EZEKIEL 18:1. The soul who sinneth, it shall die...
Cain Murders Abel (Genesis 4:3-16)
And in process of time, it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD. 4And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering: 5But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. 6And the LORD said unto Cain, “Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? 7If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.”8And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.
9And the LORD said unto Cain, where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper? 10And He said, “What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. 11And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand; 12When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.” 13And Cain said unto the LORD, “My punishment is greater than I can bear. 14Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me.” 15And the LORD said unto him, “Therefore, whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the LORD set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.”
16And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.
This biblical account of Cain and Abel records the judgements that the Lord declared over Cain:
1. There was a judgement on Cain’s relationship with God. It says he went out from the presence of the Lord (4:16).
2. There was a judgement on Cain’s relationship with the earth (4:11). The earth was already under a curse because of Adam. Now there was a second curse – a deeper layer of curse put on whatever land Cain would try to farm.
There was a curse placed on his social relationships – people would know that he was different:
3. There would be limits as to what kind of social relationships he could have (4:12).
4. God put a permanent mark on the body of Cain even cursing his relationship concerning his own body (4:15).
In this circumstance, we see the first mention of the word “iniquity.”
Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is more than I can bear.” Punishment here is translated “iniquity.” The root meaning of the word iniquity means to “warp” and to “twist”. Cain was actually saying:
“My twisting, and warping is more than I can bear. You have damaged my relationship with”
· You, · the land, · people, · my own body.
This is an appropriate picture of the word iniquity.
When a man intentionally, boldly, attempts to side-step God’s laws, when he rebelliously, defiantly violates the Law of God, God responds by warping him and His family line.
This is the moment where generational curses and demonic downloads enter the family line – not casually – not easily – not flippantly. They enter and even attach to the DNA because of serious, weighty rebellion where somebody attempted to deny or twist (wicca) God’s rules.
There is a misconception that stems from Exodus 34:7 where it says that God, “[visits] the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation” and Exodus 20:5, “I am a jealous God, punishing the children for the iniquity of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”
There are those who feel this verse indicates the visitation of God through curses only reaches the third and fourth generation. They think anything that happened further back than that simply does not apply to them today.
If these were the only verse in scripture that dealt with the issue, then we might have reason to believe that. However, there are different levels of generational curses.
For example:
Deut 23:2 “A person begotten out of wedlock shall not enter into the assembly of the Lord; even to his tenth generation shall his descendants not enter into the congregation of the Lord.”
Within this verse we see it addresses two issues in regards to a generational curse:
1. For illegitimacy (born out of wedlock)
2. For incest related sin (the Ammonites and the Moabites were conceived out of incest and were cursed).
Because of this curse, it is not unusual for a person to feel uncomfortable in the presence of the Lord. They may not be able to explain why they are uncomfortable. These are the Christians who love the Lord and have a decent daily walk of devotion, and can meet the Lord in different venues, but feel uncomfortable when they are among God’s children.
When the last “amen” is said, these people are in a hurry to get outside of the church. They may even stand in the parking lot and visit for hours, but they are uncomfortable being within the house of the Lord.
Typically, this means somewhere, there has been a curse of illegitimacy. To go back ten generations in a family line takes into account an awful lot of relatives within the lineage. The truth is, almost all of us have some illegitimacy in our family line within the last ten generations and, if the sin is revisited, the ten-year clock resets.
Likewise, concerning incest, where there has been incest and conception, that too will bring a curse of exclusion from the House of God, where people do not feel comfortable being in the presence of God, even though they can worship God in other contexts.
An Example of a Curse that has no limit: Naaham and Elisha
2 Kings 5:24-27-24 “When he came to the hill, he took them from their hands and put them in the house; and he sent the men away, and they left. 25 He went in and stood before his master. Elisha said, ‘Where have you been, Gehazi?’ He said, ‘Your servant went nowhere.’
26 Elisha said to him, ‘Did not my spirit go with you when the man turned from his chariot to meet you? Was it a time to accept money, garments, olive orchards, vineyards, sheep, oxen, menservants, and maidservants?
27 Therefore the leprosy of Naaman shall cleave to you and to your offspring forever.’ And Gehazi went from his presence a leper as white as snow.”
This is a generational curse that goes beyond the ten generations – it goes on forever.
Gehazi’s descendants are presumably still in the world today and some of them still have leprosy. There are curses that have no generational time limit as God determines.
This is not a specific, predictable, cause-and-effect formula but God sovereignly determines specific judgements for specific times according to his word. Any ancestral line can have an endless curse on health, finances or on anything else if our forefathers have defied the True and Living God at least until the curse is broken through repentance, the more specific the better. Praise God for Jesus! Only through His Blood can we be set free from family anathemas and even certain curses that were supposed to last forever can be eradicated through the blood of Jesus.
Another Misconception:
Ezekiel 18 has been wrongly translated that God no longer deals with generational curses:
Ezekiel 18:2 "What do you mean by using this proverb concerning the land of Israel, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’?”
This passage needs to be put in the context of sin, rebellion, and iniquity as well as the historical moment in which this word was given.
Ezekiel 18:19-23 “Yet do you say, why does not the son bear the iniquity of the father? When the son has done that which is lawful and right and has kept all My statutes and has done them, he shall surely live. The soul that sins, it [is the one that] shall die. The son shall not bear and be punished for the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear and be punished for the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him only, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon the wicked only. But if the wicked man turns from all his sins that he has committed and keeps all My statutes and does that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live; he shall not die. None of his transgressions which he has committed shall be remembered against him; for his righteousness which he has executed [for his moral and spiritual rectitude in every area and relation], he shall live. Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked? says the Lord, and not rather that he should turn from his evil way and return [to his God] and live?”
This is the basic principle that applies to all historical generational curses as well as all curses from the present day. There is nothing within our generational bloodlines whether past, present, or future that can not be brought under the Blood of the true Lord Jesus Christ and repented for and renounced.
Even if a man changes midstream from a life of iniquity to a life of holiness, the iniquity that he has committed in his life can be covered by the Blood of Jesus. The power of that iniquity can be broken off of him in the same way that an individual son can break the power of the generational curses coming from his iniquitous father. In this passage, we are dealing with the judgement of Israel collectively. This was spoken by the prophet Ezekiel who was ministering to people who were in exile in Babylon.
There had been a national judgement upon Judah, and the nation as a whole had been taken into captivity because of a national curse. You had extremely righteous people like Daniel and Ezekiel who were taken into captivity. They had no sin in their own life or no generational iniquity that caused them to be carried into captivity but because they were under a national curse / a collective curse that affected a large group of people, they were also scooped-up and taken into captivity.
God differentiates between a generational collective judgement and an individual judgement. Collectively, generationally, a lot of people died – in the war, in the trek across the desert, and some people died after they arrived in Babylon. Collectively, everybody is under judgement and, collectively, the children are being judged for the iniquities of the fathers.
In the historical context, He then goes on to say, now that you are here, each one of you individually has an opportunity to be different. Each of you have an opportunity to stand and relegate judgment, declare victory and a separation from what has gone before in the generational lines. Renounce, repent, and stand free of the judgement.
God clearly differentiates between a ‘collective judgement’ where indeed, just like the Israelites, no matter how much the people repented they were taken into captivity and were not going to be able to go back to the land of Israel for 70 years. That generational curse did affect innocent people. The fathers did eat sour grapes (commit iniquity) and the children’s teeth were set on edge (Jeremiah 31:30; Ezekiel 18:2). Innocent people suffered because of the collective iniquity of the nation.
Going forward, once they were taken into captivity and transported to Babylon, each person had skin in the game and an opportunity for something fresh in the writing of the story of their own life. Whether or not they would choose to be obedient or disobedient to the commands of God following their repentance and renunciation of what had taken place with their ancestors was up to them. Each one of us can sin and individually reap the consequences of that sin, or we can be righteous, and individually reap the consequences of being righteous.
In the book of Isaiah 1:18 it reads, “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
It’s interesting to me that Isaiah refers to our sins as the color “red.” In general when I think of sin, I think of the color black or something that is heavy and dark, but no, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Isaiah penned the word ‘red.’ I believe this is an indication of bloodline curses and indebtedness that attaches to the DNA as iniquitous filthy rags, and travels through our ancestral lines until we repent for the specific sin and bring it to an end. One can still be a Christian without going through this detailed work, but just as we see from the story of Cain, the quality of life will be affected.
Daniel chapter nine gives us a clear picture of what it looks like to renounce and repent of generational baggage and iniquities that brought a curse when we were not specifically the guilty party. Daniel includes himself in this prayer of repentance and stands in the gap for the nation. All throughout the book of Daniel we see that he is called when there are severe problems to be addressed (Daniel 5:12; 6:3). Daniel had the wisdom of God and an excellent spirit rested upon him. Daniel 11:32 is one of my favorite verses,“The people who know their God shall prove themselves strong, they shall stand firm and do exploits for God!”
Prayers
Generational Wounding Prayer of Release
Emotional Healing for a Captive Spirit
THE SPECIALIST
A.W. TOZER writes: Great industrial concerns have in their employ men who are needed only when there is a breakdown somewhere. When something goes wrong with the machinery, these men spring into action to locate and remove the trouble and get the machinery rolling again. For these men a smoothly operating system has no interest. They are specialists concerned with trouble and how to find and correct it. In the kingdom of God things are not too different. God has always had His specialists whose chief concern has been the moral breakdown, the decline in the spiritual health of the nation or the church. Such men were Elijah, Jeremiah, Malachi and others of their kind who appeared at critical moments in history to reprove, rebuke and exhort in the name of God and righteousness. Ten thousand ordinary clergy-ish "priests" or "pastors" or teachers could labor quietly on almost unnoticed while the spiritual life of Israel or the church was normal. But let the people of God go astray from the paths of truth and immediately the specialist appeared almost out of nowhere. His instinct for trouble brought him to the help of the Lord and of Israel. Such a man was likely to be drastic, radical, possibly at times violent, and the curious crowd that gathered to watch him work soon branded him as extreme, fanatical, negative. And in a sense they were right. He was single-minded, severe, fearless, and these were the qualities the circumstances demanded. He shocked some, frightened others and alienated not a few, but he knew who had called him and what he was sent to do. His ministry was geared to the emergency, and that fact marked him out as different, a man apart. To such men as this, the church owes a debt too heavy to pay. The curious thing is that she seldom tries to pay him while he lives, but the next generation builds his sepulcher and writes his biography, as if instinctively and awkwardly to discharge an obligation the previous generation to a largely ignored... [-From the Foreword to Leonard Ravenhill's "Why Revival Tarries"] The historian D'Aubigne writes: "A great work of God is never accomplished by the natural strength of man. It is from the dry bones, the darkness and the dust of death, that God is pleased to select the instruments by means of which He designs to scatter over the earth His light, regeneration and life." [- D'Aubigne's "History of the Reformation"]. Another writer has observed: "In the various crises that have occurred in the history of the church, men have come to the front who have manifested a holy recklessness that astonished their fellows. When Luther nailed his theses to the door of the cathedral at Wittemburg, cautious men were astonished at his audacity. When John Wesley ignored all church restrictions and religious propriety and preached in the fields and by-ways, men declared his reputation was ruined. So it has been in all ages. When the religious condition of the times called for men who were willing to sacrifice all for Christ, the demand created the supply, and there have always been found a few who have been willing to be regarded reckless for the Lord. An utter recklessness concerning men's opinions and other consequences is the only attitude that can meet the exigencies of the present times." Additional Resources
Live Zoom Prayers
Ligonier Devotional
Testimony of an SRA Overcomer
Contact With "Family" - Basic Guidelines for Safety