[Here is the full text of the QUESTION from the reader:]
I would like to understand an area I feel has a huge impact on believers of an African origin. I am not sure if other cultures are faced with the same. We have instances where a believer is said to have generational curses from their ancestry or issues of avenging spirits that “follow them,” usually bringing misfortune and bad luck. We have many religious and sect leaders teaching that a Christian would need deliverance from such spirits. From a biblical standpoint, does this doctrine have any merit?
Here is Arnold’s ANSWER:
When the Bible talks about a “generational curse,” the context is Israel. Because the Jewish people had a covenantal relationship with the God of Israel, the sins of one generation could be experienced as divine discipline in subsequent generations. However, the principle of this “generational curse” does not apply to New Testament saints, not even Jewish ones. When the Messiah died on the cross, He died for all sins—past, present, and future. The kind of salvation we now have entails regeneration, which means that the new believer has complete salvation and can therefore not suffer any kind of generational curse.
Today “generational curse” is being taught by many who claim to be apostles and prophets, but they are false apostles and false prophets who do not make a distinction between Israel’s covenantal relationship with God and a believer’s covenantal relationship to the Messiah, nor do they understand the true nature of what salvation does. Those false teachers can be safely ignored and must be condemned.