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Breaking Family Curses

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The Brando Family Curse

Marlon Brando, Jr. was named the fourth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute, and part of Time magazine's Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century. He was perhaps best known for his roles as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and his Academy Award-winning performance as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront (1954), both directed by Elia Kazan, and his Academy Award-winning performance as Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972). In middle age he also played Colonel Walter Kurtz in Apocalypse Now (1979), also directed by Coppola, and delivered an Academy Award-nominated performance as Paul in Last Tango in Paris (1972).

Brando’s mother suffered from alcoholism, and his first wife, Anna Kashfi, developed drug and alcohol problems after giving birth to their son Christian. Along with his own drug problems, Christian shot the boyfriend of his half-sister Cheyenne. Dag Drollet, the Tahitian lover of Brando's daughter Cheyenne, died of a gunshot wound after a confrontation with Cheyenne's half-brother Christian at the family's hilltop home above Beverly Hills. Christian, then 31 years old, claimed he was drunk and the shooting was accidental. He was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and served six years of his ten-year sentence.

In an effort to prevent Cheyenne from testifying at Christian’s trial, Marlon Brando sent her to Tahiti so she couldn’t be subpoenaed by U.S. authorities. A year before Christian was released, she committed suicide. Christian Brando died of pneumonia at age 49.

These are three examples of family curses discussed in American newspapers. There have been many more including the Hemingway, Barrymore, and Redgrave families. Some would say this is just plain superstition and think nothing of it. Others, however, might want to think a little more about it especially when they see signs of family curses within their families. If anything these stories make us question the possibility of real family curses and ask if there is a way of escape. Even though these accounts are saddening the good news is that family curses do not have to continue, they can be stopped. [The Spiritual Warfare kit. Learn to discern the enemy's strategies, resist the devil and get complete victory. Fight back.]

The Recompense for Iniquity

Curses come on families because of sin and disobedience to the Word of God. They are the effect of broken sanctions. Our God is a God of covenant. Every covenant has sanctions. Without sanctions there is no covenant. Sanctions are penalties or other means of enforcement used to provide incentives for obedience with the law, or with rules and regulations. Just as the Bible is full of blessings for obedience there are also penalties when sanctions are broken. These penalties we call family curses. A curse is a payment or "recompense for iniquity."

Sin has consequences. Scripture declares "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23)

Recompense can come as failure, premature death, sickness, diseases, destruction, tragedy, marriage problems, mental illness, suicide, torment, depression, sorrow, grief, lack, hopelessness, confusion, guilt, shame, setbacks, accidents, addictions, reprobate minds, sexual perversions, whoredoms, vagabondism, barrenness, lack, female problems, and fear.

What Happens in Vegas

Las Vegas is known as Sin City. Perhaps you have heard the official Las Vegas tourism slogan "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas." Not so when it comes to the repercussions of sin and iniquities flowing down the family line. Scripture says,

One may sin in Vegas but the results of those sins never stay in Vegas. You can run but you can’t hide. That’s because curses pursue and overtake. As we have already discovered disobedience opens the door for family curses, and the recompense for iniquities. These curses can enter through generational curses, sin, fantasy, pornography, unforgiveness, rape, drugs, witchcraft, sexual perversion, serving others gods, and rebellion.

Sociologist Richard L. Dugdale wrote The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity in 1877. He was a member of the executive committee of the Prison Association of New York that was delegated to visit jails in upstate New York. In a jail in Ulster County he found six members of the same family and recorded their family history. According to his research he claimed to have traced the family’s Hudson Valley roots back seven generations to a colonial frontiersman named Max, whom he described as having been born between 1720 and 1740, a descendant of early Dutch settlers, who lived in the backwoods as a "hunter and fisher, a hard drinker, jolly and companionable, averse to steady toil." He traced the branch that had produced so many criminals back to a woman he called "Margaret, the Mother of Criminals," who had married one of Max’s sons.

Max Juke and his wife are examples of a family curse. They were godless atheists. They had 560 descendants. 310 died in poverty, 150 were criminals, 100 alcoholics, 7 murders, and more than half the women were prostitutes.

Contrast that family tree to the Edwards’ family. Jonathan Edwards played a critical role in shaping the First Great Awakening, and oversaw some of the first fires of revival in 1733-1735 at his church in Northampton, Massachusetts. Edwards sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," is considered a classic of early American literature, which he delivered during another wave of revival in 1741, following George Whitefield's tour of the Thirteen Colonies.

Jonathan Edwards and wife were committed Christians. Of their 1394 descendants, 294 were college graduates, 13 college presidents, 30 judges, 65 college professors, 75 military officers, 100 missionaries, 100 lawyers, 80 held public office, 3 were U. S. Senators, 3 State Governors, 3 Mayors, 1 Comptroller of the U. S. Treasury and 1 Vice-president of the United States.

The differences between the Juke and Edwards’ family trees are eye opening. God’s word is clear, "The wicked are overthrown, and [are] not: but the house of the righteous shall stand." (Proverbs 12:7The wicked are overthrown, and [are] not: but the house of the righteous shall stand.Proverbs 12 verse 7). The bottom line is that the wages of sin is death. What happens in Vegas, does not stay in Vegas, it follows down the family linage.