Generational curses — patterns of rejection, addiction, abandonment, and a spirit of death repeating across family lines — are at the center of Day 8 of the Hearing From God series on FaithNFreedom. Pastor Greg Locke and deliverance minister Scott Bitcon bring a combined framework from over 7,000 deliverances: the wound has to be healed before the demon can be cast out — and it takes a genuine word of knowledge to find the wound in the first place.
Every other day in this series has been about hearing God for yourself — discernment, hunger, dreams, testing what you hear. Day 8 is the first one about hearing God for someone else: in a live service, with seconds to decide, in front of a congregation, with no way to verify the word before opening your mouth. What Greg Locke heard about a stranger’s father changed the trajectory of that man’s life. This teaching explains why.
Safety note: depression, anxiety, and self-harm are real clinical conditions with real treatment options. A deliverance session is not a substitute for medical or psychological care. Anyone experiencing thoughts of self-harm should contact a doctor or crisis line first. Greg Locke himself teaches this directly: “If it’s not a demon, get medication. If it’s not a demon, talk to a therapist. If it’s not a demon, get treatment.”
Segment 1 — Legion, and the Man Nobody Could Bind
Chains Were Never Going to Work
The longest deliverance account in the Gospels is not a quick command and a clean exit. Mark gives it unusual room, and the details he records are worth slowing down for. The man in the region of the Gerasenes — traditionally called the maniac of Gadara — lived among the tombs. The town had tried to hold him with shackles and chains, repeatedly, and he tore them apart every time. Day and night he cried out among the tombs and cut himself with stones.
“He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him.” — Mark 5:3-4 ESV
The town’s strategy was to contain the man. Their answer to torment was more chains. It failed every time — not because the chains were too weak, but because chains were never going to address what was actually wrong. The man was not the problem. Something had moved into a man, and the whole community aimed their response at the man himself.
What the Name Legion Tells Us
When Jesus asks for the name, the answer is one of the strangest lines in Scripture:
“And Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He replied, ‘My name is Legion, for we are many.'” — Mark 5:9 ESV
A Roman legion numbered several thousand soldiers. Mark’s point is unmistakable: this was not one thing. Many things had taken up residence, and this man had been carrying all of it. That matters for how Bitcon describes his sessions — people rarely carry one wound with one thing attached. They carry a history, and there is often something sitting on each layer of it.
He Ran Toward Jesus
Before any command, before any confrontation, the man ran to Jesus and fell down before Him. Part of him wanted out even while another part screamed resistance. Both were true at the same time. When the confrontation was finished, the people from town found him sitting, clothed, and in his right mind. Mark records that they were afraid. That response — not celebrating, but frightened — is worth noting. Real deliverance is not a spectacle. It is a man sitting down.
The man asked to go with Jesus. Jesus told him no: go home to your own people and tell them what the Lord has done for you. The first missionary to that entire region was a man who had spent that same morning in a graveyard, cutting himself with stones. The deliverance was not the end of his story. It was the beginning of his assignment.
Segment 2 — Why the Wound Has to Heal Before the Demon Leaves
Seven Thousand Times
Scott Bitcon has conducted more than 7,000 exorcisms and deliverance sessions and has done inner healing work with over 700 pastors. That volume produced a pattern he could not have seen from a small sample: people came to him after being prayed over by other ministers, sometimes many times. The deliverance had not held. Bitcon’s explanation is not that he prays with more authority. It is that he understands, in his phrase, the rules Satan has to play by.
The Rule That Changes Everything
Bitcon teaches this: a demon attached to a wound cannot be expelled until the wound is healed at its root. Not “should not” — cannot. Command it with real authority, in genuine faith, in the name of Jesus — and it will not hold, because the entity is not standing on the person. It is standing on the wound. Remove the authority, and the wound is still there. The wound is the ground. The pattern of demonic oppression returns to open ground because the opening was never closed.
This is also why inner healing and deliverance belong together, Bitcon argues: inner healing without deliverance leaves the tormentor in place, and deliverance without inner healing leaves the door standing open.
How the Ground Forms
Bitcon teaches a three-part model of the person — body, soul, and spirit. When trauma arrives and a person cannot cope with it in the moment, they dissociate. Part of them goes away. That withdrawal is protective — it is how a child survives something a child should never have had to survive. But it creates a split in the soul, and that split holds the pain and the memory at the age they were formed. A wound made when a person was six is still six years old inside them. Most of these form in childhood, when coping capacity is lowest. Bitcon teaches they can form as early as the womb.
The resulting symptoms are not character flaws. They are the sound of an old wound being touched:
- Triggers: A small thing produces an enormous reaction — a ten where the situation warranted a two or three. That gap is the tell. The emotion belongs to the age the wound was formed at, not to the present moment.
- Spontaneous memories: A painful memory surfaces for no apparent reason. Bitcon treats that as the Lord raising something for healing, not as random rumination.
Scripture addresses this kind of damage directly:
“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” — Psalm 147:3 ESV
God does not treat a broken heart as a sin problem. He treats it as an injury. Isaiah said the same thing seven hundred years before Jesus was born:
“The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.” — Isaiah 61:1 ESV
Jesus walked into the synagogue at Nazareth, opened the scroll to that exact passage, read it out loud, handed the scroll back, sat down, and said the Scripture was fulfilled that day:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed.” — Luke 4:18 ESV
What Hebrews 4:12 Actually Means for a Wounded Person
“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” — Hebrews 4:12-13 ESV
In context, the writer of Hebrews is warning readers not to miss God’s rest the way Israel did, and his point is that nothing is hidden from God — His word cuts down to where a person actually lives. For a wounded person, Bitcon argues, that is the best news in the passage. The wound formed before there were words for it. It is buried under years of coping. The person cannot locate it themselves. But God sees it. He knows the split, the memory holding it, what was said, how old the person was. Nothing is hidden from Him — including the part of a person that has been in the dark since they were six.
David asked God to do exactly this:
“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” — Psalm 139:23-24 ESV
David is not asking God to find sin he already knows about. He is asking God to search him for what he cannot see himself. And the Holy Spirit brings things to remembrance:
“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” — John 14:26 ESV
Bitcon’s method, across thousands of sessions, is to go back to the wound in prayer and invite Jesus into the memory. What happens there is not uniform. Session after session, what Jesus says is brief — not a sermon. “It is not your fault.” “I have this.” “You’re fine.” “I’m here.” Some people do not hear anything at all. They simply feel the weight lift. Some see Jesus walk into the memory, take the child by the hand, and walk out of it. One woman told Bitcon afterward: “You probably just saved my life.”
Then the Ground Is Gone
Once the wound is healed, whatever was attached has nothing left to stand on. That is when Bitcon teaches to use the name of Jesus — not before, because before the healing, commanding it out still leaves the opening in place. After the wound is healed, there is nothing holding the attachment there, and a believer tells it to go and it goes. The authority was never the missing piece. Christians have had that authority the entire time:
“Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.” — Luke 10:19 ESV
Jesus said that to seventy-two ordinary followers, not to specialists. The authority is not the hard part. The hard part is that a demon standing on an unhealed wound has legal ground — and no amount of authority overrules ground that has not been dealt with.
Bitcon and Locke both note that not all ground comes from wounds. Some comes from choices — sin a person committed knowingly, strongholds built and lived in. Those are dealt with differently: a wound gets healed; sin gets confessed and repented of. Scripture is direct:
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” — 1 John 1:9 ESV
Segment 3 — Hearing God for Someone Else
What Everyone Could See
A man came forward at one of Greg Locke’s services. He was drunk, and not subtly. Every person in the room had the same read on the situation. The obvious ministry response was to address the drinking — pray about the addiction, get him help for what was visible.
Locke did not go there. God told him the man had a problem with his father. Not a pastoral hunch, not pattern-matching from experience — a word of knowledge, the specific unprompted kind this whole series has been building toward, arriving in the middle of a live service about a stranger.
The father had left. What was actually running underneath the alcohol was rejection — the deep belief that he had not been worth staying for. Locke put his arms around the man and held on, telling him to forgive his father and that his Father in Heaven loved him and would never leave him. The man wept, releasing his spirit of unforgiveness.
The word of knowledge was not the end of the ministry. It was what made the ministry possible. Without it, Locke prays about the drinking. The man goes home. The alcohol was never the ground — it was what grew on the ground. Within a month he is drinking again, and now he also believes prayer does not work for him.
Generational Curses: What the Pattern Actually Looks Like
Locke and Bitcon both name what was really running in that family. Generational curses, as they teach it, are patterns that repeat down a family line — abandonment, addiction, rage, poverty, a spirit of death hanging over a household across generations. Not fate, and not punishment earned through an ancestor’s sin. A pattern with ground under it, handed down because nobody in the line ever healed the wound that opened the door. The man at that altar was drinking. His father left. Somewhere behind his father, something started. That is what a generational curse looks like in practice.
Scripture takes generational patterns seriously but refuses to make them destiny:
“The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.” — Ezekiel 18:20 ESV
Ezekiel writes that directly against a proverb the people kept repeating — that the fathers ate sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge. God told them to stop saying it. How to break generational curses, Bitcon teaches, is not a matter of the right formula. It is the same rule as everything else: heal the wound, and the ground goes with it. The pattern stops in the person where the healing happens.
The Spirit of Rejection
Locke and Bitcon both identify the spirit of rejection as one of the most common things they encounter in deliverance work, and the reason it is so stable is structural. It arrives early — usually before a person is old enough to question it. It does not argue. It states itself as fact: you were not wanted, you are not worth staying for, nobody is coming back for you. A lie that got there before any defenses were in place does not feel like something you believe. It feels like something you know. That is precisely what makes it such stable ground for forty years.
“Even if my father and my mother have forsaken me, the LORD will take me in.” — Psalm 27:10 ESV
David does not write that as a hypothetical. He names the worst form of abandonment and answers it directly — exactly what the wound of rejection needed and never got.
Can a Christian Have a Demon?
Locke and Bitcon address this question directly, and the honest answer, as the teaching frames it, is that serious Bible-believing Christians genuinely disagree. Some traditions hold that a believer indwelt by the Holy Spirit cannot be affected by demonic influence at all. This ministry distinguishes oppression from possession: belonging to Christ is settled at salvation, but that does not mean every wound has been healed or every foothold surrendered. Both positions are held by people reading the same Bible carefully. Study the texts rather than taking either side on someone else’s word. And whatever you conclude, both sides agree: God wants that thing off you. Do not let a theological debate keep you sitting in something Jesus died to remove.
The Cost of Speaking It Out Loud
Locke could not verify the word about the man’s father before he said it. He could have been wrong — said something painful and irrelevant to a drunk man at an altar in front of a congregation. He said it anyway. The man’s response confirmed it instantly. That is the actual risk of hearing God for someone else. Not unbelief. Exposure. Most people who receive a word of knowledge say nothing — not because they doubt, but because they are unwilling to be wrong in public:
“For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit.” — 1 Corinthians 12:8 ESV
Paul lists the utterance of knowledge among the ordinary operations of the Spirit in the church. Not a specialist office. Something given as He wills, to whom He wills, for the good of somebody else. The same way this series has said God speaks to each person differently — Amanda Grace hears for a nation, Timothy Dixon hears in dreams, Manny Johnson heard in a dark apartment at 5 a.m. — Greg Locke heard one sentence about a stranger’s father, in a room full of people looking at the wrong thing. Hearing God is not a private spiritual hobby. Sometimes it is the only thing standing between a person and another ten years of being prayed for incorrectly. For more on that prophetic dimension of hearing God, see the Rapture Series on FaithNFreedom, where many of these same voices appear in a different context.
Closing Prayer
Father, thank You for the man in the tombs — that You went to him, that You did not send more chains, but You sent Jesus to heal him.
Thank You that You still tell us what You see. That in a room where everyone was looking at the obvious thing, You told Your servant about an earthly father. We would have prayed about the drinking and sent that man home unchanged.
Come to the places we have not looked at in years. The ones still held at the age they were made. Break what has run down our families and called itself normal. Let it stop here, in us, because You healed the thing it was standing on.
And give us courage to speak what You show us about someone else. Make us more afraid of staying silent while someone stays bound.
Thank You that You came to heal the brokenhearted and set the captives free, and that You have never treated those as two different jobs.
In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Get Help or Go Deeper
Inner healing and deliverance sessions through B2T Ministries are free. To ask a question or schedule a session, contact Paula Holwegner at pholwegner@hotmail.com. Scott Bitcon trained the B2T ministry team, and his full training course is available free in the Courses section on the community.
Questions About Generational Curses, Deliverance, and Hearing God
What are generational curses, and are they real?
Generational curses, as Greg Locke and Scott Bitcon teach them, are patterns that repeat across family lines — abandonment, addiction, rage, poverty, a spirit of death — not because God is punishing descendants for an ancestor’s sin, but because a wound was opened at some point in the line and nobody ever healed it. The pattern has ground under it, and that ground gets passed down. Ezekiel 18:20 directly refutes the idea that a child bears the guilt of a parent’s sin, so the mechanism is not inherited guilt. It is an inherited open door, and the door closes when the wound underneath it is healed at the root.
Why does deliverance sometimes fail to last?
Bitcon’s central insight from more than 7,000 deliverance sessions is that a demon attached to a wound cannot be permanently expelled until the wound itself is healed at the root. If the wound stays, the ground stays. The entity leaves and returns because the opening is still there. This is why Bitcon pairs inner healing and deliverance in sequence — healing the wound first, then commanding the spirit to go. Inner healing without deliverance leaves the tormentor in place; deliverance without inner healing leaves the door open. Both halves are required for the work to hold.
What is the spirit of rejection, and how does it get such a strong hold?
The spirit of rejection is among the most common things Locke and Bitcon encounter in deliverance work. It arrives early — usually before a person has the capacity to question it — and it does not argue. It simply states itself as fact: you were not wanted, you are not worth staying for, nobody is coming back. Because it arrived before any defenses were in place, it does not feel like a belief. It feels like knowledge. Psalm 27:10 addresses this directly: “Even if my father and my mother have forsaken me, the LORD will take me in” — naming the worst form of abandonment and answering it, which is precisely what that wound needs and has never received.
Who was the maniac of Gadara, and what does the Legion account show about deliverance?
The maniac of Gadara is the man described in Mark 5:1-20, living among the tombs in the region of the Gerasenes, unable to be restrained by shackles or chains, crying out day and night. When Jesus asked his name, he answered “Legion, for we are many” — signaling not a single entity but many, all occupying the same person. The account shows several things Day 8 builds on: that the community’s response (more chains) addressed the man rather than what was in him; that part of the man wanted freedom even while another part resisted; and that real deliverance ends with a man sitting down, clothed, in his right mind — not a spectacle, but a restoration, followed immediately by an assignment.
Can a Christian have a demon?
Locke and Bitcon address this directly, and the honest answer is that serious Bible-believing Christians genuinely disagree. Some hold that a believer indwelt by the Holy Spirit cannot be under demonic influence at all. This ministry distinguishes oppression from possession: belonging to Christ is settled at salvation, but that does not mean every wound has been healed or every foothold surrendered. Both positions are held by careful readers of the same Scripture. Study the texts rather than taking either side on someone’s word. And whatever conclusion you reach, both positions agree: God wants that thing removed. A theological debate should not keep anyone in something Jesus died to take away.
How do you know if you have a demon versus a mental health condition?
Greg Locke — who leads one of the most prominent deliverance ministries in the country — addresses this directly, and his answer matters because of who is saying it: if it is not a demon, get medication. If it is not a demon, talk to a therapist. If it is not a demon, get treatment. Depression, anxiety, and self-harm are real clinical conditions. A deliverance session is not a substitute for medical or psychological care. Locke’s approach is not to assume it is always demonic — it is to find out, which requires listening and discernment rather than defaulting to either assumption. Anyone with thoughts of self-harm should contact a doctor or crisis line before seeking ministry.
What is a word of knowledge, and how did it work in Greg Locke’s story?
A word of knowledge, as Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 12:8, is a specific piece of information given through the Holy Spirit — not through observation, pastoral experience, or pattern-matching, but directly and supernaturally. In Greg Locke’s account, a man came forward visibly drunk at a service. Everyone in the room read it as an alcohol problem. God told Locke the issue was the man’s father — that beneath the drinking was rejection, the belief that he had not been worth staying for. Locke had no way to verify this before saying it out loud. He said it anyway, and the man’s immediate response confirmed it. The word of knowledge was not the end of the ministry; it was what made the ministry possible. Without it, the visible symptom gets prayed about while the actual ground goes untouched.
How to break generational curses, according to this teaching?
Bitcon and Locke both teach that how to break generational curses is not a matter of the right formula, declaration, or prayer sequence. The mechanism is the same as everything else in this framework: identify the wound the pattern is standing on, bring Jesus into that wound through prayer and invite His healing of it, and once the wound is healed, remove the spirit that was attached to it using the authority Jesus gave to all believers in Luke 10:19. The pattern stops in the generation where the healing happens. Ezekiel 18:20 is explicit that generational iniquity is not destiny — the pattern continues only because the ground has never been removed, not because God has decreed it must continue.
