Breaking the Bastard Curse – Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Understanding the Curse of the Bastard

      In the last chapter, we showed that a Christian can be cursed. We showed that deliverance from curses requires faith. As with all the promises of God, each one must be received by faith. Just as Israel, though given the Promised Land, had to take each city by faith and obedience to divine revelation, so must Christians today take each of their promised blessings by such faith and obedience.

Let’s take a moment to examine how God led His people out of Egypt. Egypt was the land of bondage. He delivered them through Moses. They wandered in the wilderness of disobedience and unbelief. Deuteronomy 8:2 and 3 tell us what God was trying to get them to do.

Deuteronomy 8:2-3
And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.
And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.

If they learned these lessons, they would have quickly graduated from the wilderness into their Promised Land. Instead, they continued to resist hearing the voice of the Lord, and naturally continued in their rebellious disobedience. Joshua 5:6 tells us that for this reason, and this reason alone, all the men of war died in the wilderness.¹⁷ How can you fight spiritual battles without learning to hear and obey the voice of the Lord like Joshua did?

Today, our deliverer is not Moses. Our deliverer is Jesus Christ. He will lead His people to a place of learning to hear and obey God. If they resist and remain stubbornly disobedient to hearing and obeying His voice, they will never cross over into the Promised Land of New Testament blessings. Instead, they will remain in the place of wilderness wandering. For example, Jesus came to bring a more than abundant life (John 10:10). And in I John 3:2, we learn that above all things, God wants us to prosper and be in health. But what does it take to receive this health and prosperity? The rest of the verse says that our souls must prosper.

How do our souls prosper? By believing and obeying the Word of God, which leads us to developing a personal relationship with The Word of God, Jesus Christ. He is the Living Word, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

In the book of Acts, the Christian church was in a whole different spiritual state. Signs, miracles, and wonders were happening daily. People were getting born again by the thousands. They were sharing their abundance with one another. Instead of spending a fortune on insurance and medical bills, and chasing after blessings, they were busy praising God and loving one another. They truly did esteem others better than themselves. They even burned their religious items and politically correct ideas. They were beginning to live in God’s New Testament Promised Land of blessings.

What caused the church to change from the Book of Acts when God has not changed, His Spirit has not changed, His gifts are without repentance, His love never fails, and His mercy is from everlasting to everlasting? If God doesn’t change, obviously the church has changed. And the church is the people. So read this as an individual to see what it can do to change your life, and not as a critical note against the church.

What has caused the church to do this? We have built walls and started splinters that became denominations, believing that we are the only ones that have the truth, over emphasizing small points, and trading knowledge for personal relationship with God, Jesus Christ, and one another. The only Christians that we fellowshipped with were the ones that believed our own religious doctrines, which we fought hard to hold onto, while the Spirit and the Word were saying, “No!” The church has thought that in order to have unity, there needed to be unity of doctrine. Suddenly, doctrines replaced relationship.

Some denominations that believed in healing now have their names all over hospitals, relying on doctors and medicine, more than our Lord Jesus Christ and our heavenly Father. Some that used to be Spirit-filled churches now reject the gifts of the Holy Spirit because they are not politically correct.

All these things did not happen overnight. When Eastern Europe and Russia were dominated by communism, the Christians risked their lives to protect and take care of one another. They never asked what their fellow believers’ doctrine was on the Holy Spirit, or when one should be baptized, or what day of the week one should worship.

We could go on an on with examples of such doctrinal divisions that have splintered us. When the iron curtain of communism came down in those countries, denominational doctrines were spoken and taught. Yet with the new freedom to speak openly, there were very few speaking of Jesus Christ and having personal relationship with Him, nor was the love of God lifted up above pet doctrines. Instead they sought after truth by their own intellectual understanding. But the only source of truth that we have today is the same source of truth that Adam and Eve had in the garden – hearing where God stood on things, and relating to Him instead of making up their own man-made rules and understandings.

Now that communism has fallen in Eastern Europe, religious prejudice has come in. Those who had risked their lives for one another in the days when Christianity was illegal have found themselves divided by doctrine.

The flesh loves to argue and judge, and dominate by doctrine. Yet the Word of God is the only truth. And Jesus Christ is the only way to that truth. He got pushed aside by religious learning and titles. What has caused the church to get to this state from where it was in the first century of Christianity? We adopted doctrines that were not Godly. From there, we developed whole universities of thought that would defend our doctrine rather than submitting to the Word of God. We, with our pride, fell into near destruction. How could this happen to the very people that God gave the Great Commission to (that’s us!)?

Mark 16:15-17
And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.
He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.
And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;

How did the church get to such a place of unbelief? How did it fall asleep and stay in such powerless, anemic condition? How could it remain in such slumber? As the master declared to the servants who observed the tares growing with the wheat, “an enemy hath done this!”¹⁸

We know that enemy is satan. But how did he do this? Curses are among the tools he used. Curses are the very things that satan uses to interfere with the blessings given to God’s people by their heavenly Father. They are his stealth technology. Generational curses, occultic curses, curses spoken by believers against other believers, Christian judgmental statements (which are curses), gossip curses, even clergy curses — these give all the authority satan needs to undermine the Christian’s blessings from God. Remember, God’s gifts and calling are without repentance.¹⁹ God never takes away His gifts.

The bastard curse and its consequences directly interfere with our ability to come into the congregation (fellowship) of the Lord. We believe that the bastard curse interferes with our ability to stay God-hungry. This results in our seeking to find our own way to God. Or, stated in the language of Deuteronomy, we try to find our own way into the congregation of the Lord.

This is like the children of Israel who sought after the golden calf instead of waiting on the Lord as they waited for Moses to come down from the mountain. And it is like Cain sacrificing his way, instead of the way that God told him. Both the calf worshippers and Cain were being religious. But neither were being obedient. There is much religion in Christianity today that is disobedient to the ways that God has told us through faith in Jesus Christ.

Deuteronomy 23:2
A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD.

Ten generations is a long time to be unable to come into the congregation of the Lord. In the New Testament, this relates to fellowship with both the Lord and with other Christian believers. This curse of the bastard is a curse of illegitimacy. Ten generations is at least four hundred years. What long reach this has to keep God’s people from getting to know the Lord with any intimacy, and what implications this has for the church! Hidden from view, it has been a very effective tool of satan to keep the church divided.

How does this relate to overcoming curses? Because Jesus Christ enabled us to overcome our curses by faith in what He accomplished on the Cross, there remains the need to exercise faith in those areas with which we are struggling. Some of our problems are obvious, and some are not.

One of the curses which is particularly pervasive and harmful, and even lasts for ten generations, is the curse of the bastard, which is referenced in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. You may be surprised to learn that it is the only curse noted in the Bible which lasts for ten generations. In the next chapter, we will document how this curse affected all of Israel.

¹⁷Joshua 5:6
For the children of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, till all the people that were men of war, which came out of Egypt, were consumed, because they obeyed not the voice of the LORD: unto whom the LORD sware that he would not shew them the land, which the LORD sware unto their fathers that he would give us, a land that floweth with milk and honey.

¹⁸Matthew 13:24-30

Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field:
But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.
But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.
So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?
He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?
But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.
Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.

¹⁹Romans 11:29

For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.

Chapter 7 – Tracing the Curse of the Bastard

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