It's a shame: how so often you find a general Christian book with truly and even profoundly useful information -- stuff you can't find in Catholic books -- but somewhere inside that book will be a little slap or tweak directed at the Mother Church (Catholicism).

Sometimes, it's an outright insult.

Virtually always, it's unwarranted, a sign of spiritual immaturity (in all fairness: Catholics rarely do the same to Protestants).

It happens so frequently that it's as if there is a program in the computers they use, or that more likely Satan is just waiting to ruin things.

A recent book, People, Pigs, and Principalities, is an example: just one phrase against the Church, but one that takes the edge off what is otherwise an extremely interesting book, a book that can help people with demonic affliction, especially the first part, which discusses the intricate workings of demons. You simply have to ignore one word on one page.

This problem is not encountered -- thank the Lord, that we can tell -- in an even more fascinating and in fact uniquely powerful book by deliverance expert Bob Larson, who has penned what is the most informative work on ancestral healing in several years, at least since Fr. Yozefu-B. Ssemakula's landmark bestseller The Healing of the Families. In fact, Larson warns against anti-Catholicism (calling the besmirching of the Church a work of evil spirits). How fortunate. How refreshing. Because folks can really be helped by this, if they pray from the heart.

In a number of regards Larson's book, Curse Breaking: Freedom From the Bondage of Generational Sin, goes places we have seen no other book go, and further into ancestry -- and the reasons why we all have certain woes -- than any book with which we're familiar. It also has extremely thorough and potent prayers at the end (twenty-five pages of them).

Larson, who has ministered in more than a hundred countries, and has appeared on television networks like Fox, CNN, and ABC (he has written thirty-two books), points out that all of us have folks in our family "trees" who may have sent down inequity through the ages (far beyond three or four generations). And where there has been iniquity, he points out -- with examples -- evil may attach to a family, moving through time; it may also come from a curse that has been levied against a family and erupts now and again through the generations if it has not been "canceled" -- not just cast out, but canceled, with the spirits attached to it then expelled.

Consider the fact, says Larson, that "if you take it back eight generations -- approximately to the time of Abraham Lincoln -- each of us has 250 people who contributed to our genetic and spiritual heritage. If we keep going, the number rises exponentially. By the time we get back to the time of Shakespeare, we could tally up to 16,384 ancestors (and counting).

Somewhere in that number of people will almost certainly be somebody (or more than one) who produced an illegitimate child. Or who was a thief. Perhaps a murderer. A witch. Alcoholics. Or a drug addict. Someone who had an abortion. Or who was an abuser. In fact, it would be extraordinary, in any lineage, if there wasn't a good number of such!

Think about it: "sins of the fathers."

Father John Hampsch, the foremost Catholic biblical scholar on this subject, also points out that curses last beyond several generations -- perhaps to perpetuity, if they are not broken.

Might this be part of our missions of earth -- to purge our family lineages?

In prayer, Larson, who is not an exorcist (that's left for priests; this is deliverance), says one must seek who created the curse, how they created it, what, when, where, and why.

Why might your family or a family you know be plagued by repeated problems like abuse or addiction or specific illnesses or strange incidents and accidents?

A curse unbroken, argues Larson, can last forever (indicated by the biblical term "ten," as in "ten generations").

Even now, in the current generation, we must ask: is anyone speaking evil into your life?

This can happen so many ways! It can happen through the words we use ("I wish you were dead"). It can happen through illicit sexuality (look how rampant that is right now!). It can happen through violation of the cardinal sins.

It can come, says Larson, through endless manifestations of exotic beliefs. Take reincarnation. "Almost universally, reincarnation undergirds [occultic] belief systems. As people seek to get in touch with whoever they may have been in the past, mimicking demons will manifest through them, purporting to carry knowledge of some long-gone personage. As they pursue information, the seekers pick up demonic curses."

Some other things that draw a curse?

Intellectual pride. Pretense. Deceit. Cunning. Hatred. Lies.

The list is long. It's why the prayers take so many pages!

Is there Freemasonry in the lineage? Necromancy? Fortune-telling?

We'll look at that next.

-- Michael H. Brown

[resources: Curse Breaking: Freedom From the Bondage of Generational Sin,]

[Note also: Michael Brown retreats, generational healing, prophecy, spiritual warfare, the afterlife: Philadelphia-New Jersey and Connecticut!] [Michael Brown's books]

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