the law."

In other words, the law only applies to those who are under the law – or to those who put themselves under the law, as some of them were doing in the Galatian churches, and as these modern teachers want us to do! We have seen that the Gentile nations were not "under the law" because they were not in covenant with God nor, generally speaking, did they know His law; and we have seen that Christians are not "under the law", since the law can only condemn us and Jesus died to redeem us from the curse of the law.

[Although the Gentiles were not under the law and therefore didn’t have that knowledge of sin that the law gives (Rom:3:20; 7:7), this did not mean that they were without excuse or without sin. The scriptures teach that all men have sinned and are guilty and in need of salvation, Rom.3:19; 5:12. It also teaches that men are without excuse because they have been created by God to know Him and to recognise His power and Godhead through created things, Rom.1:18-25. Having been created by God and to know God, it is not surprising that the Gentiles have hearts and consciences that witness to them if their actions are right or wrong. So Paul says that when the Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, this shows the work of the law written in their hearts, Rom.2:14-16. But here Paul is obviously speaking about our consciences which convict us about basic righteousness and which every person has been born with. He is not talking about the Mosaic law with all its rules and ceremonies. So all men shall be judged according to their works (Rom.2:6-9), whether Jew or Gentile, and all that have sinned shall be judged. And to rescue and save both Jew and Gentile from sin and its condemnation, whether under the law or not, Jesus came! The law is holy, good and just (Rom.7:12), but its application to our lives could not make us holy, justified or good! The only way anyone can fulfil the righteousness required by the law – whether it is the righteousness that your conscience witnesses to, or whether it is the righteousness demanded by the Mosaic Law of the OT – is by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ!]

The other passage that these modern writers use, as we have already seen, and which is a foundation stone to their teaching, is Deut. 28:45. From this passage in the OT they want to tell us that we as Christians can be afflicted and plagued with any of these curses, which are contained in this chapter, because of the sins of our ancestors. They further teach that not only can we be afflicted with the sins of our fathers up to four generations back, but even much, much further back – up to hundreds or even thousands of years back. This is completely their own invention. Even according to the scripture they use in Ex. 20:5, God mentions up to four generations. But they think nothing of corrupting the word of God and apply their own reasonings. They say that if each generation doesn’t repent and many generations continue in idolatry against the Lord, then this number of "four" multiplies itself many times, so that you could be affected by sins that go back even a thousand years! Superstition so takes hold of them, that they ignore God’s word and create their own system of teaching! They also magnify the law against grace, and God’s judgement against His mercy. This is not surprising since, as we have seen, this teaching wants to bring us under the law, and to be brought under the law, is to be brought under judgement. But what does even the Law say? Apart from limiting it to four generations, the next verse, Ex.20:6, tells us that it is His mercy and goodness that extend to thousands of them that love Him! His mercy rejoices over judgement (James 2:13) and His blessings are poured out far more abundantly than His curses! This is the revelation both of the OT and the NT.

Now, if we look at Deut.28 we see that the curses relate to the law and covenant established between God and His people Israel. So these teachers now take this unique law which was based on the unique covenant between God and His unique people Israel and apply it to all nations for all time, and to believers as well as unbelievers. But in Acts chapters 14 and 17, as we have seen, Paul makes no such mention, application or use of the Law and its curses when preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles! On the contrary, as we have already pointed out, Paul declares that God had winked at their time of ignorance and had blessed them (and not judged them according to what their sins deserved at that time) because He knew they were unaware of His Law and nature, unlike Israel, to whom God had revealed Himself by word and various revelations and manifestations.

Ex. 20:5 tells us that an unrepentant, wicked person (those that hate the Lord) will reap or be visited with the sins of their rebellious ancestors up to four generations. But verse 6 tells us that if a person has turned to God and loves Him, then God shows His mercy in overwhelming abundance! There is no hint of being pursued by curses once the person has turned to the Lord with all their heart. For as we have said, mercy rejoices over judgement and indeed, this is the unique revelation that Moses received of the nature of God at Sinai and that is also revealed in the NT, namely, that God is "merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in goodness and truth", Ex.34:6,7. And it would not be difficult to quote many verses in the NT that declare the same truth and message, such as, John 1:17; Rom.2:4; 15:5; 2 Cor.1:3; Eph.1:6,7; 2:4,7.

Just as horrendously and erroneously these modern writers apply these curses or judgements in Deut.28 to all Christians. But they are those who have repented, turned to the Lord and who love Christ! In Deut.28 these curses apply to unrepentant Israel, that is, when one generation continues in rebellion and refuses to acknowledge their sin and to return to the Lord in repentance. And these judgements or curses accumulate as one generation continues in the sins and rebellion of previous generations. In verses 20, 45 and 62, for example, we are told that these curses will come upon Israel if they do wickedly and if they don’t keep His commandments but turn away from Him. These curses will come upon Israel for their continued disobedience. The curses do not apply when Israel are walking in obedience to God! That is what we find in Deut. chapter 28. We find a parallel passage to Deut.28 in Leviticus 26, which helps to make this even clearer. ( Please see the first article, where this point is fully illustrated.) God’s judgements (curses) are not plagues let loose without purpose as an endless punishment on subsequent generations for the sake of the disobedience of one generation. No! Read Lev.26 and you will see that as one generation of Israel rebelled against the Lord and against His word, God said He would send judgement upon Israel in order that Israel might realize its foolishness and repent and return to the Lord. If they continued to rebel He would send further judgements in order to bring them to their senses and to repentance. His judgements were simply a form of His mercy, in that, since Israel wouldn’t listen to His word, God sent outward judgements to bring them back to Him. And if they did return to Him then they would be pardoned, cleansed and brought back into a clear relationship with God, without the need to seek deliverance from ancestral curses. This point has already been fully made in the first article, where we mentioned the cases of King Hezekiah and Josiah, who when they turned away from continuing in their fathers’ sins and turned to God, did not need to be released from any curse. Repenting from sins deals with the judgement of those sins, whether they began with you or your fathers. No curse remains to hang over you after true repentance. In the covenant that God had established with Israel, curses came upon the unrepentant children or nation, who continued in the evil ways of their fathers. But curses did not pursue or plague them after they had acknowledged their sins and repented!

What is stated in Deut. chapter 28 is very clear; for repeated and continued disobedience against God, God would send specific, severe judgements – but with the aim of bringing Israel back to Himself in repentance.

When Israel sinned, God sent them prophets, rising early, to declare their sins to them and to warn them of judgements that would follow if they didn’t repent; the prophets urged the people therefore to turn to the Lord, who would abundantly pardon them, ( Isaiah 1:18,19 )! Israel was left in no doubt as to what their sins were, and why God was sending such judgements on them. Nor were they left in any doubt about what they had to do to be fully pardoned and to walk again in God’s blessing and favour. They were told all these things by the prophets, continually. How different is this to these modern teachings, that say that curses can mysteriously appear out of the distant past and plague us, after we have repented and turned to the Lord. They further teach us that we have to look back into our past, perhaps hundreds of years, for the cause of the curse, and even then it could take years of "discernment" and prayer before one gets release! What a corruption of God’s word!

It would be bad enough if these modern teachers wanted to bring us back under the Old Covenant. But what they want to bring us under is far worse than what even Israel knew! Namely, curses still plaguing you even after you had repented, then having to discover the mysterious sources of such curses, and then maybe having to pray for years to be set free! But dear reader, don’t be entangled in such a yoke of bondage and deception! Christ has secured your liberty!

So again we see that these modern writers make two fundamental and serious errors. Firstly, they do not recognise that curses or judgements are cut off or come to an end upon repentance, that is, when a person repents. Nor do they recognise that the curses of Deut. 28 apply to the covenant that God made with Israel and that these curses are unique to Israel, even as the blessings and promises were unique to them. You cannot start applying them at random to all peoples for all time. And you certainly cannot apply them to Christians who have repented from their hearts and found salvation in Jesus Christ.

Let me finally say, that because God is Creator of all mankind, of course He can speak to peoples and nations and judge them, even as we find in the Old Testament accounts. But He spoke to them and judged them, not according to the Covenant that He had established with Israel, but when iniquity increased to such an extent among a people or nation, then God found it necessary to judge it and bring its influence to an end on earth. We have examples such as, Sodom, Nineveh and Babylon. But there are no examples of these kinds of dealings with nations in the New Testament. Of course the accounts of the book of the Revelation are an exception but these relate to the final judgements of God on the world. Obviously, as God and Lord of all, who had created us to know Him, (Rom.1:18-21), God could both judge and pardon the peoples of this earth according to His own righteousness and mercy and according to the dispensation of the time.

Let us now consider what the Bible has to say about the devil and his work in this matter of curses.

Firstly, it is clear that the Bible doesn’t mention curses in relationship to the devil at all. It does not show him personally putting a curse on anyone. It does not use the expression the "curse of the devil".

You may like to think of Job as an exception to this, but in the case of Job, we see that what happened to him was not an ancestral curse coming upon him. No. It was God allowing or even using the devil to test His people, to bring forth their faith as gold. God allowed His people to be tested in the wilderness for this purpose, Deut.8:2,3, and Jesus was led by the Spirit of God into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And we read that Jesus went into the wilderness full of the Holy Spirit, and that He came out in the power of the Spirit, Luke 4 : 1,14. The testing had only strengthened Him, and that is what trials are meant to do for us – that we should grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord and in faith. As Job said at the end of his trial, " I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes have seen you...". Job grew in the knowledge of the Lord through this difficult trial. Notice also in this story that the devil needs God’s permission before he can touch Job or anything he possesses. In all this it is God who is in control and His purpose is also to bless Job with more than he had at the beginning - not just in outward things but also in his relationship with God. The difficulty for Job, and perhaps for many of us, is that we don’t always know the reasons why we suffer at times. There may be a difficulty or we may suffer, but we don’t know the reason; we don’t know and we can’t see the spiritual background to the events that may have brought suffering. This is the test of faith, which is more precious to God than gold! 1 Peter 1:5-9. To suffer without knowing the reason why and yet to trust and love God in the midst of it all; this is what glorifies God and what will bless us abundantly if we let patience have its perfect work in us, ( James 1:2-4 ). I’m not saying that we never understand or know why certain things happen to us, but we all pass through trials like this where we don’t know why things happen. It’s part of God’s way for us. If Job had known the spiritual background or context for his suffering, namely, that God was for Job but He was allowing the devil to test Job’s integrity and that this had nothing to do with punishment for sin, he certainly may not have suffered unnecessary thoughts concerning God and his own suffering. But no one knew the spiritual background to Job’s suffering, and this is what the test is for us all. Even as it was, not just for Job, but also for his friends, who thought they knew exactly why Job was suffering. His friends came with their theology and told him he was suffering because of his sins! And these modern teachers of "curses" think that they have eyes to see into the spiritual background as to why people are suffering certain things. And if they had been there with Job, no doubt they would have burdened and afflicted Job’s heart and mind with the thought that ancestral curses were causing all his suffering. Looking at Deut. chapter 28, they would have convinced themselves, and they would have tried to convince Job, that here was clear evidence that he was under a curse – his financial ruin! A clear sign of a curse, Deut.28:16,17; also loss of livestock, 28:18,31; and family problems and distress is another clear sign of a curse, 28:18, 32,41; and how can we doubt that he is under a curse when he is suffering illnesses described in chapter 28 of Deuteronomy, verses 22, 35?! Had they been there and had they had the book of Deuteronomy then, as they have it today, no doubt these would have been their arguments. And how terribly wrong they would have been! They would have only added to Job’s suffering by leaving him with the thought that a curse was hanging over him, and perhaps spent years trying to discover through prayer and "words of knowledge", which ancestral curses were to blame! All in vain. Because this was not the cause of his suffering. They would have tried to bewitch Job with their delusions, Galatians 3:1. And so these modern teachers and false comforters would have also been rebuked by God because they had misre