Can a Christian be kept in bondage by ancestral powers?

I worked as a deliverance minister in one of the megachurches in Nigeria for 5 years and have witnessed symptoms of demonic bondages in the lives of many Christians.  In the deliverance sessions, we deal with ancestral lineage, curses, and evil covenants.

While I was there, I kept wondering why these powers should still torment Christians despite their newfound faith in Christ. One of my pastors who taught us “Introduction to deliverance ministry” told us that Africans should not emulate Western Christianity because most of us are the first generation of Christians in our families. According to him, every African man is rooted in idolatry and any attempt to move from idolatry to Christ is always resisted by ancestral powers.

I sincerely do not believe that ancestral power can hold Christians in bondage. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Every Christian is a new creature and should not be held captive by ancestral powers. The blood of Christ is a ransom for our redemption, and we are already set free by the blood that brings with it the best promises. I am convinced beyond every reasonable doubt that if the son of Man sets us free, we are free indeed.

However, many Christians in Africa, out of ignorance of who they are in Christ, still claim that there is evidence of manifestations of evil patterns in some families even after they have become Christians.

They are of the opinion that there are families with a history of untimely deaths, marriage failures, drunkenness, barrenness, sexual perversion, and that these evil patterns run through the family blood and continue to manifest even when the family members have become Christians.

In the “school of deliverance” that I attended many years ago, we were told that it is not only in Africa that ancestral powers are wreaking havoc. Our lecturer claimed that even biblical characters suffered from the same affliction. Notable among them, allegedly, were Moses and David. According to this lecturer, these characters’ sinful traits were hereditary and affected their walk with God. Moses could not make it to the Promised Land because he had anger issues and David messed up his relationship with God because of sexual perversion.

Sin is a reality in believers’ lives. No one can deny that. But an even greater reality of those in Christ is that our sin nature no longer defines us; it longer controls us. We have received new lives through Christ: “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12). This is the Scripture that has uprooted us from our ancestral lineages and grafted us into Gods’ family. In Christ, we are no longer yoked to our sin and its curses; we are yoked to God, through Christ’s sacrifice.

If it is possible for a Christian to be kept in bondage by ancestral powers, then it means that Christians can be possessed by the devil. The words of God do not agree with this and the Scriptures cannot be broken. Many of the “deliverance churches” have done more harm than good by teaching people unbiblical concepts to attract followers. They manipulate people into believing that there is bondage where none exists. If Christ has set us free, and we are free indeed.