Are Generational CURSES Real?! What the Bible REALLY Says... | Live Free with Josh Howerton

Hey dads, when you're fighting those dragons, you're not just fighting for you, you're fighting for your children and your children's children. Sin can be passed on from generation to generation, but on an encouraging side, faith can also be passed from generation to generation. One teenager made a decision many years ago to go, I'm not my granddad and I'm not my dad, that's my heavenly father and I got a new spiritual heritage now. And it changes the course of the whole Old Testament. Well, hey, Live Free Nation, before we jump into the episode, this podcast is recorded right here at Lake Point Church in Dallas, Texas, but the Live Free Nation is spread all over the country and all around the world. So if you've been watching and thinking, man, I wish I could be part of something like this, we wanna invite you to take a simple next step and that is join us for church online. Every weekend we stream our services live on YouTube, Facebook and our church online platform. And it's more than just watching a service, there are live hosts in the chat, prayer teams ready to stand with you and people all around the world worshiping together in real time. And so whether you're exploring the faith,

coming back to church or just looking for a place to start, church online is a great way to jump in and experience what God is doing here at Lake Point. We would love to see you in the chat this weekend and now enjoy the podcast. Let's kick this pig. Let's kick this pig. Well, hey, welcome back to another episode of the Live Free Podcast. My name is Carlos Erazo and today I'm here with the one and only Pastor Josh Howerton and Pastor Paul Cunningham. The boys are back in town. Hey man, what a great episode we had the last week. Man, you were just real quiet. It didn't say a word. The three of us, it was so great. I was a little stiff, you know, like, you know, just a little, I felt a little rigid. Least chemistry I've ever experienced with you ever. But I thought it was pretty good. How was vacation? It was good, man. Went to Disneyland. It was good. People don't know this, but there's actually a few people at Lake Point that they are like hardcore, diehard Disney fans. Yeah. It's a little cultish, if I'm honest.

And, and so. Do you know this song? Do you know this song? It's by Nickelback. It's not. Stop. All right. I think I've heard it. But yeah, it was great. We had fun, man. It was good. Did your boy have a good time? He did. Yes, we had a blast and yeah, everything is new. All the, you know, Pixar characters. Oh yeah, dude. One thing I will say, there is a, I saw that you shared a particular photo of me. I have no idea what you're talking about, man. I was gonna ask you how that corn dog or hot dog was. Did you say, did you just ask your favorite photo of me? Is that what you said? It's one of my favorite pictures of you. Well, that's funny because. No, let's get ready to have fun. That's really funny because I actually have a favorite photo of you as well. He's been waiting to do this. What is this?

He's been waiting. And so, Trinity. You got it. Hold on, so. So first of all, let me, I cropped it because I want to make sure that we major in a major. Oh, Jana would have loved to be in this picture. Oh, okay, well, you know, first of all, I will say this. I will say this. Josh, there is nothing you need to explain in this photo. Yeah, there is. Except for one thing. The shoes. The shoes. Bro, look at the shoes. Bro, what? Bro, you're weird. I know, dude. So here's the deal, man. Somebody gave me a free pair of Nike running shoes in an era of my life where I couldn't just afford to go get another pair. And I was running a lot. And so I wore them for like four years. Everything else is normal in that photo, but the shoes, okay. Let me explain this. And then we have quite a spicy episode. So we're gonna talk generational curses. Are generational curses a thing?

Can a Christian be possessed by a demon? And then, ladies and gentlemen, this has become such a frequently asked question, we're gonna do it. We're gonna do every Christian denomination explained in 20 minutes or less. So, and then we may rank them. Oh. Oh. I did not know that part. So we'll see, we'll see. But we're definitely gonna, so this is gonna be interesting. It's gonna be fun, man. So wait, I do wanna explain that picture real quick. Okay, go ahead. And then, hey, then you gotta explain your camping picture. Oh, no. So we were in, dang it, what city was that in England? We were in York, maybe? Okay. Wherever the Jane Austen Museum is. And Jana could not miss the Jane Austen Museum. And then when you're done, they, you know, you can dress up as the characters. And Jana really wanted to dress up and get a picture. And as a sacrificial, loving husband. Wow. I, look at that. What an example.

Ephesians five. Wow, that's a, thank you. That's my best Mr. Darcy impression. That's amazing. Well, that's my favorite photo of you. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm happy to share it. Hey, if you are part of the Live Free Nation, if you're ever in the DFW area and you wanna come hang out and come visit us in person, please do. Come say hi and find us in our first time guest tent. We're going to hook you up with some gifts. Uh, every single week we do a hat giveaway. If you're on YouTube or Spotify, comment hat, and we love to give away some free stuff. And by the way, some people are asking, Hey, I didn't get chosen for the giveaway. We get this a lot. Yeah. There's a lot of people who actually think the only way to get a hat is to be the one person chosen out of 2000 comments. That's not true. Pastor Paul, how do we get a hat? You text hat to two zero four one one. Oh, is that the right guess? Yeah, that's right. That's it. We were trying to make it easy on such the spot.

I was afraid to get it or go to live free that shop to get a hat. Also. Oh man, I was going to get a flag. We're going to get a free workout is coming. I also want to tease this and let's start talking about this. Um, I just want to put this on everybody's radar when we opened the Roy city campus, which is coming up. Oh, by the way, shout out Roy city campus got into their building this week. So that was soft launch, hard launches, not until August. Um, when we get into the Roy city building live free nation, we, because it's going to be honestly pretty close to our hundredth episode. I, I think we're going to do our first ever live podcast recording. It'd be so good. So you heard it here first. Yeah. Start making plans. You'll get more info later. One more thing to find our daily Bible reading plan. Plus the weekly sermon, plus an early release of this live free episode. Plus the discipleship guide, download the Lake point church app and text the word app to two zero four one one, or go to Apple or Google play store. If you're on YouTube and you have not yet subscribed to our YouTube channel, you need to do that right now because we're literally like 50,000 subscribers away from hitting 1 million subscribers. We're going to keep track of who specifically is the millionth subscriber. We're going to give him a special gift. Yeah, man. If we can figure it out. Yeah. Two hats, two hats, signed by Paul Cunningham, mid tier, middle of the road

podcast, man, just not, not too bad at all. Sorry. That was for you. That's hilarious. That was for you. And I took that personally. Wait, can I make fun of the Israel thing? Yeah. Not Israel itself as a nation. No, no. The Israel thing. Yeah. I was going to ask you. We need every podcast listener to stop believing stupid things on the internet. And we need every podcast listener that doesn't believe stupid things on the internet to tell people who do believe stupid things on the internet that those things are really stupid. Yes. Okay. So this is, I just want to, I'm so tired of getting this DM that I'm just like, let's just get this out of the way. So toss that up there and we will, okay, good. We blurred it. So we keep getting this accusation that somehow this is what I won't read the whole, actually, Josh, are you telling your parishioners that you are geofencing all their data on behalf of a foreign agent, Israel, somebody listening to Nick Fuentes too many times, and they will receive pro Israel information as a result. Bah, bah, bah, bah, show Faith by Works LLC, list Lake Point Church in Rockwall, exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point.

The minute you had Allie Beth on, it was clear. I'm sorry. I'm, I'm being a teenage girl. For someone new to Christianity, blah, blah, blah, you have become exactly what you preached and warned about. You are a huge disappointment. How could you do this people who trust you? And this is like, we keep getting this. So here's what this, what we keep getting accused of is, is receiving $7,000. This is the accusation that Lake Point received $7,000. And in exchange, we sold everyone's data to the, to the government of Israel so that they could propagandize our people. Bah, bah, bah, bah. Okay. Let me just say, please stop believing stupid things. Please stop believing stupid things. That's a stupid thing. So we actually, we got to sweet times. We dug into this. So there actually was, there was an organization called show faith or something like that, that they unbeknownst to churches, they had developed some plan to try to like, to, they actually were going to try to geofence certain churches, that kind of thing, and, and send them some political propaganda, that kind of thing. But A, they were found out and it never happened. B, none of the churches had any idea this ever happened. C, do you guys have any idea how much crap people try to do to churches without churches knowing about it? And D, let me just tell you something. Uh, if we were going to do something like that, D, we'd never, ever would do that.

Ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. But I just want to say like, do you think we would trade everyone's data for $7,000? 7,000 per person. Put some extra zeros on that thing. So anyway, this is just me publicly pleading with you. Please stop believing stupid things. That's a public service announcement. That's a public service announcement. That's amazing, man. I'm getting a phone call right now. It's probably, it's probably somebody from the government of Israel. Is that Kadhi? It's the prime minister of Netanyahu right now. Hey, I want to, I want to celebrate this, uh, last weekend. We had 267 graduates this weekend celebration. Nothing like it. We believe discipleship is not just a marathon, but a relay race. So man, we're cheering them on. Also, this weekend, we have a special guest coming in to preach. Bishop Jonathan Bacluda. Jonathan Bacluda, the tall man. I listen to him during workouts. He's taller than people think. He's taller than me, man. I'm shorter than people think, he's taller than people think. We're excited for that. It's gonna be a special week.

So Pastor Mike Burrow crushed it this last weekend. He did crush. And Pastor Josh, I wanna ask you, I know there's a couple of things from Acts 26. This is the second week where we're in it that you wanted to double down on and kind of explain. Yeah, so here's what I wanna talk about. The reason we wanna lead into this. So Acts 25 and 26, Paul is obviously testifying before the Roman judicial system there in, where is he there? He's in Caesarea, Caesarea Maritima. What he does in Acts 25 and 26, he testifies before a guy named, you just see in your Bible, it just says Herod, or actually it just says Agrippa. It says Herod and Agrippa if I remember right. But that's one of those names. And let me just say this real quick. And then there's a reason you're gonna see when we talk about generational curses. This actually is a passage that sometimes people use to give an example of a potential generational curse. Because what's really interesting when Paul testifies before Herod, there's two names in the New Testament that trip people up all the time. There's, it's Mary and Herod. Because there's a million Marys

and there's a million Herods. So the big deal on this guy is he's one of four Herods mentioned in your New Testament. They're all related. So it's the Herodian, it was called the Herodian dynasty, the Herodian family tree. They were all extremely powerful in the Roman Empire. So for Bible readers, this is a quick Bible nerd moment. So here's who they are, here's where they're mentioned, here's what they did, and here's how they're related. And then you're gonna see why all this leads into the question, are generational curses a thing? Let's do a theology of that real quick. So number one, the first guy is mentioned in Matthew 2. So the guy mentioned in Acts 25 and 26 is Herod Agrippa II. That's who historians definitively pinpoint as the Herod, Herod Agrippa II. So if you're listening, bookmark that in your head. The first guy that's mentioned is his great-grandfather was a Herod just called Herod the Great, Herod the Great. He's mentioned in Matthew 2. Matthew 2 is a chapter where he's the guy, by the way, that the wise men come to him and they're like, there's a king gonna be born. He's the guy that sends people to slaughter all the kids, two years old and under in Jesus' hometown to try to kill Jesus. So bookmark that in your head, not a great dude.

So then that's Herod the Great. Now, the second one that's mentioned is mentioned in Luke 9. That's another Herod, that's Herod Antipas, also related. He is the great-uncle of Herod Agrippa II in Acts 25. Now, again, you're gonna start to see a pattern develop here. He's mentioned in Luke 9 because that's the Herod who, she's not his mistress. The girl that dances, Salome, or whoever it is. Oh, yeah, this is like daughter-in-law, yeah, daughter-in-law, something like that. She does the shady little dance. And he and his buddies are, I don't know, man, I don't even wanna talk about it. They get all excited about her little dance. And he essentially goes, I'll give you anything up to half my kingdom. She asked for the head of John the Baptist. Side note, that's always what happens, is godless political leaders wanna kill faithful prophets. That's always what happens. And so he is the guy that beheads John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus, John the Baptizer. So that's two. Now, there's a third one that's mentioned. The guy's mentioned in Acts 12. That's Herod Agrippa I. So that's, obviously, Herod Agrippa II's dad. That's a good little, there you go. This is the guy who's mentioned in Acts 12.

He's the guy that has the apostle James beheaded. So he's the first, James the first apostle that's a martyr. Yes, James the first apostle that's a martyr. He beheads James in Acts 12. That's also the chapter where Peter gets arrested. And then the angel lets him out. All that happens in Acts 12. So he's the guy that kills the first apostle and tries to kill Peter, the leader of the apostles. So for you who are listening, if you start putting this together, when Paul's standing in front of this guy in Acts 25 and 26, I just want to think about this. It's the kind of thing you read your Bible and you don't realize the emotional tension that's built into the chapter because Paul knows everything about this guy's family tree. So Paul knows his great-grandfather tried to kill Jesus. His great-uncle did kill John the Baptist. His dad killed James and tried to kill Peter. Paul knows that. And this guy knows that Paul knows that. And Paul's on trial in front of this guy. And think about this, dude. Testifying to the guy whose family tried to kill Jesus and killed a bunch of Jesus followers, Paul stands, he stands for. firm, and he testifies to the lordship of Jesus, the fact that Jesus is the King of Kings, that Jesus did rise from the dead, and he's pointing to the reality that Jesus, in the words of the Apostles' Creed, from thence he shall come to judge the quick and

the dead. So, bro, you want to talk about courage. That's like Joby Martin's little thing of, hey, man, God wants you to be saved, he doesn't want you to be soft. Like Paul, man, spine of steel, and he just goes, hey, man, I cannot define my conscience. Here's who Jesus is, and he even just says, I want you on Team Jesus. It's crazy, if you think about it, all these herets, in some sense, they all were exposed to the gospel by, again, Jesus in front of them, Paul, the Apostles, the wise men, and every single one of them responded in the same way, with a heart in heart. That's one, and then two, this is literally, like you said, multiple generations of herets that are actively and demonically opposing the gospel and the word of God. And so my question, Pastor Josh, is, are generational curses real? Okay, let's talk about this. Now, let me just say, pre-podcast, we may disagree at this point, because we rolled into the podcast with like, ah, I believe that's a little different. So let me, I'll tell you how I view it. We need to have more debates here. We do, it's a little more fun when we have little debates. Yeah. All right. Yeah, let's talk about this real quick. So I'm just going to tell you how I think about this, and then Carlos, I want you to try to disagree with us. That's great. We can figure this out together. Let's talk. So here's what I would say. I would say it depends how you define what you mean by curse. So how I like to say it, if by curse you mean, hey man, because of what somebody's ancestor did, there is a spiritual opposition to them, and they will not be able to overcome that

spiritual opposition without something like an exorcism. They can't be free without fill in the blank. I do not believe in that. So what I would do, and I'm going to give a biblical case for this. What I would say is in my language, generational curses, no, generational influences, yes. So here's what I would say. Say that one more time. What I would say, the language I'm most comfortable using is generational curses, no, generational influences, yes. I think there is in one sense, what I would say is it's almost like there's a spiritual DNA. We were talking about this before the podcast. We've heard reformed guys say that because of the actions of a father, it can give a covenantal permission for sins or spiritual influences to happen in your family. But what I would say is generational, you're smiling, generational curses, no, generational influences, yes. Here's why I say that. Now, first of all, I'll give the positive. The passage, and I want you to add to this, you guys add to this, one of the passages that make people say yes, in addition to, for instance, you got the Herod's here. Here's what we need to acknowledge. Frequently in the Bible, righteous men result in righteous children, and evil and wicked men and women result in evil and wicked sons and daughters, and we could give a million examples of that. I'm going to read one passage that makes people say yes to generational curses, and then I'm going to read one that makes me go no, and I'll say why. You remember that passage, Moses is like, hey, can I see your glory? And God's like, hey, man, I'm really sorry. I would love to do this for you, but no man shall see me and live. And then God takes him, and he puts him in the cleft of the rock.

And then it's, I had it memorized in college, one of my favorite passages of the Old Testament. The Bible says that God, quote, turned his hind parts to Moses, and he passes in front of Moses in the mountain, verbally declaring his character. And God says, the Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God. By the way, before I quote this, if I understand correctly, this passage is the most quoted passage in the Bible by the rest of the Bible. Have you ever heard that? He repeated it in terms of his character, this refrain over and over again. I've read before that this verse is quoted by other parts of the Bible more than any other version of the Bible. I'd need to fact check that. So God passed in front of Moses, he says, the Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin, listen, listen, listen, yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished. He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation. Now that makes some people go, man, it seems like there's a reality of generational curses, that if dad does this, there's a spiritual reality that lasts for three to four generations. The reason that I'm going to say no, and then let's open it up. And then I wanna talk about some spiritual realities. Here's why I'm, the reason I wanna say no is this. I'll give you an example. I will not say who and I will not say where. When we were adopting, we had some people who came from a more hyper-Pentecostal background who they literally gave us a warning against adopting. Like, hey man, watch out, you may bring a kid home that has a generational curse on their line. So that all of a sudden now you start to get like,

oh bro, stuff starts to hit the pavement. Okay, what about this? The reason I had no fear of that at all, like not even a little, a passage like this. So here's Ezekiel 18. By the way, this passage I think, if you wanted to get real spicy, this passage I think both is a rebuke to the hardcore generational curse crowd and honestly, it's a rebuke to modern therapy culture. That's a whole different conversation. So Ezekiel 18, God is rebuking Israel and here's what he says, listen real close. He says, the word of the Lord came to me, Ezekiel 18 one. And then he says, what do you mean by quoting this proverb in the land of Israel? And here's the proverb. You say the parents eat sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. In other words, apparently throughout Israel and bro, all of a sudden this starts to sound like 21st century America. All the kids were going, do you know my life's so messed up? Because my dad did. Man, you know why all the problems in my life, do you know where it comes from? My family of origin. So that's what it means when it's an ancient Israelite way of saying, all my problems were from my family of origin. They were saying the parents eat sour grapes

and the children's teeth are set on edge. God rebukes it in verse three. He says this, as surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, you will no longer quote this proverb in Israel. For everyone belongs to me, the parents as well as the child, both alike belong to me. Watch this, this is the key verse. The one who sins is the one who will die. In other words, I don't care what your dad did. Don't care what your mom did. God's going, did you sin? Then that's gonna be your problem. If your dad sinned, that's gonna be his problem. If you sinned, that's gonna be your problem. Now he keeps going. Yet you ask, this is much later. Yet you ask, why does the son not share the guilt of the guilt of his father? Since the son has done what is just and right and has been careful to keep all my decrees, he will surely live. So he's talking about, he had just finished talking about why are there situations where you got an evil dad and actually end up with a righteous son? And he's answering that. And God goes, verse 20, here's why. Because the one who sins is the one who will die.

The child will not share in the guilt of the parent, nor will the parent share in the guilt of the child. The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them. I'll give one more and then I wanna open it up and then I wanna start, I wanna make a biblical connection that's like a little mind blowing. I actually wanna see if you guys ever heard this before. The other one I'd say, I think, we may disagree here. It kinda depends on how you define curse. That's fine, let's talk about it. I think Jesus actually cuts against this in John 9. So John 9 is a passage, Jesus is walking by the dude that's got the, he's born, man born blind is what it says. That's the whole passage, man born blind. And then everybody looks and I think what they're doing is they were a more superstitious spiritual culture that believed in something like generational curses. And they went, they asked Jesus, man Jesus, this guy's blind, so who sinned? This man or his parents? Here's what Jesus says. Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

So in other words, now we can go a layer deeper and I do wanna go a layer deeper. But on the surface, what I would say is, I think what you're seeing there is Exodus 34 points to the reality that very, very frequently, especially when a dad, everybody, but especially when a dad does not slay dragons in his life, you better watch out because you're gonna pass some spiritual DNA. So I would just say this to our dads. Hey dads, we gotta stand up and bend the knee to Jesus, act like men, slay some dragons. When you're fighting those dragons, hey man, you're not just fighting for you, you're fighting for your children and your children's children to the third and fourth generation. It's good, yeah. So that's one, it's a reality. On the other hand, I think those passages make it tough to believe in something like a generational curse as we defined it earlier. Agree, disagree, additional comments, let's talk. It's funny because we did not know we were gonna talk about this, so I wish I would have been more ready, but might as well. It sounds like it really depends on what you mean by a generational curse.

At the end of the day, because you said no, but then you described something that sounds like what a lot of people would describe as a generational curse, right? And so I think you defined it as, and I'm like. taking notes so I can be as accurate as possible. You define it as they can't be free without somebody praying. So as Christians, we don't believe that. Jesus can save you or make you free in so many different ways. How I would rephrase that is that God uses some people to pray for a specific type of deliverance of some sort of spiritual stronghold that has been consistent over in multiple generations of a family. And by the way, I do believe that. As far as generational influences, dude, let's just be honest, man. So it's really interesting. We got therapy terms for things that have theological origins and therapy just doesn't have the theological background so they're like grasping for language that the Bible already described. Like dude, if you go to a therapist, a lot of times what they'll do is they'll have you fill out what's called a genogram and it's literally like sit down and hey man, what issues were in your granddad's life?

Oh, my granddad was an alcoholic. Oh, what about his, what about your great granddad? And they'll tell you, I want you to go find out. They'll tell you this. Go find out, ask grandma. Hey, what about great grandpa? Did he have? And dude, when people start filling up those genograms, what you're gonna, you're gonna start. Oh, dang man, I didn't realize there's alcoholism four generations deep in my family. I thought I was fighting this alone. Man, maybe there was something that was passed down or divorce, I mean like stuff like that. So again, generational influences, 100% a real thing. So again, when people say generational crisis, people think different things. Honestly, that's what I think, what we just described. Again, there's a saying that has been consistent over multiple generations and somebody at some point, and I know, because for me, I've seen this, especially coming from a more Latin American background, Pentecostal, we'll talk about this in just a second, and then they go through some sort of experience where somebody prays for them and they, after that, it seems to, it just breaks that pattern that they saw their whole family go through, but now they're free and they start a new legacy. Again, you see this in scripture. I 100% believe in that.

So it seems like we agree, it's more so, how do we call it? Again, it also- Here's what I do not believe, and maybe let's define our terms. This is what you wanna do. Every time there's a potential agreement, define your terms, disagree, define your terms. What I don't believe is that you can have a generational curse in terms of you can have a Christian person, that's really important, a Christian person that has been redeemed by Jesus Christ that is helpless to get free from some spiritual issue in their life that they inherited from previous generations until, whatever you wanna call it, an exorcism, a deliverance moment happens. I do not believe that. The reason I don't believe that is my theology of what happens when somebody gets saved. And dude, and we can talk about this in a second, one, we've talked about this before, but one aspect of the atonement is it's just historically been called Christus Victor, that one of the things Jesus did at the cross is he, quote, in the words of, I wanna make sure I get it right, in the words of Colossians 2, that he, this dude is so great, that he triumphed, he disarmed the rulers and authorities

and put them to open shame, triumphing over them in him. In other words, one thing he was doing at the cross is he literally dunked on Satan and demons, conquered them, and then that atonement gets applied, it is the application of redemption to everybody that's under Jesus Christ, you are already in his victory over demonic forces and powers. Now that does, and we can talk about this in a second, that does lead into, so can a Christian be possessed by a demon? So anyway, I don't believe what I said earlier. And I would agree on the helpless part. So as Christians, we would say, of course they're not helpless. Where I think I would slightly disagree would be on the, if you're saved, then that's it, you're good. I think, and we can, again, I wasn't ready for this conversation, but we can talk about this. Well, hey guys, as you know, Lake Point Church is a movement for all people to know Christ, live free, and change the world for God's glory. But here's the thing, movements by definition move. And so if you're not moving, then the question is, are you really being a part of the movement? In fact, somebody once said that

too many churches are like football games, 22 people on the field in desperate need of rest being watched by thousands of people in the stands in desperate need of exercise. Hey, listen, we refuse to be a church like that. And so if you call Lake Point Church your home church, and if you have not yet joined a serve team, I wanna invite you to take your next step right now. Text the word serve to 20411, and we'll help you find your spot where you can serve in person or online on whichever serve team you are being called to serve. Hey, thank you for being obedient to God's calling in your life. And let's keep doing this together. I think, God uses different means of grace all throughout your Christian life to set you free. But ultimately, we would agree, the hope is in Christ. The hope for any generational curse, if anybody's listening to this and they say, well, man, I'm a victim because of my father or my grandfather, in Christ, you are not a victim. That's right, you are a victor. You are a victor and you have freedom in Him. But I think God can use different means of grace to set you free in the same way that if you're a Christian and you've struggled with pornography or alcoholism, you don't just like immediately stop or don't feel any urge.

Again, there's a process there. And then again, we were talking about this with Paul. I think you see it more in Latin America with things like witchcraft or some sort of like a spiritism background with people that have, they find out that their grandma or something like that were involved in some sort of like occult activity that was just sketchy, weird. And then they see a pattern all throughout the different generations. And then it's like, hey, I'm a Christian now. I need to find my new identity in Christ and any generational curses is done in Christ. So the point of agreement that I wanna highlight though is the helplessness part. That's right. This is theologically significant because honestly, dude, I just think the Bible specifically rebukes and contradicts the idea that a saved person is helpless before a demonic spiritual power until somebody else does some sort of exorcism, deliverance, whatever you wanna call it. Paul, what do you got? Well, building off of what you said, I love that passage in Colossians. This is in Ephesians one, which is interesting because it has similar language where it talks about after Jesus Christ was raised,

he seated at the right hand in the heavenly places far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, which often when that's used, it's talking about spiritual dominions there. But then what's interesting is it says, and then he put all things under his feet and gave him his head for all things to who? The church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all, which is a cool little thing in Colossians that talks about how Christ is the fullness of deity. The word there is pleroma, same word here. Christ is the fullness of deity. Somehow the church is the fullness of Christ. So the victory that he won, he gave to us and we can have as well. Yeah, a few things here. One, I mean, just to briefly go back to the Exodus passage, if anyone were to hear that, try to use for generational curses, I would just like to highlight, it doesn't talk about generational curses here. It says, he does not leave the guilty unpunished and he punishes the children. So this is about punishment. And if you think about the context here, they're at Mount Sinai. After this, they're leaving to go to where? The promised land. They send some scouts in.

The scouts disobey God, they don't go in. And so what's the punishment? They have to wander in the wilderness for 40 years, which would be about three to four generations at that time. Wait, say that one more time, because this is very significant to understand that passage in Exodus. They would have wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, which would have been at that time, probably about three to four generations. And in the one, you could say, those children were being punished, not for the sins they committed, but for the sins that their parents had committed. But it wasn't a generational curse. It was just the idea of, it was punishment that they had to experience. Same thing. How was that not a generational curse? Sounds like there is a consequence because of something that somebody else in your family did and they're in some ways experiencing. That's why I just prefer the word, it's a punishment. We might disagree on what we call it. It comes down to semantics. Yeah, and that's what the, because I'm like, I'm with you. If I hear curse, it makes it feel like there's been something put on me by an outside entity that I have no control over

and I have to then be delivered from the outside. This is about just the consequences of someone else's sin. But you do though. I mean, not that you can't be delivered. That's the only part in that sense that I would disagree, but everything else is true. Here's what I say to the pushback on, is the way some people think of generational curses, let's get really specific. I think it's easier for you to use specific examples, is a dad or grandfather dealt with pornography and then the next person does, and the next person does, and the next person does. It's a specific sin that's committed. Here, that's not what you get because the first generation, they did not believe the scout's report. I mean, sorry, they did believe it and they didn't go in. That's not here. They simply are getting the punishment. It's not a repeat sin that they're completely committing. That's how I would distinguish here. The second part I would say is, I kind of like, as I was listening to y'all, maybe the word that I would prefer is generational strongholds, that there are such a sense of generational strongholds as it relates to sins. By the way, it's gonna take a pair of scissors

to get the concept of a spiritual stronghold out of the Bible. That's straight out of Ephesians and Colossians. 100%, you do see that. But what you also see in scripture is that again, those strongholds don't have to persist. As you have Saul, who is an evil king, one point a good king, but then becomes an evil king. His son, Jonathan, doesn't follow his example. Can I give you my favorite one? Come on, what you got? Let me get my favorite one here, because I've been waiting for the moment for this. So dude, here's the best example of like, if you wanna say breaking a generational curse, you're gonna say breaking the generational influence of sin, what are you gonna say? This is my favorite one in the whole Bible. And bro, there's a deep cut here that's like, I didn't recognize that. I've been reading the Bible 30 years. I never seen this until two years ago. All right, Josiah. Let's talk about Josiah. Were you going to go there? I was about, yeah. Next, go. So, let's think of Josiah. So, if you don't know who Josiah is, Josiah, when he's a teenager, oh bro, a little teenager ascends the throne of Israel and God finally sees one kid that has a pure heart before him. Josiah walks in the back of the temple. I'm giving a little Josh version. And he finds the old dusty Bible that nobody in wicked Israel has read in generations, maybe to the third and fourth generation because of the sins of the fathers. I'm going to talk about that in a second. And he pulls it out and he starts reading it. And he's a kid that just decides, I'm going to believe what I'm reading here. And he walks right out and he starts tearing down a whole bunch of demonic idols and statues. Now, where do those come from? Let me tell you who Josiah's grandfather and his dad were.

So, Josiah's grandfather was arguably the most wicked king Israel ever had, a guy named Manasseh. Let me read to you what Manasseh did is nasty. He rebuilt the high places, which was just spiritual, nasty strongholds, demonic things. He worshiped Baal and Asherah. He worshiped the stars. So, now we're into astrology that the other pagan nations were into. I'm going to list some things. He practiced sorcery, divination, medium spiritist. Listen to this. He built a pagan temple to a demonic false god inside of the temple of the one true God. So, he's defiling every holy thing God has. The Bible says he shed innocent blood until Jerusalem was, quote, filled with it. And then to top it all off, he sacrificed his own sons in the fire. He burned alive some of his own children in worship of demonic false gods. So, that's Josiah's granddad. Now, who's Josiah's dad? What about generational curses? Who's Josiah's dad? His dad was this dude named Amon. Amon, the Bible says, quote, continued in the sins of his father, worshiped and sacrificed to pagan gods, forsook the God of his ancestors. And then the Bible says he, quote, increased the guilt. So, as bad as Manasseh was, this guy made it worse. I love this so much. But then Josiah comes along. He just opens up the Word of God. He chooses to believe it. But dude, here's the deep cut, dude. So, what Josiah could have done is he could have opened his Bible. And here's my warning to people who overplay the generational curse thing. He could have opened his Bible and read all of it and been, you know what, man, it's great. But I got a generational curse because of Manasseh and because of Amon. But then it says, I love this so much. All right, check this out. Listen close. Second Chronicles 34.3. In the eighth year of his reign, while he was still young, he began to seek the God of his father, David. David was not his dad. Amon was his dad, and Manasseh was his dad. And then 2 Kings 22.2 says this. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and followed completely the ways of his father, David. Not turning to the right of left. Now, bro, here's what's going on here. What apparently Josiah did is he opens the Bible and he realizes my dad and my grandpa were demonic, wicked men. But then he went, I don't gotta be who my dad or my grandpa were. He goes back up in his family tree and he finds a godly man and he goes, I choose to make that man my spiritual heritage. I don't gotta be who my dad was because my heavenly father is my dad. And he was in my grandfather, great-grandfather, David. And he claims the spiritual heritage of David. Now, listen, you want to talk about things affecting generations, so here's the deep cut. That wasn't even the deep cut. Here's the deep cut. So a few years ago, I'm studying for the preaching series through the book of Daniel.

So then, dude, when you read Daniel, do you know where I'm going with this? I don't know where you're going. I don't know where you're going. Bro, I'm about to blow your mind. The Bible's amazing. I'm gonna blow your mind. So when you read Daniel, they take all these little kids into Babylon, and then they get in there. It's Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And all we know, we don't know much about them at all. All we know is that they were, quote, royal kids that were raised in the palace. That's all we know. They go to Babylon, this demonic thing. Bro, these kids stinking lay it down. You get in there and they're there and they hold the line. They're in the most powerful palace in the world, this demonic palace. They refused to bow before golden idols. They're like, you know, the King is like, I'm actually gonna burn you alive. And they're like, that's fine, that's fine. You do that, man. But what we're not gonna do is betray God. They threatened Daniel's life, quit praying. And he's like, man, you do what you want. You throw me in that thing. I'm not gonna quit praying to my God. So like, they hold it, they're teenagers. So then you start asking the question, like, bro, where did these kids, kids, where'd they get this spiritual backbone? Okay, let's check this out. Daniel 921, while I was still in prayer, Gabriel, this is Daniel, the man I had seen earlier in the vision, so you wanna talk about spiritual influences, came to me in swift flight about the time of the evening sacrifice. Now, I got this from John Tyson. Now, you start noticing, you start going,

whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you talking about evening sacrifice? You're in Babylon. What are you talking about evening sacrifice? Because evening sacrifice is referring to the temple schedule from ancient Jerusalem. Okay, so here's where it starts to connect. All we know about these dudes is they were quote of royal descent and nobility. Now, all right, you start doing some genealogical math and what you realize is Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they were in the royal palace when Josiah opens up the book of the law and leads a national revival in Israel. And these four teenagers have the discipleship they need to walk up into Babylon and resist an entire demonic power because one teenager made a decision many years ago to go, I'm not my granddad and I'm not my dad. That's my heavenly father and I got a new spiritual heritage now. And it changes the course of the whole Old Testament. That's right. Boom. Wow. Wow. Can I share a personal? Come on, do it. I mean, just to be an open and vulnerable. You mentioned earlier, Genogram,

I've actually drawn mine for people before. Really? Yeah, and if I were to draw it for y'all, you'd be cross-eyed. It's pretty messed up. I think I've shared anywhere. I've shared in here before, a little massive long history of divorce in my family. Literally every immediate family member, extended family member, except for I believe one has had a divorce. And I mean, and it's a lot of brokenness. I think I'm one of the first positive I jumped on with you guys. I shared, I mean, after, and I emphasize after my parents got married, my mom's dad had an affair with my dad's mom. Wait, say it one more time. After my parents got married, my mom's dad had an affair with my dad's mom. Both couples divorced and my mom's dad married my dad's mom. That hurts at Thanksgiving. Yeah. I mean, yeah. And I mean, it's by God's grace, there's been redemption, but I'm just saying that, it's about generational strongholds. If you want to use curses,

whatever things you want to say, man, that's there. And by the way, I would be a fool to look at that and not take that seriously. I'd be a fool to look at that and say, oh, I'm good. Like, no, there does seem to be some kind of a special attack. The enemy has given my family in every direction on this. On the other hand, to your point, I can't look at that and say, well, I guess I'm cursed. I guess I'm just going to get divorced. So maybe I shouldn't get married. Or if I do, it's just going to happen. Just got to prepare myself for it. No, instead it's a both and where I say, hey, there seems to be a special attack on the enemy. And then because of that, I'm going to call on every means I can of prayer and the prayer of others so that in my generation with me, it stops. By the grace of God, the cycle is broken. And if you even think about that word stronghold, if you think about it in a war and a battle, if there's a stronghold, usually we have to have a both and of a ground war and an air war. You can't just do it by the ground war.

You've got to have air support. So I'm going to call an air support through prayer and the prayer of others to try to beat that in my marriage. But then also I've got to know that if this is history, it is on me to take responsibility and say, no, I'm also going to do everything on my end to fight the ground war and beat it. So that if my marriage is struggling, I can't say, well, I guess I'm just cursed. It's their fault. It's my dad's fault. It's my granddad's fault or whoever's fault. I say, no, no, no. It's on me to have a healthy marriage. It's a both and. I've got to take it seriously and realize the stakes and realize I'm going to need supernatural help. And I've got to realize I've got to do everything within my power to break the cycle. So it's a both and for me. I take it really seriously. Here's why this is so important. And I think we're all on the same page on this. Here's why it's so important. Because honestly, man, we know who listens to podcasts. Honestly, it's a bunch of dudes that don't have a spiritual background. And the reason I'm real nervous

about some of the language that surrounds the generational cursing is it puts this thing in a guy's head that like, I can't because my dad did. Exactly. Here's what I want to point out. And we're all going to be on the same page on this. To double click on what you just said, what I want to point out, you go back to that Exodus 34 passage. When God describes his character, listen really close. This is so fascinating. Listen really close to the numeric values attached to the different actions of God. So God says, if you're a... Listen, really close to the, there's gonna be two numbers that I say in this, when I quote this verse. I hope I remember it from memory. So God says, the Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness, forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished. He punishes the children and their children to the third and fourth generation for the sins of the fathers. But then he says later, he talks about how he has his loving kindness

last to a thousand generations. A thousand generations. So what you're getting is, here's what you're getting, is that the grace of God is more powerful than the power of sin. And dude, I don't care who you are. I don't care what you did. I definitely don't care what your dad did. I don't care what your granddad did. In Christ, you don't gotta do the things you used to do and you don't gotta do the things that your dad or your granddad did because in Christ, you're not the person you used to be. Amen. Amen, and to the person that says, man, I can't because my dad did. We would say, you can because the son of God, Jesus died for you and disarmed the powers and authorities and he made a public spectacle of them, triumphant over them by the cross. In him, you are new and that is good news. That's good. Amen. And again, I just wanna keep saying, hey man, you have a different dad now. That's good. You got a different dad now. So along those lines, Pastor Josh, can a Christian be possessed by a demon?

Yeah, let me answer, because it is germane to this question. You get this a lot. So honestly, I'll give a little bit of a curveball answer and then let's do every Christian denomination in 20 minutes. It's gonna be really fun. We're gonna have some fun with this. That's great. It's a lot of faith. You're a man of faith. Yeah, we're just gonna go awesome, just gonna go awesome. Okay, can a Christian be possessed by a demon? Now I wanna give a shout out to Pastor Mark Driscoll. These are some really helpful categories I heard. It depends how you define the word possessed. So I wanna do this. So let's go Oxford Dictionary. Oxford Dictionary gives three definitions of the word possessed. Number one, have as belonging to one or own, okay? Now, so belong to one or own, that's definition one. If you mean, can a Christian own, can a demon own a Christian? The answer is no, no. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son. So I just wanna say this to you, man. Only one person has purchased you is Jesus Christ at the cost of his own blood. In fact, I'll just say this.

On this note, what some Christians will do is they'll go, okay, yeah, but God did possess you, but now a demon possesses you. And I will just gently point this out. We may get into soteriology later. A lot of people from particularly some, not all Pentecostal backgrounds that have a strong belief in that you can lose your salvation, they'll go, okay, you did belong to Jesus, but now you belong to a demon. So I would just say, somebody goes, hey, Josh, can a Christian lose their salvation? Well, here's what I would say. The Bible says this, salvation belongs to the Lord. So the question isn't whether a Christian can lose their salvation, but whether God can lose a Christian. The answer is no, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. So on definition number one, if by that you mean, can a demon own a Christian? No, okay. Definition number two, Oxford Dictionary. Have possession of as distinct from ownership. So if that's your hat and I borrow it, but it still belongs to you, I have possession of it, but it doesn't belong to me. I actually think in one, I would qualify some language around this in one sense, I would say yes.

So here's the analogy that sometimes would be used. And what I would do on this, if I'm pointing to a passage, is I would go to two things. Number one, when you read the word demon possessed in the New Testament, the Greek is literally just one word, Paul knows this. It's just one word. It just is demonized. So think about the word fossilized. It's very, very similar, fossilized. In other words, over time, a person lent themselves to this demonic activity, a sin, something like that. And over time, there's this thing that starts to crystallize or form in you. The analogy that I would give is if you think of your life like a house, you're the legal resident of your home, nobody else has the right to move in, watch this, this is really important, without your permission. This is really important, without your permission. This is why Jesus, and again, I'm stretching an analogy, there's more I wanna say. When Jesus talks about how he came to bind the strong man, and he specifically is talking about, he's talking about a home and a strong man, so I can plunder his goods. He's talking about, hey, man, I'm the strong man. I came to, Jesus came to bind the strong man. This was, you know, in quote unquote, possession of the home. Here's what I would say.

What you can do, even if you own a home, is you can invite. I'd a bunch of people in, I mean, let me open my door to you. I can't come in and that kind of thing. And then they can decide to stay and they can make your life pretty daggum miserable. We call them squatters. So they possess no legal right to be there, but they are very willing to squat, watch this, until you exercise your legal authority to evict them. I would say in one sense, I think on rare occasions when Christians give themselves over to habitual sin, radical forms of unbelief, dark addiction. I honestly, dude, listen, I'm gonna keep saying this. Some people laugh at me, mock me, tinfoil hat, the thing. Occult activity, all the Ouija boards and sorcery and healing crystals and all this stuff. Like, hey bro, get rid of that stuff. People, is that stuff real? Yes, it's really demonic. What I would say is Christians can, through those things, they can potentially, I might use this imperfect language. They can open a door to internal demonic influence that has no legal authority to be there and it can be immediately evicted in Jesus' name. Amen. That's two. Three, let me do one last one. Let me put a bow on it.

If you define possession, Oxford Dictionary definition number three, an ability, quality, or characteristic. An ability, quality, or characteristic. Okay, if you're gonna define possess like that, that's another one I would say yes. I'll go back to the New Testament. The Greek terminology for demon possession is very frequently demonized, fossilized. And what it's saying is, in the same way that if something fossilizes, it takes on the characteristics of stone. In the same way, man, you can do things and you can manifest demonic character or say things that have a demonic origin. Dude, I think you're gonna have to, it's gonna take a pair of scissors to get out of the Bible. There's sometimes a Christian who do that. Here's my analogy and y'all disagree with me. That's fine, we can fight about it. When Jesus says to Peter, so Jesus goes, hey man, here's what I'm gonna do and here's my plan of redemption. And Peter's like, never Lord, we're never gonna let that happen. And Jesus looks at him and he says, get behind me, you say it, get behind me, Satan. When he does that, he's not talking to Peter,

he's not talking to the person, he's talking to the spirit behind the person. Jesus is, he knows, hey man, it came out of your mouth, but it came from the father of lies. It came through you, but it came from him. So in that sense, yeah, I'd say, so in those second two senses, I think you might say yes. In the first sense, let me just say this, definitively no. And here's how I'd put a bow on it. If you're a Christian, you can be oppressed by a demon, but you can never be possessed by a demon. Why? Because you are a blood-bought possession of the living God. Amen. There it is. Agree, disagree, additional comments. You got it. Well, I was gonna defer to you on this one. Go ahead. You're the local charismatic. You're the generational charismatic. You're the demonology expert in the room. I'm preaching the gospel of freedom. Christ is victor, Jesus is king. I'm not the generational curses guy. Live free. Live free, that's right, in Jesus' name. I'll say to you real fast,

we talked a little bit this off air when we were talking about, we joke about it about the generational curses thing, which is there is a thing more like in Western countries and modernized civilizations about sin being, oh, it's just personal responsibility, which by the way, in part it is. We hit that earlier, don't have to recap again, but the idea of I've got to take responsibility for my sin, my decisions. But I will say there is much more attunement in other parts of the world, the idea of it is that, and there are spiritual forces of darkness that we have to resist that can attach themselves to different sins that we are acceptable to. And so like, for example, I did some ministry in Dubai one time and we would do these labor camps at night and we'd be ministering to people from all over the world. Wait, you've been to Dubai? Yeah, have you? Have you ever been there? No, I have not, but I was gonna say, I'm gonna celebrate every time Paul has been somewhere, I'm gonna celebrate that. That's what I'm saying. I'm just like, I'm gonna celebrate that. That's great. You've never been?

I've never been to Dubai and I'd love to go someday. Have to go someday. But I'd be glad you have, man. Me too. It says something about Paul that he made it to the Muslim country before making it. Oh my God. That's a joke. That's a joke, man. To share my faith, to share my faith. Oh, Jesus took you out of your shoes. That baptized people, the person who called out. I repent, I repent. Anyways, so yeah, so like these would be people from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, really hard places to get to, but that was part of the strategies. They'd come in, they'd work during the day and these, they were camps at night. So we would eventually share the gospel with them. But the first story we would tell them out of scripture was the story of the Dabaniyak who was like, they had to chain because he was so possessed by them. And they were just falling on every word because there's much more to it. This is a real thing. There are demonic forces. And so even when I say with believers to your point, while we cannot be possessed, we can be oppressed and we can invite that in.

It's not just always, it's usually not against our will. We're inviting them in and they will gladly take whatever inch and space you can give them. So to your point, I think we need to be more aware that while yes, sin is something we have to take responsibility for in our actions, we can also invite darkness into our lives that will take every inch and lead us into more sin. That'd be the only thing I'd say on that. That's great. The Bible says that sin can be passed on from generation to generation. I think in a similar line, but on an encouraging side is faith can also be passed from generation to generation. That's right, Carlos. And so speaking of passing faith from generation to generation, what we've seen in the history of Christianity is that there's been groups of people that have tried to do that. And what they've tried to do is they've tried to preserve what they believe was important and essential to the faith. We call those denominations today. And so I wanna- We went from demon to denomination. There's no connection between those two words, by the way. And so now some people have done that well, other people, not so much. Some have divided unnecessarily, others have faithfully contended

for what is true until today. And so what I want you guys to do, help me understand every single Christian denomination in the next 20 minutes. Well, hey, Live Free Nation, thanks for tuning in today. Hey, today's conversation on generational curses and demon possession went a bit extra long. And so once we got into the conversation, there was too much to unpack. And honestly, we just didn't wanna rush it. So instead of cramming everything together into one episode, we decided to do a bonus episode dropping this Wednesday, May 20th, where we're gonna be breaking down and explaining every major Christian denomination in about 40 minutes. And so we're gonna be talking Catholics, Baptists, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists, Orthodox, non-denominational churches, and more. What they believe, where they came from, what makes them different, which disagreements are secondary and which ones actually matter. And honestly, this is gonna be really fun. So if you've ever wondered why are there so many denominations? Are denominations a good thing or a bad thing? What's the difference between all these churches or even how do I know which one to trust? Don't miss Wednesday's bonus episode. Make sure you subscribe.

Turn on notifications and we will see you then. All right. Thank you for watching. I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.