Lessons in the Ladder Days

Candace Long: I'm Candace Long with Lessons in the Ladder Days, offering biblical commentary to make sense of the times that we're living in. Today in Transgenderism Part 2, we'll look at some of the biblical causes of why we may be seeing gender confusion in families, and we'll discuss some ways to bring healing.

When gender identity crisis erupts in a family, the family generally freaks out and takes the child to a physician to examine hormone levels and see what's going on physically. Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with this option, but depending on the belief system of the physician, the visit may end up doing more harm than good, especially if the doctor believes in the cultural theory that gender confusion is normal and the child needs to be encouraged to go the way he or she wants to.

I do not concur with this theory in any way, shape, or form. It is not biblical. It goes against God's created order, which we'll get into in a bit. Today, I will cover a few more biblical reasons why a family might experience what I call a biblically errant condition. Now, I'm using the term errant because it refers to an outbreak of symptoms showing that something has strayed off course from what God would have created for that child who is now confused.

As I mentioned last time, God is not the author of confusion. In Part 1, I presented reason one that might bring about gender confusion in it, and it has to do with the high percentage of creatively gifted people that I believe identify as transgender. Sensitive creatives are gifted with a very unique wiring that enables the person to detect spirit. This ability is God-given and, when used correctly, is a tremendous gifting. I encourage you to listen to Part 1 for a complete discussion of it.

A second reason a young person could experience gender unrest is a biblical concept known as generational sin. Let me explain what that is. It's not a scary concept or irreversible curse that dooms somebody. It is a very common occurrence among families, but godly families who are Torah-observant learn how to deal with it and reverse the situation.

In the Ten Commandments, we read in Exodus 20, the second one that says that if you bow down and serve anyone or anything other than the Lord God, He will quote, "visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me," unquote. This means if someone in the present generation struggles with sexual desires and leanings that are outside of God's parameters, there is a good chance that sexual perversion of some sort took place in an earlier ancestor's life that was left unrepented, and that iniquity is alive in the blood.

Sexual perversion is very seductive. From the beginning, the Israelites struggled with the sexual addiction that was connected to Baal worship. That's why this second commandment is related to idolatry. In Baal worship, male and female prostitution were commonplace, and the false theology of this god not only allowed for the combination of worship and sexual pleasure, but it encouraged it. Now, this sort of perversion lives on in the bloodline if our ancestors practiced it. It lies dormant in the DNA, waiting for the right circumstances to come along and manifest.

Leviticus 17 teaches us more about ancestral blood. It says the life is in the blood. This means that someone's blood is alive and influential now. If your ancestor was God-fearing, that influence passes down to you in the blood. The opposite is also true. Ancestral iniquity explains why some people have stronger proclivities or leanings toward alcoholism, poverty, addictions, illegitimacy, divorce, violence, adultery, incest, homosexuality, and gender confusion.

This is the power of the second commandment. It is a spiritual law that God set up, as sure as the law of gravity. You jump off the top of a mountain, you're going to fall down. The spiritual world has laws, too. In the Bible, it's called the Law, the Torah. It's comprised of 613 things that God set up to govern those who want to walk according to the Derekh, which is the way of God.

This is a choice. If you want to be His child and walk in His ways, then the Torah serves as the plumb line to guide your life. When a person goes astray and produces fruit that shows up like bruises or pus-filled sores, a good biblical examination helps the minister identify those areas that need healing. I want to revisit a section that I wrote in The Days of Noah, Part 4, in which I talked about Bruce Jenner's situation.

Here's a little of what I wrote in that monograph: In Jenner's interview with Diane Sawyer in 2015, he admitted his conflicted feelings as a young child about his gender and sexual orientation. Now, notice the keyword, his feelings were conflicted. An important principle is that feelings in and of themselves are not sin. These feelings were passed on to his emotional antenna from unclean spirits of perversion and gender confusion that were roving around looking for someone to open the door so their true nature could be expressed.

Now, let's stop right here a minute. If someone were attuned to these biblical principles and could spot the signs, they could have helped Bruce as a young boy to understand his conflicted feelings and what to do about them. But there was no help for him, so he stuffed all of those feelings inside and he spent years fantasizing what it would feel like to wear his sister's clothes.

Now, most likely, to be quite frank, he masturbated while he fantasized, thereby connecting a very real physical sexual relief triggered by his fantasies, which in turn built what's called cellular memory of the experience. Now, Genesis 1 teaches us that God saw everything that He had made and behold, it was very good. Now, the word good in Hebrew is the word tob, which means beautiful, at ease, pleasant, precious, and ready. God made everything to be at ease within itself and ready to spring forth into what God created it to be.

So what happened? As I said before, Jenner's conflicted feelings were not sin. The desire to be in his sister's clothes was not sin. But Bruce was in Satan's crosshairs to make him the poster child for transgenderism. Satan's strategy was to so conflict him with feelings of unrest that he would finally give in to the physical sexual relief, and once he did, he got trapped. It felt good. He wanted another fix, another release, and the insidious web of sexual seduction entrapped him.

Once we give in to a wrong behavior long enough with no desire to repent, Romans 1 teaches that God eventually gives us over to that behavior, at which time we become its slave. I put Bruce Jenner's story under the heading of generational sin because if there were sexual perversion in his family line that no ancestor repented for, then that unrepented sin cries out to express itself in the third and fourth generation, which may have been Bruce Jenner.

Do you remember the passage in John 9 where His disciples asked Jesus about the man who was born blind? They asked, "Did this man sin or his parents?" This is referring to iniquity being passed down from one generation to another. We all have people in our family lines who acted wrongly. I've spent quite a bit of time in my own journey confessing the sins of my forefathers. This is an important spiritual discipline that we learn as we walk with God. I wrote an entire book on generational healing because it's that important, and I'll put a link to the book in these notes if you'd like to learn more.

One thing I need to mention before moving on: When we stand before God and the books are opened, each of us gives account individually of what we have done in our lives. It is written in God's books. But scripture also teaches that families are recorded in the book as well. Jesus had a harsh word for the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23. He said, quote, "You witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up then the measure of your fathers," unquote.

That expression "fill up the measure" is a very Jewish concept. It refers to the counting of the Omer, which is when the priests offer a measure, an Omer, which is about two quarts of pure flour. This is a picture of the quality of our lives that we offer up to God. We either fill up the measure with righteousness or with wickedness. In the case of the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus saw the condition of their heart and said, "Go on and fill up to the brim the full measure of wickedness which your family is known for."

We therefore have an awesome responsibility. Every family member contributes either to the measure of righteousness or to the measure of iniquity of our family line. That is each generation's responsibility. The third possible influence that might come into play in gender confusion is the power of an inner vow. This principle is illustrated by the story of a sensitive man called by God to serve Him. I had the privilege of getting to know him. His name is Mark.

Mark grew up as the son of healing and deliverance ministers, but unbeknownst to them, Mark was gang-raped at the age of five by a group of teenage boys. He pushed that horrible memory so far down he had no recollection of it. His conscious mind dissociated from the memory altogether. As Mark grew older, he walked into the kitchen one day and announced to his mother, "I've decided I don't want to be a boy. I'm going to be a girl."

His mother was stunned. The only thing she could say was, "Well, too bad. God made you a little boy and that's what you are." As the months went by, Mark began to be transformed into a little girl. He let his hair grow and he took on feminine characteristics. His sisters taught him how they walk and talk and giggle, and pretty soon he talked like a girl, walked like one, looked like one. Kids at school called him a fag and made his life miserable. As you can imagine, his parents were beside themselves because nearly every week somebody at church would say, "You have the most adorable little girl."

Now, the full story is a miraculous one, but allow me to summarize by saying that years later, through the ministry of Holy Spirit revealing a word of knowledge to an anointed counselor, the memory began to surface. Mark then began his long journey toward inner healing and the breaking of inner vows. He is now happily married with children, and he and his wife lead a powerfully effective ministry.

During the counseling process, he recalled that after the rape, he made this vow: "If this is what it is to be a boy, then I refuse to be one. I will be a girl." That inner vow was so strong that it was able to alter the very cells and hormones of his being. Now, remember the biblical admonition in James 3 of the power of the tongue and verbal confessions that we allow to proceed out of the mouth. The good news is that there is total healing and deliverance when someone has been victimized by perversion, for it is the Father's heart to set His children free.

We talked earlier about God's magnificent design of every creation. Within the embryo, inside that child's DNA is a set of genetic instructions that directs the growth and development of that child. The power of inner vows and the power of generational iniquity have the ability to scramble the original genetic instructions. But after we repent and we renounce an inner vow and break all agreement with the sins of our fathers, that door to gender confusion is closed and the door to healing is opened.

By the act of our will, these genetic instructions can be restored. It's kind of like we are returned to the manufacturer's default settings once again, which is one of the paths of inner healing. A fourth reason that children can become conflicted within their own gender is much more common. It happens when children go through emotional hurt and they don't know how to deal with the pain.

I want to share my own story because the Lord taught me a way to be healed, and I want to pass that on to you. When I was 16, I fell madly in love with a boy who, some 30 years later, became my husband. But at age 16, he was terrified of his own feelings and pushed me away, and it broke my heart. Now, being an overly sensitive creative, I didn't know what to do with that kind of pain, so I stuffed it. I didn't need anybody.

By the early 70s, it was the height of the feminist movement. I knew Helen Reddy's song by heart, "I am woman, hear me roar." I convinced myself I didn't need a man, and I went around proving my worth as a self-sufficient, hardened young woman who could do anything and who vowed not to let anyone get close to me again.

The Lord had other plans for me, though, and this women's libber was chosen to be part of a music group touring the United States with Campus Crusade for Christ. Now, I was barely a year old in the Lord, but with everything in me, I wanted to please the Lord and grow in my knowledge of Him. For the two years that I traveled with the music group, I tried my best to fit in. But the leader became very threatened when I showed an aptitude for writing songs. Now, if truth be told, I actually had a crush on Bob, but no one ever knew. I learned to hide my feelings very well.

I'll never forget one stop on our tour. It was Lexington, Kentucky, and Bob said he wanted to talk with me. I could hardly contain my excitement. So we went off to a quiet place on the motel grounds and he said something so profound, it shook the foundations of my already shaky self-image. He said, "I have to confess something to you. I neither like you nor respect you as a woman. Furthermore, I believe you are sinning by not allowing God to transform you into a woman of God."

Talk about a low blow. I could hardly breathe. I mean, the primary woman in my life, my mother, had just died the year before and I had no idea what to do with this news bulletin. Now, keep in mind I was extremely sensitive, but I somehow knew that my next words would be very important. I see now that this was a test. I could have said, "Who do you think you are, Bob? Back off and get out of my face." Or I could have burst into tears and run back to my room. But I was way too proud to give him such satisfaction.

Believe it or not, what I did was thank him for his honesty, following which time I spent the first of many all-nighters with the Lord. God and I had a come-to-Jesus meeting that night. I refused to leave His presence until He revealed to me why I wasn't transforming. What was I doing wrong? If I really wanted to become a woman of God, which I did, then why wasn't I? Why wasn't anyone else seeing the fruit of that change?

That night, I learned the key to gender transformation. Before I explain this key, I want to fast forward two weeks later when Bob asked to speak with me again. He said, "I don't know what has happened, but I have never seen such a transformation. You have changed completely. Your looks, your mannerisms, you are so feminine." I just smiled and I said, "Thank you, that's nice to hear."

I never shared with him or anyone else what I learned, for it was a deeply cherished secret that the Lord had shared with me. What He taught me is that I had created a stereotype of a "woman of God," and she was nothing like me. This woman of God stereotype was nauseatingly sweet and told cutesy little stories at Bible studies that made me want to gag. She was not dynamic, not particularly gifted, she taught the Bible in nice proper homes filled with nice proper ladies, and none of that was me. Now, remember back then I was a hardened feminist.

So during my all-night vigil, I listed the qualities of this phantom woman of God, and I concluded that because I wasn't anything like that, God was forced to take what I was and build from there. What He asked me to do next, though, was radical. He said, "Look up all the verses about my women and list their qualities." It took me a while, but I did it. And what I found were qualities that I didn't object to at all. I would have loved to have a gentle and quiet spirit, have a heart that my husband would safely trust in, to be so secure in who I am that I could trust God to lead through my husband, that I could have wisdom and discernment to make right decisions for my family and have business enterprises all my own, even encouraged by my husband, able to fully exercise every gift that God gave me. None of these were sappy qualities.

So then and there, I made a covenant with the Lord. I looked at these three lists that I had made and I said, "Lord, here's the list that describes me as I am now. Here's my stereotype of the 'woman of God' which I hated. But here's this list over here of what You would like for me to be. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to lay down all that I am right now, rough edges and all, and I choose to trust that You're going to somehow turn me into this list over here. There's no way that I can do it. But since I know I am praying according to Your will, I choose to believe that You'll do it."

That was it. There were no goosebumps, no drum rolls, but there was an act of my will to lay down what I was as a woman and trust Him to make me His woman. Within two weeks, transformation became noticeable, and I have never doubted who I am as a woman of God ever since.

If this episode has been helpful, especially to you women, I encourage you to download my monograph, God's Call to Heal His Women. You'll find it in my online store at candacelong.com/store. In Part 3, we're going to look at what makes transgenderism a sign of the ladder days. I'll also introduce you to the transgender person that God used mightily in the Bible. I hope you join me.

As always, you'll find this episode and all of my podcasts and resources at candacelong.com. Thank you so much for being with me. I hope you join me again next time for Lessons in the Ladder Days. God bless.