Religion and Theology

Pentecostalism, Healing and Deliverance
Pentecostalism , as used in this paper, refers to forms of Christian religious expression that arm belief in, encourage, and actively promote the experience of the Holy Spirit as normative for Christian life and worship today. The primary sources of appeal for Pentecostal movements are the events of the biblical Pentecost as recounted in the Acts of the Apostles (chapters 1 and 2). The coterminous expression

Charismatic is used to refer to Pentecostal movements that operate outside major Pentecostal denominations either as renewal movements within historic mission churches, or as para-church trans-denominational fellowships or independent churches and ministries. Charismatic Christianity is very lay-oriented, and in its ecclesiology, the gifts of the Spirit tend to be more liberalized or democratized than in classical Pentecostal denominations. The main theological emphasis of Pentecostal and Charismatic movements includes speaking in tongues, prophecy, healing, miracles, generational curses, signs and wonders in general. In dealing with the streams of pneumatic Christianity under discussion, I simply refer to them collectively as PentecostalCharismatic movements. By virtue of its emphasis on the immediacy of Gods presence, Pentecostal Charismatic Christianity possesses a very strong interventionist theology that is seen especially in its attention to healing for the cursed and deliverance for the demonically possessed or oppressed by the generational curse. (Robertson, p. 21)

Healing has to do with praying for the restoration of health to the physically sick, and deliverance refers to the exorcistical aspects of the process where evil spirits are perceived to be involved in the identified crises either as a result of generational curse or demonic curse. If the victim of suffering dissociation because a generational curse has taken control of his or her personality, this is described as a case of spirit-possession. In Pentecostal discourse, it is believed that sometimes spirits do not take possession of victims, but they may remotely control ones life in negative ways by aicting with diseases and the like. In such cases, a person is described simply as being oppressed by evil curses. Generally, traditional deities, and spirits including the ancestors, have survived in the Christian imagination as demons. The idea, as we will note later then, is that those who associate with traditional institutions including shrine slavery systems, open themselves up to demonic inuences made up of possessions and oppressions.

 Healing and deliverance  therefore live to liberate persons from the encumbrances of such demonic powers. To articulate the environment of this ministry, I often use the conjoined sign healing and deliverance as a singular noun to mention to the deployment of divine assets, that is, power and administration in the title or body-fluid of Jesus  seen in pneumatological periods as the intervention of the Holy Spirit  to supply issue for demon-possessed, demoralized, broken, distracted, and worried individuals, in alignment that victims may be refurbished to proper functioning order .  Healing and deliverance  in the Pentecostal context, thus means being set free from demonic inuences and ancestral curses, that persons may relish wellbeing and wholeness or God s fullness of life appreciated to be accessible in Christ. (Basham, 1991)

For instance in Ghana the PentecostalCharismatic movement has generated many religious centers or  prayer camps , as they are called, specically established to undertake  healing and deliverance . The largest and most well organized of these belong to the Church of Pentecost.  In addition to the large prayer camps that operate under the auspices of the Church of Pentecost, there are many smaller and independent ones such as The Lords Vineyard Ministry of Evangelist Vagalas Kanco. According to his personal testimony, Evangelist Vanco was converted from life as the agent of a traditional deity through the Assemblies of God church. He is one of the most popular exponents of healing and deliverance in Ghana today, and his Tuesday deliverance sessions attract up to one thousand worshippers at a time.

Generally, in Evangelist Kancos healing and deliverance sessions, the prayers for healing that follow diagnosis may be accompanied by some form of touch such as the laying on of hands andor anointing with oil. In Pentecostalism sickness may be perceived as the result of some personal sins, curses, or as arising from natural causes. The belief that God has granted the church the power to engage in a ministry of healing as part of its mission, is inspired by precedents in the ministry of Jesus and such Bible passages as James 514-16 where elders of the church are enjoined to pray for the sick, and to anoint them with oil for restoration and forgiveness of sin. Some exponents of the healing and deliverance phenomenon, on the basis of the James and other passages, generally hold a somewhat uncompromising causal relationship between sin, the work of demons and sickness. The idea is that those who live in sin create a foothold for the devil to enter their lives through the activities of principalities and powers (Ephesians 427 as seen in Basham, 1991)

In practice however, irresponsible believers are also taught not to glibly blame the devil for problems, including sicknesses and other aictions arising out of personal disobedience to Gods word.

Historic Mission Churches and Interpretation of Evil Curses
I share Bashams opinion that a major reason for the attraction of PentecostalCharismatic spirituality is its sympathetic or at least a serious approach...to life and culture, fears and uncertainties, and to the worldview of spirits, magic and witchcraft. The belief that sickness and misfortune could result from both natural and mystical causes is found also in African traditional religions. Just like the adherents of African traditional religions, Pentecostals also believe in natural causality. However, in both contexts the lines between natural and spiritual causes of sickness and misfortune are not that sharply drawn. This explains why African PentecostalCharismatic theology generally holds the processes of healing from sickness and deliverance from the demonic together in an inseparable manner.

Sometimes sickness or misfortune may be of natural causes, but it is believed that evil spirits could capitalize on the situation and worsen the plights of their victims. (Basham, 1972)

Unlike the Pentecostals historic mission churches generally tend to have an Enlightenment mind-set, at least at the official level, because of their western missionary heritage. In those historic mission contexts, as illustrated in Achebes story, persons tabooed by traditional religions would simply be accepted in church if they wished to convert to Christianity. Not so in modern PentecostalCharismatic contexts where the spiritual or ritual status of such persons may not be overlooked because of the belief that association with traditional religions implies association with the demonic supernatural realm controlled by the devil.

This explains the Pentecostal insistence that such converts must usually undergo deliverance so that any problems in their past could be exorcised before new status as born again Christian could be considered complete.  (Brown, et al, p.16)

GenerationalAncestral Curses
Central to the ministry of  healing and deliverance  is what is understood as a generationalancestral curse and how this is identied in the Christian context. From a contemporary Pentecostals viewpoint, systems of traditional shrine slavery serve as examples of traditional institutions that perpetuate the phenomenon of generationalancestral curses within particular families. The Pentecostal concept of ancestral curse is underpinned by the belief that the consequences of certain sins committed by a persons family whether dead or alive are recurrent in their family lines. Curses, it is believed, arise from certain sinful acts including, as we have noted, participation in traditional religious rituals and negative pronunciations made against people. The eects of such sins and curses are, according to  healing and deliverance  discourses, to be seen in the prevalence of such negative occurrences as chronic and hereditary diseases, emotional excesses and allergies, frequent miscarriages and deaths, suicidal tendencies, and persistent poverty within a person s family. Also included in aictions dealt with under the rubric of generationalancestral curses are persisting emotional  diculties and phobias, physical disabilities, and what has now come to be known in the West as alternative sexuality lifestyles.

Personal observations at various healing and deliverance sessions indicate that any negative habits, events, phobias, negative emotions including excessive anger and so on that disrupts the harmonious ow of a person s life, may be explained in terms of generational or ancestral curses. The sources of such problems are many and varied but the bottom line is that no matter how they occurred whether through personal sin, inherited guilt or curses, their mystical effects could be handled through appropriate healing and deliverance rituals.

Christian mission has to do with knowing the purposes of the creator God in the world and allowing him to co-opt you into his endeavors. But what are Gods purposes in the world Going by Jesus manifesto in Luke 418-19, what the creator God is doing in the world includes preaching good news to the poor, proclaiming freedom for the prisoners, restoration of sight for the blind, and the release of the oppressed. According to Brown

Gods purposes are those things, which God is about in the world. People committed to the reality of God seek understanding of his involvement in order to be immersed in his concerns. These purposes are not an enigma.... God is not hidden or remote. He has come among us and spoken to us... Jesus Christ is the normative understanding of Gods historical project to establish his governance over the entire created order in justice, reconciliation, peace and compassion. (Brown, et al, p.16)

Considered from the biblical perspective and focusing particularly on the ministry of Jesus, therefore, the pursuit of human rights falls squarely within the demands and concerns of Christian mission. Loving God with all ones mind, heart, and soul, and loving ones neighbor as oneself, which is the summary of the Christian faith according to Jesus, underscores the inseparable relationship between religion and human rights. When John the Baptist exhorted the dierent parties who came to him to observe their religious and social duties, he was advocating the rights of the people to food, clothing and shelter. The soldiers were also admonished to eschew violence against the citizenry (Luke 310-14). The theme is also present in the ministry of Jesus for he points out that those who inherit the kingdom will not be those who display outward piety, but those who recognize the rights of the poor to decent living and pay attention to their needs. Elsewhere Jesus cautions against denying the old and inrm their right to live by claiming to fulfill religious financial obligations at the expense of remittances due them (Matthew 153-6). His deep concern for the poor, and the conscious attempts by Jesus to integrate such ritually marginalized persons as lepers, and other ritually unclean people into the community, was not just to restore these relationships with God, but also to restore the human dignity of the victims. Christianity in particular has often been accused of adopting a hostile stance towards traditional religion and culture. That may be so in many respects, but there are also aspects of the culture, which Christianity had to ruthlessly resist because of their negative effects on the human person, as created in Gods image. (Ankerberg, et al, 1991)

The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loving-kindness and truth who keeps loving-kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations. (Ankerberg, et al, 1991)
Reading this verse closely, it means that when your ancestors sinned than as a penalty for their sins, a generational curse will overtake on you from one lifetime to the next until somebody arrives along and breaks this generational curse off of you. This generally engages a meeting, or meetings, where the sufferer has to cut into their past to convey up  the sins of their ancestors, or the curses they have endured with, in order that now  they can be consigned from them. Some use this to call out some demon and other ones even force themselves to free the demons. Others shatter the generational curse through some plea equation founded on an unscriptural state that they have arrived up with. It is not there Jesus and the New Testament are demonstrations and have found no record of these types of curses anywhere. Yes, I accept as factual that when you arrive over a demon we can cast it out. We have administration over all the work of the enemy. (Luke 1019, 1Peter 58, James 47, Mark 1617  numerous others as seen in Ankerberg, et al, 1991)

It is not easy to believe or accept as factual in what some may call deliverance from generational curses and releasing demons. Therefore, to be protected, one must stay with the Word of God and should not get involved with these unscriptural methods or so-called deliverance sessions. Let us proceed to the Word of God to get our concepts straight. It is significant for Christians to be aware of what the Scripture says in context to this because there is much disarray on the subject. Extremely crucial for the comprehending of any scriptural text is that we understand scripture in its context. We should furthermore permit all the Scriptures that talk on a subject to convey us comprehending on it, and not just use some isolated text. I have glimpsed too much doctrine travelling on just an isolated text, numerous times taken out of context. We do not ever desire to do that. It is unsafe and impairing to the Body of Christ in the earth. We should shun from engaging in it.

Actually, if Exodus 347 was the only Scripture we had on the subject, there would be a minor likelihood for such a educating as generational curses but it is not the only verse in the Bible on this subject.

For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing loving-kindness to thousands, to those who love me and keep my Commandments. (Deuteronomy 59, 10 as seen in Basham, 1972)

Did you observe the phrases those who hate me It is very clear in this route that the iniquity will pass down only upon those who despise God. Go to the preceding verses in this section and you will glimpse that Moses was mentioning to idolatry, or having other gods before the one factual God. Those that despise God in this route are the ones that perform idolatry. I will verify this below. The generational iniquity will only overtake to the next lifetime IF they extend in the idolatry of their fathers. This is a very significant but between verse 9 and 10. Instead of iniquity transient from one lifetime to the next, if the following lifetime will love God and hold His commandments, He will display loving-kindness to them. In other phrases, in the method of the generations, who denies to perform the idolatry of their fathers will get clemency and not judgment. They will get the good thing and not the generational curse.  

Generational Curses and the believers of God
What would occur in an idolatrous family where one individual concludes to reside for God  Would this new believer still be subject to bear the outcome of the sins of their fathers Would they still be subject to family curses  Deuteronomy 3019, 20 states otherwise. We are granted the right of alternative between the good thing or the curse, life or death. Then we are instructed to choose life in alignment that you may reside, you and your descendants. In other phrases, if somebody in the generational line concludes to select life and good thing, the generational curse and death will not be perpetuated. The buck halts right then That is what you should accept as factual and proceed upon. Do not accept as factual that some generational curse has arrived on you because the penalties of the sins of your fathers have arrived upon you. Do not bow down to the incorrect understanding of some that espouse this error. Believe this Word from God in Deuteronomy 3019, 20. (Basham, 1972)  
The generational curse is on those families that extend in the sins of their fathers according to these scriptures, not on those that repent and assist God. The generational curse does not, and should not arrive on those that assist God. It would be a violation of the covenant for God to need the individual that serves God to bear the penalties of the sins of the generations before them. The curses are for the disobedient, rebellious, and the hard hearted, not for the believer and follower of God. Please read Deuteronomy 28 and read that verses 1-14 notifies you the blessings are for the obedient and verse 15  ff. notifies you that the curses will arrive on the disobedient to Gods commandments.

Jesus became a curse for us when he was crucified on the cross. At that instant he took our curses and extended to us his blessings (Gal. 3 13-14.) That is part of the large exchange. He took everything that was awful and provided us everything that was good. No one although, inhabits with all the blessings that pertains to them. Jesus passed away for the entire world, but all are not saved. Jesus passed away to convey us wellbeing, but numerous are still sick. He passed away to convey us into his family and make us wealthy, yet numerous bear from rejection and poverty. The traverse is an opportunity.  As we, by belief lay contain of what the Lord has supplied, we gain more blessings.  (Anderson, et al, 2001)

Breaking the Generational Curse
Blessings and curses are set before us. We select one or the other by the way we reside, and the outcomes continue to our children. Take note, Gods blessings will permit you and your young children to live. Curses do not arrive without reason. Curses arrive on persons and families because of horrific sins that we or our ancestors have committed. They furthermore arrive when those who have administration over us, for example our parents, talk curses or judgments over us. (Jos. 626, 1Kgs. 1634, Gen. 3130 3516 as seen in Basham, 1972)

We may furthermore curse ourselves.  Until these curses are taken, they become designations that cripple and hinder our advancement in God.  Behind shut doorways, even numerous pastors have arrived to us, inquiring for ministry to shatter generational curses off of their lives. They do not desire the sins of their ancestors to sway their children. We are blessed to glimpse thousands of persons obtain this ministry each year. The shattering of generational curses is particularly essential for first lifetime Christians. They should halt the bleeding initiated by very vintage sins. The judgments should not proceed any further. They face a large assault, but they can certainly win, by the power of Gods Spirit. Curses are lawful judgments initiated by sin. God imposes a generational judgment on wickedness. Then demon spirits have an open doorway and a right to originate trouble. They originate all types of difficulties in the inhabits of humans, encompassing Christians. A Christian will not be demon owned, for ownership is an issue of ownership and Christians pertains to God. If although, there are dark sins or curses, bad spirits will arrive and origin sickness, scarcity, infertility and numerous other types of oppression.  Jesus became universal healing his persons, the Jews, who were demoralized by the devil. Act 1038, Lk.418-19 presents us the power to do the same. All problems are not initiated by demons, but numerous difficulties are. (Anderson, et al, 2001)

Curses are initiated by numerous distinct sins. A partial register is discovered in Deuteronomy 2715-26. The register of curse-initiating sins encompasses, witchcraft, sexy perversion, robbing, shedding blameless body-fluid, being an assassin, killing, betraying in enterprise or shattering covenants, dishonoring parents, mishandling widows, orphans, the handicapped, immigrants, the poor or young children, anti-Semitism, and not giving our tithes.  Many unidentified generational curses hinder the inhabits of the saints. We do not need to understand the entire minutia to eliminate them. To be free from curses we should plead, confess our sins and repent of them, pardon all who have outraged us, renounce witchcraft and the bad sins of our ancestors.  We then will be able to ascertain what pertains to us through the traverse, shatter the power of all curses in the title of Jesus and issue us from the administration and penalties of our ancestors curses.  Then we stroll out of jail, shatter the chains and declare our flexibility in Christ. It may engage restitution, good thing our foes, a plea of belief for healing and instructing demons to leave. It may need a change of way of life and allotments of proclamations to obtain Gods blessings and favor. (Sandford, 1992)

The Christian Perspective
Encounters with evil belong to the most fundamental of human experiences and all religions attempt to articulate a response to it. From a Christian perspective, the meaning of evil is broadened to include all natural and supernatural structures that do not allow people and communities to enjoy the fullness of life in Christ as purposed by God (John 1010). The aggregate meaning of the various biblical expressions for evil, raah in Hebrew, and kakos or ponros in Greek, is that which is bad and potentially distorts and destroys the meaning of life by alienating humankind from God. (Sandford, 1992)

Christian salvation thus encapsulates the biblical shalom, the presence in a person, or a relationship of all that needs to be there healing from sickness, deliverance from demonic possession, freedom from servitude to sin, and redemption from the ultimate power of death. This inclusive soteriology is one that also speaks, for that matter, traditional view of abundant life. For instance supernatural evil is called mmusu. It is also widely used with the suxal verb, yi ( to remove ) in Mmusuyi to refer to situations in which deliverance from evil takes place. Morton Kelsey has noted that in the ministry of Jesus, healing also amounted to the removal of evil

Jesus seemed to believe that a primary cause of sickness was a force of evil loose in the world which was hostile to God and the divine way. He believed that people sometimes fell into the hands of this power, which then exerted a destructive impudence in their lives, morally, psychologically, and physically. (Sandford, 1992)

There are many positive aspects of traditional religions and cultures that need to be preserved, but since traditional institutions enslave people in ways that stigmatize them for life, they could be seen as part of the evils of modern society that need to be removed. A turning point in the power of evil was inaugurated in the ministry of Jesus Christ who disarmed the powers and authorities and made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross (Colossians 215). Those who come under the protection of the cross should thus experience the freedom from those structures that negatively affect human dignity. This healing and deliverance ministry becomes even more poignant in the context where salvation connotes deliverance from evil and all misfortunes for an unrestrained enjoyment of material and spiritual prosperity in all its forms. The recovery of the healing and deliverance ministry as part of the essential mission of the Church is, therefore, an important dimension of the renewal that Pentecostalism has brought into Christianity.

The position of some exponents of healing and deliverance, who believe some sin or generational curse lurks behind every misfortune, may be problematic. Those who advocate such an uncompromising link between misfortune and mystical agents are in danger of inadvertently discouraging individual and corporate responsibility, contrary to the biblical ideal. In spite of some deciencies in its theological understanding, the centrality of  healing and deliverance  in the message of salvation and its import for Christianity cannot be overemphasized. Its popularity provides further evidence of the practical dierences that exist between indigenous Pentecostal thought and the inability of traditional western mission Christianity to respond adequately to the theological questions raised by Christians. It is my view that by articulating a response to the correlation between problems in peoples backgrounds and their present circumstances, Pentecostalism restores to Christian mission a dimension that is very central to the ministry of Jesus, the Lord of mission. The most important point, as noted earlier, is the PentecostalCharismatic bottom-line position informing the healing and deliverance worldview.