Didn’t I just see you last week?” I thought.
My own question stuck in my mind. Here we were in church, many people coming forward for prayer, healing, deliverance, you name it. But this person looked familiar. Then another. And another. I saw the pattern and wanted to know what was going on.
I prayed, “God, what’s the issue here?” I know there’s such a thing as ‘deliverance idolatry,’ folks getting more attached to deliverance than actually getting to the actual freedom. I pressed in and asked God for wisdom, wondering what was beyond this. Was it something I was doing? Was it the person? If a person gets delivered, but then is not free—what else is going on?
If we knew there was faithful submitting to God, and purposeful resisting the devil; if we knew it was not the flesh, and it was not demonic, then there must have been some sort of unresolved conflict.
That is a generational curse.
Think of it like this. If someone has a health problem and goes to the ER, the doctor can resolve the temporary symptom, but the underlying sickness could still be there and needs to be checked out to address and resolve. When the person sees their doctor who diagnoses that underlying condition and suggests surgery to fix it, that is fixing the underlying, potentially terminal sickness.
Beyond The Article With Alexander Pagani
So it is with generational curses. Getting deliverance over and over again without ever getting completely free in Jesus is merely visiting the ER to make the problem stop. But attacking the generational curse is the spiritual surgery that plucks out the tumor causing ongoing illness, and opens the gates to complete freedom in Jesus’ name.
Stumbling and Searching: The Mystery of the Curse
The revelation of generational curses is not easily defined or outlined in Scripture the way many other things are. Generational curses can only be discovered two ways: 1) by stumbling upon them unintentionally or 2) by searching for them intentionally. The first way reminds me of the parable Jesus told about a person who stumbles across something hidden in a field (Matt. 13:44), only in this instance we “trip” over the mystifying phenomenon known as generational curses. This “stumbling” usually happens when a believer is talking with another believer, and the Holy Spirit brings to light previously unnoticed hereditary patterns of behavior and identifies them as the root cause of their struggle. The person realizes they’ve stumbled upon a great revelation and does whatever they can to obtain further understanding on the topic.
The second way of discovery happens when someone has been made fully aware of this treasure—either by divine direction or through another means—and intentionally searches for it. Once again, we find a parable of Jesus (Matt. 13:45) that illustrates how we can go in search of truth until we discover it. It is my belief that most great truths are discovered these two ways: stumbling and searching. The late Myles Munroe summed it up when he gave his assessment of the underlying theme to the parables of Jesus: “Nothing is yours until you discover it.”
To further drive this point, the book of Proverbs also states, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter,” (25:2, NASB). God highlights the topic of generational curses all throughout Scripture to the person who has ears to hear what the Spirit is saying, and then He expects them to search out these clues until they solve a mystery of the kingdom
I want to help you collect the clues they’ve gathered all throughout the years and come to one conclusion: a Christian can have an active generational curse operating in their life through either ignorance, inheritance or invitation. The work of redemption broke the power of the curse but did not eradicate its presence, just as the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross broke the power of sin but did not remove sin’s presence. The apostle John tells us that even after salvation, believers will have moments during their journey of sanctification when they will sin, and they will be required not only to confess those sins and forsake them but also to allow God to cleanse them of all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9, KJV).
That phrase “cleanse us from all unrighteousness” is talking about finding the root cause of what is still giving sin its legal hold on a believer, causing the person to sin in that particular area. Most believers overlook that part of the verse by only focusing on “confess our sins,” but the issue is twofold; we confess our sins, but we also allow God to cleanse us (break the curse; unrighteousness) of what’s making us sin. The great news is that God not only will remain faithful and just—which are courtroom terms— in forgiving our sin but will also go a step further in helping us identify and cleanse ourselves from the curse that empowers it.
In my first book, The Secrets to Deliverance, I explained that for humans to have effective communication, the concepts have to mean the same things for both parties, or there will be a miscommunication as a result of misconception. This can be avoided by what I call “prototype timing.” A prototype is an original model on which something is patterned. Good communication requires finding the right prototype that means the same thing to both parties. This is foundational in understanding the language of deliverance, but generational curses require a different set of rules of interpretation.
Hidden in an Illustration
In Galatians, the apostle Paul gave us the greatest reference point in being able to find hidden treasures in any field of Scripture when he used the Greek word állo, which means “other; different.” It is where we derive the word allegory, “a story, poem or picture in which there is another, hidden meaning.” This opens up a whole new avenue of interpretation that allows God to highlight what’s been hidden in plain sight in understanding the secrets to the kingdom.
The greatest example of this can be found in Galatians 4:24, where Paul says that while Sarah (Abraham’s wife) and Hagar (Abraham’s concubine) were real people, their lives were illustrations, or allegories, of two covenants to be later revealed at the establishing of the new covenant. He goes on to explain that Hagar represents Mount Sinai, while her mistress, Sarah, represents the heavenly Jerusalem. Had Paul not pointed out the allegorical significance of these two women, their stories would be nothing more than historical information about Abraham’s attempt to fulfill God’s promise by trying to have a child with his concubine Hagar.
When it comes to generational curses, you immediately find there are no Scriptures using the term openly, but you find generational curses hidden in the extremely large field of biblical events, commandments, psalms, epistles and prophecies in both the Old and New Testaments. Seeking out this treasure requires the reader to become more allegorical than literal. One of the downfalls of proper hermeneutics, or the proper interpretation of Scripture, is that it trains students to be trapped in “black letters on white pages” and doesn’t allow them to view Scripture from an allegorical perspective. So, when reading the story of Sarah and Hagar, you find nothing more than a story about two women married to one man. In proper exegesis—yes, this is what we’re reading, but in an allegorical sense—we’re dealing with two covenants, and everything that is recorded in Scripture about the details of their lives has some spiritual significance in the life of the believer.
In the text we’re told that Hagar represents Mount Sinai and that her spiritual DNA has been transferred to her spiritual bloodline: “she and her children live in slavery to the law,” (Gal. 4:25). If this is not a perfect example of the generational curse of slavery being transferred (post-crucifixion) to her descendants, I don’t know what is! This curse of slavery continues to exist 4,000 years later to those blinded to the freedom that can only be found in Jesus Christ. Even after salvation many believers are still in bondage to legalism, keeping them from walking in the fullness of the generational blessing of Isaac, “the son of the freeborn wife [who] was born as God’s own fulfillment of his promise,” (v. 23).
Had Paul not been allegorical in his interpretation of this passage, we would never have known the story of Hagar and Sarah has a much deeper meaning. If this one story has great significance that could only be discovered through an allegorical approach, then how many more stories in Scripture have hidden allegorical meanings of both blessings and curses?
The Weapon of Misinformation
Before we go any further in uncovering generational curses, we must first address the misinformation surrounding them. To be clear, misinformation is false or incorrect information that is spread intentionally or unintentionally. Of all the enemies to the revelation of generational curses, misinformation reigns as its arch-nemesis. And there is more misinformation out there about curses than there is anti-curses propaganda.
As I travel the country, I spend more time correcting misinformation than actually conducting deliverance. I find myself having to correct the errors of what the church believes generational curses to be or not be before helping any church go through mass deliverance. All misinformation must be addressed and eradicated before generational curses can be dismantled. Misinformation’s sole purpose has always been one thing: to get the church in error.
Being in error is more dangerous than being in false doctrine. When a church is in false doctrine, everyone knows it because the church at large has been trained to recognize and reject heresy. But when a church is in error, they don’t know it and can’t figure out why true doctrine is not working for them. Error is having sound doctrine but not understanding the essence of why it was said, therefore producing no manifestation of that truth.
The rejection of generational curses is more modern than ancient. The early church believed in demons, deliverance and generational curses and regularly practiced the ministry of deliverance for both nonbelievers and believers. What I have found in my travels is that 99% of misinformation about generational curses is being perpetuated by sincere believers (some theologians) seeking to help the church walk in the fullness of Christ by removing the pre-occupation of those who blame everything on demons and curses and never take any personal responsibility for their habitual patterns of sinful behavior. I haven’t found one person spreading misinformation on this topic with malicious intent; instead everyone I encounter has a sincere desire to help the church. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make it any more helpful but actually perpetuates what I call “fake news” about generational curses. And as in real life, most people would rather assume that fake news is real than investigate the facts and come to the truthful conclusion.
Though many examples of misinformation are circulating in the body of Christ about why a believer can’t have an active generational curse in their life (after the crucifixion), I’ve narrowed the list down to these top four: (1) Jesus became the curse, (2) Christians can only have generational blessings, (3) sins of the parents, and (4) “neither his sins nor his parents’ sins.” They represent the arguments used most frequently in debate.
Concluding Thoughts
Dealing with generational curses is like going to court during a trial. Most trial cases aren’t dealt with at the moment of arrest, but those arrested are given a future date on which their case will go to trial. Today your bloodline is on trial, but the great news is that Jesus is our Advocate (lawyer), and He wins every case! The work that Jesus did on the cross for you resolved all curses against you and your bloodline!
Your trial ends with the Judge saying, “You are free, and free indeed—case closed.”
Alexander Pagani is the founder of He Is Risen Tabernacle in the Bronx, New York City. He is an apostolic Bible teacher with keen insight into the realm of the demonic, generational curses and deliverance. He is the author of The Secrets to Deliverance and The Secrets to Generational Curses. He has appeared on various television networks, including TBN and The Word Network. He currently lives in New York City with his wife, Ibelize, and their sons, Apollos and Xavier.
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