Understanding our Hereditary
EZEKIEL 28:11-13a
11 ¶ Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
12 Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.
13 Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; (We know that the king of Tyrus himself had never been in Eden, but the prophet here is speaking of the spirit of Lucifer which had been in Eden in the serpent that deceived Eve which was the same spirit that was now in this king of Tyrus – so men die, but spirits live on through men from one generation to another.)
II TIMOTHY 1:1-5
1 ¶ Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus,
2 To Timothy, my dearly beloved son: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. (He is both God the Father and Christ Jesus - not two different people, but the same person)
3 I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day;
4 Greatly desiring to see thee, being mindful of thy tears, that I may be filled with joy;
5 When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also.
Paul here is telling Timothy how that through the hereditary from his grandmother Lois that this spirit of a genuine faith in God had come down from his grandmother to his mother and then to him. And so Paul is clearly telling us here that this spiritual characteristic came through a hereditary channel, and the angel that God sent in this generation also teaches us the same thing – and so we want to look into this to help us to understand with more clarity when it comes to the things of our own family hereditary and how to deal with these things according to the word of God.
Understanding our Hereditary
There are a few different uses for this word “Hereditary”.
*In biology it’s to do with a disease or illness that is genetically transmitted or transmittable from parent to offspring.
*But we also know that this word “hereditary” is also used in connection with the inheriting or the passing down of character traits (good and bad) of mother and father from generation to generation.
Merriam-Webster describes it as the “characteristic of or fostered by one's predecessors”.
We see in our opening reading that it’s as though the prophet Ezekiel is speaking about king Tyrus, but king Tyrus had never been in Eden, so we see that he is speaking directly to the spirit that was dwelling inside this king which was the same spirit that entered into the serpent in Eden that deceived Eve – so spirits live on though people from generation to generation, both good and bad spirits, and those spirits heavily influence the thoughts of the person that they indwell. Remember the three stages of spirit influence – oppression, obsession, and possession. All of us are oppressed every day with wrong thoughts which are influenced by demon spirits – Eve was deceived by a wrong spirit speaking into her thoughts that got her to question the word of God.
**Character traits are not just confined to individuals passing down certain individual things; they can also be religious traits that are passed down upon an entire dispensation of people.
The bible talks about the Mother of Harlots – the daughters are the denominations which have come out of the Catholic Church that once they became of age have manifested the same traits of organised religion that their Catholic Church mother had done for 1500 years – so these hereditary traits can be passed down on an entire church religious level.
And then there are national traits and national spirits, and city spirits, cultural spirits, family spirits, cult spirits – all these traits and characteristics are so easily pass on from generation to generation – it’s a spiritual thing, a spiritual hereditary.
Even in breeding animals, we know that the characteristics of the animal’s nature will often be passed down into the offspring. So this understanding of hereditary isn’t a foreign thing to us.
II TIMOTHY 1:5 Opening reading – we find that Paul is referring to an hereditary trait that (in this case) is a good trait – so this is not always a bad thing, but just as God can use this for a good thing, the devil can also use this for something back for his cause and advancement.
5 When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also.
Notice how Paul inserts here very clearly about this hereditary influence – he looks at the mother and the grandmother (their character traits), and that is why if you are a young man looking for a wife then you want to first look at the mother and the grandmother, because that is where the daughter of the mother has come from that heritage – and yes there can be exceptions to this rule both on the good and bad side, but it is always a very good place to start because as the saying goes “like mother, like daughter”.
GOD.BEING.MISUNDERSTOOD_ JEFF.IN COD SUNDAY_ 61-0723E
604-Q-137 137. Brother Branham, I am saved and have been baptized in the Name of Jesus Christ, but how do I get away from a stubborn spirit that I can't seem to break away from?
Well, my Christian brother or sister, whoever it may be, now, most times when you find people that's got stubborn spirits, it's usually a complex that causes this, either they have inherited it from a mother, father, uncle, aunt, or grandmother, grandfather, somebody like that. And if you'll chase back down through your life, you'll find... Now, I've taken it by experience under discernment, because I have met cases on the platform, thousands of those that had that spirit. And the first thing you know, I'd chase that spirit right back by discernment and find that there was a granddaddy, there was a grandmother, there was somebody else back down there, and you inherit that by nature.
605-47 Stubborn--stubbornness is not of God. And now, the only way to get away from that is you have to have faith to overcome that, that's if you are a Christian. You are a son or daughter of God, whichever you may be, and you will never be able just to stand and rebuke it and rebuke it and rebuke it. It's just like tantalizing a rattlesnake; he's laying there ready to bite you. If you will just ignore him and walk away from him, he can't hurt you. See?
So when you feel that you got a stubborn spirit, lay the thing on the altar, and believe God that the thing is dead and you will never have it no more, and go on and don't even pay any attention to it no more, and the thing will leave you. Resist the devil and he will flee from you; that's "get away quickly." So that would be my advice how to overcome it. We overcome the devil by faith. That's what we overcome all evil, is by faith. (Faith in the word)
Whatever area of our life we have to deal with, we want to be able to have a knowledge of what the Word of God says about these things so that we can relate to these things from a standpoint of the Word. The reason we often don’t get results is that we try to accomplish things in a way that is not according to the scripture, and so then it becomes a hit and miss approach, and then we can’t have true faith if we are not sure of what we are doing.
***So we want to look at understanding and dealing with our own heredity and what our parents married into and what we marry into because this is what we inherit in our natural spiritual characteristics of our human nature, and then our children also become a product of this.
*And so we want to see how these traits got into our grandparents to start with – maybe it came down from their grandparents, or maybe their grandparent had some experience that happened to them in life that caused a complex and a certain negative spirit to enter into their spirit and torment them with maybe a stubborn spirit, or a bad temper, or a spirit of unfaithfulness, or a spirit of arrogance or pride, and then that spirit that anointed them and road on top of their spirit during their lifetime, if that spirit is not dealt with by the Holy Spirit, then it can keep coming down through each generation until it is dealt with by the deliverance of the word of God.
So we know that negative experiences can cause evil spirits to affect people – bad experiences in life can break people’s spirits down to a low point, and when your spirit is low then that can be a vulnerable time of when an evil spirit can bring trouble into your life. Look at when Saul disobeyed the Lord because of the pressure of the people – an evil spirit began to trouble him from that time on – it caused him to think crazy thoughts.
Brother Branham tells us about the little boy that his mother came up in the prayer line because he had a spirit of nervousness – it came by an experience of a dog scaring him.
BE.NOT.AFRAID_ TUCSON.AZ FRIDAY_ 63-0607
334 How do you do? Speak English? [The sister says, "Yes, I do."--Ed.] You do. Do you believe me to be God's servant? ["I do believe."] That's what the Angel said to me, said, "If you can get the people to believe you." Not believe me as Him, but believe He sent me. ["Yes."] It's for your little boy. ["Yes, it is."] That's right. You believe God can tell me what's his trouble? ["Yes."] You'll believe it? ["Yes, I will."] He's nervous. ["Yes."] It's caused from a scare. ["Yes."] A dog scared him. ["Yes."] That's right. He is going to get all right. Take him back. Believe with all your heart, he'll be all right. It's a shock. I'll put my hands on you, in Jesus' Name. Don't fear. Don't fear, and he'll get over it, and be all right. See? Be thankful.
But if we look at this case – if that spirit had stayed on that little boy and he had grown into a man and had had his own children, then we know that that spirit could have affected his children and even his grandchildren – so a prophet of God is showing us something here of how these things get a foothold in the human spirit, and then that spirit can be passed on though this hereditary process.
*And so when we begin to see negative traits appear in our own children, then we must understanding that these can often be our own traits that are coming out in them and our poor children are unconscious of why they are the way they are, and so we begin to understand that’s it’s not that the children are all that bad – it’s that they are having to deal with hereditary traits like this person that asked the question to brother Branham who was having to deal with this spirit of stubbornness that they didn’t want to be that way.
***And so a prophet is telling us how to get rid of these things – it was not like it was something that had to be cast out in this case, wrong spirits can be just things in our nature that influence our thoughts in a negative way, and so this is the area that brother Branham is advising this person of how to get rid of this – don’t keep poking at it like a rattle snake, just don't pay any attention to it, then the thing will leave you – that was his advice.
***When our children are young and do not have a choice to maybe show their full nature because of the restraint of their parents because it is “do this”, “yes mummy,” “do this,” “yes daddy.” But when they reach a certain age and the chemistry of their bodies begin to change and then these things that they have inherited begin to show themselves more and then how do we deal with these things?
***Even God had problems with his own children Adam and Eve.
For many years it was such a happy home in Eden, but after the years had gone along for a while then they began to come into a certain stage of their relationship with God of where their maturity began to change, and like a lot of young girls, when they are just little girls they simple just believe everything that father and mother tells them, but as they grow older and begin to mature in their thinking, then they begin to question things, and this is how that Eve when she began to come to a stage of her mental maturity then she began to question the word of father God and began to have her own ideas based on her own limited reasoning.
***And we know that all children go through this stage to some level because they are changing from child to adult and they have to come into an understanding of truth from their own maturity and not from just being told from their mum and dad – we all know this to be true. *And so this is why this can be a very dangerous time of vulnerability because this is the time that the devil can really get in through this channel and mess the family up – and this is exactly what happened to God’s family in Eden with his daughter – and so God is showing us something in Genesis of redemption for when things go wrong in our families.
So we remember in Eden when God’s two lovely children (His son and daughter) sold out the whole family home of Eden on behalf of the entire human race and brought their father’s name and reputation into shame and ruin. **They lost the family home, the family inheritance was ruined, they lost fellowship with God, they lost dominion over the earth, death set into the human race, they brought unhappiness and death to the whole creation of God, they broke their Father’s heart, and not only that, but all this would continue on to cause incredible grief and pain and suffering for hundreds of generations to come.
**All the love and sacrifice of what the Father had done for them in creating this beautiful home and paradise for them, he had worked so hard for them for six thousand years to prepared such a beautiful world for them to live in, and it looked like they just treated it all with contempt and threw it all over for one little lie of the devil and lost the whole thing because Eve believed the serpent’s word over her Father’s word.
***Many a young person has thrown away their lives and futures over this same thing of believing a lie of the devil that he told to them also – and so we need to look at these things in the light of the revelation of the word of God.
***And then we know that 4000 years later, when God came down in the form of Jesus Christ to give his life for his very own children because he knew that that was the only way he could redeem them, then we know that these children of his children (the very decedents of Adam and Eve) said “let his blood be on us and our children” and they crucified him - this was his own children again with the same traits of rejection towards him.
**So God knows all about our wayward and lost children from his own personal experiences – does this mean that God was a bad parent? NO, God is showing us here something of how He redeems his children and of how we are also to redeem our children.
That is why when children get to a certain stage, then as adults our relationship with them has to begin to change like the prodigal son relationship with his father of how he dealt with his boys differently – sometimes they have to be committed to God and allowed to do their own thing in order to really learn themselves.
QUESTIONS.AND.ANSWERS.1_ JEFF.IN COD SUNDAY_ 64-0823M
946-117 I've just went through the experience with my Rebekah. See? Just commit it to God. When she got to be a little "teeannie," and she was going with some girl when we first went out there, going--run over to some girl's house taking music lessons... And this girl... I come by one day, and here this girl was setting there at the piano playing rock-and-roll. Well, that was just enough for me. So I told her stay away from over there. See? And then she said, "Well, it's the only place I got to go to take music." (You know how "teeannies" get.)
And I said... Every kid has to go through that. Practically everyone goes through that age. You did; I did. And we got to think their thoughts.
946-119 So then, a few days after that her mother got after her for something, and she sassed her. Now, that's not Rebekah at all. Took off and slammed the door, almost, and knocked the things off the wall, went to school.
Now, I ought to have, seemingly, just taken my belt off, and followed her out there in the yard, and brought her back with warps around her. See? But I thought, "Wait a minute; I got to think eighteen year old thoughts." See? "Now," I said, "Mother, I know that..." She started crying, Meda. I said, "I know you done all you can do; I done all I can do. Now, if it's out of our hands, we have to take the next step."…
…I said, "Well look, honey, now, you've got to listen to me. It's hard for you to do this; I'm your husband. But people drive across the nations and around for just a few words of advice. Now, if you... I talked to her the other day, and she just walked away from me."
947-123 Now, Becky never did do that to me. See? And when her mother said something about it, she slammed the door and say, "You expect me to set here and be a wallflower all my life?" And blammy, she slammed the door and went out. That was the devil.
I remember, the first two years of her life she cried. We'd go into a restaurant and eat; I'd walk her on the street while Meda eat, and then she'd walk her while I eat. Just cried and cried. And one day up here in Canada, cried all night, and I couldn't rest and everything, me standing there... Now. And Something said to me, "It's the devil getting at your ministry."
I said, "Hand me that baby." I said, "Satan, in the Name of Jesus Christ, you take your hands off of her." She stopped right then and never cried no more. She's the quietest kid I got. From that very hour it was gone. You have to get that... You have to have that in you though, before you can do it.
And then when she--and then that--she started that. And I took Meda about a hour. I said, "Meda, take your hands off."
"Me? That's my kid."
I said, "Isn't it mine too?" All right. I said, "If she was dying this morning, you'd have to commit her to God for her eternal destination. Why can't we commit her to God now for her earthly journey?"
And she said, "Well, that's my kid."
I said, "It's mine too."
I said, "Now, can you take your..."
"Me not say nothing to her?"
I said, "I never said that. We'll quit scolding her, just advise her. She needs a buddy, and you're the one to be her buddy, you and I. We're her parents."
These kids today needs a buddy.
To be continued - the Lord willing.