Sid Roth: We want everyone everywhere to understand what the Jewish Patriarchs understood about the power of the blessing, to understand what Jesus understood about the power of the blessing. I have Pastor Bill Ligon who has devoted a great deal of his life understanding this mystery that has been stolen from the church. He went back to the Jewish roots, he studied with was it a reformed Jewish Rabbi?
Bill: No, he was a conservative, Rabbi.
Sid Roth: A conservative, oh well, that’s Jewish; my Father used to say reformed wasn’t even Jewish. No, he was Jewish.
Bill: He was conservative and kosher. He was kosher.
Sid Roth: When I became a Messianic Jew my Father said, “Reformed looks pretty good.” Ha-ha. So, he’s made it a point to really study and as far as I’m concerned he’s the pioneer in understanding imparting the blessing. And Jesus understood this; I mean he understood it, because it hadn’t been stolen from the Jewish people; it was just stolen from the church. How did Jesus use the power of the blessing? -Its Supernatural.
Bill: Jesus began his ministry by speaking a series of blessings over his disciples. Now consider who those men were; they were fishermen, they were called Galileans, they were considered unlearned, untrained in the rabbinical schools, one was a tax collector. And yet Jesus took these men and he formed them into apostles, they had apostolic statue now eternally in the church and it all began when Jesus started speaking a series of blessings over them. We call them the beatitudes. He blessed them with everything that they needed to fulfill their destiny and purpose as successful men in the kingdom of God. But then in Matthew chapter 5: 13 & 14 He said something unusual to them; now this is at the beginning of His ministry with them. He said, “You are the salt of the earth and you are the light of the world.”
Sid Roth: But at that point they weren’t.
Bill: They were neither, they had no evidence of it, they were rowdy men, they were jealous with each other, they would argue with each other. The fact is before it was over; Peter would deny the Lord three times and even curse the third time. But Jesus said to them, “You are and they became everything that He said that they were. Now that becomes a model for us, so that we are to pray and ask God to show us not only with our children, but with our husband, with our wife, the potential in them with our employees, and with our employer, with other people. All people show me the potential in this person that I’m going to speak blessing over.
Sid Roth: Now you are talking about loving people the way Jesus did and seeing them not as they are, but what they are destined to be.
Bill: Exactly, and then Jesus then taught them the Biblical principles of blessing; He showed them how to do it. Even showed them how to bless children, when in Mark chapter 10 He lifted children up upon His lap and he blessed them; the scripture says that He blessed them. You know the last thing that Jesus ever did Sid is found in Luke 24:49 when he was ready to lift up into heaven as he was going up into the cloud the scripture says that He lifted His hands and blessed the people. Now I attended, my wife and I attended a Jewish Bar mitzvah for the grandson to some Jewish friends of ours one time and afterward we went to a nice dinner with them and I was seated with a Rabbi who was a visiting Rabbi and I found him to be a very congenial man. And I said, “Rabbi, I said, you know in Luke 24:49 when Jesus was ascending into heaven he lifted his hands and blessed his followers; what do you think he said over them?” And this is what he said Sid? “He said, Jesus was a Rabbi,” I said, I agree, a teacher that means teacher. He said, “In order to fulfill his rabbinical Judaism, among other things he had to be saying the high priestly blessing.” He said, “I agree with you fully. “I believe that when Jesus was ascending into Heaven that he was saying over his people, May the Lord Bless you and keep you; may the Lord cause His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, may the Lord let the light of His countenance on you and give you His peace.” The Rabbi said, “I agree with you, I believe that he had to be saying that when he was ascending into heaven.” And I said, “Yes and I believe that at that point he released upon them special favor that was followed not to many days after that with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon their lives.” Now Jesus did that and that becomes our model and that’s the way that we are to live. Were to all the people, we to whom we relate, we are to do the same thing Sid. And it makes a tremendous difference in our lives.
Sid Roth: Now, you’ve pointed out if people sit under your teaching get this revelation you pointed out that marriages, husbands and wives bond together in their spirit; that children start fulfilling their destiny and honoring their parents. What about businessman, how does the blessing affect them?
Bill: Tremendously, we had one man move to Brunswick with his wife and a little girl and he worked very hard in his company, but he couldn’t seem to get ahead everything always seemed to fall apart for him. He secured a copy of this material on “Imparting the blessings,” studied it carefully. And then it dawned on him, my problem is my father raised me under verbal curses. He always spoke negative to me, he didn’t talk to me accept when I was doing something wrong. And you know a study was made that determined that the average father speaks to his child five minutes a day and that’s only when he’s misbehaving, speaking correction over him and warning him that he needs to change his ways. Now that’s what that father has been doing to him. Not only that, but the Father had never said, “Son, I love you.” He had never heard his father say that, so he got in his car, drove to Atlanta, where his father lived, about a five hour drive from here. And when he reached his father’s home walked into the house, his father gave him a stiff arm hand shake, with a manly hello son, “How are you?” And he said, “Pastor I didn’t let go of his hand that time, it’s the first time I’d ever done that.” He said, “I pulled him to me and I said, “Dad I want you to know something, I love you.” He said, “My father turned away from me,” He said, “I grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him back toward me, looked him in the eye and said, “Dad, I said I love you and she said, my father turned his head away from me and mumbled.” And I grabbed his cheeks and turned his face back to me and I put my nose up against his and looked him in the eye and said, “Daddy I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. And he said, I said it until finally my Dad broke and he said, Son I love you too. And at that point when he fell into my arms he said, and he said, we just hugged and hugged for a long time. When he regained his composure I taught my Dad the principals of blessing. And I said, “Dad you never received blessing in your life, you never heard your Dad say, I love you and now you’ve told me that you love me and I knew that you loved me I guess, all the time, but I didn’t feel it within me. I was struggling under that curse, now would you reverse that and speak blessings over my life?” He had them written out, he said, “I’ll do it son.” So he got down on his knees in front on his daddy and his daddy laid hands on him, and spoke blessing over him. Sid he came back to Brunswick and the only challenge I had was that he became so successful with his company they promoted him and moved him out of town.
Sid Roth: Oh, you got to watch this blessing teaching though.
Bill: That’s right to the national headquarters. And several years later my wife and I were in Birmingham speaking in a church and I looked and he was in the congregation. After the service he came up and said, “Pastor would you go home with me?” So we followed him to his house, went through a guard gate, up a mountainside, up a hillside to a home, beautiful home up on the mountain side and we sat in his beautiful library. And he said, “Pastor, thank you for what I learned on the power of the spoken blessing; when I went to my Dad it changed my life,” he said, “Everything you see here is paid for,” he said, “I’m active in my church, I’m more than a thither.” And he said, “It all came about because of the power of the blessing,” that’s what God did.”
Sid Roth: Bill, tell me the areas that you cover in your course.
Bill: Well, first of all we talk to people about the value of their children; they need to understand that first of all. Or the value of your wife or the value of your husband, they have to get that in their mind first. Employers, they need to understand the value of their employees; or the employees, the value of their employer; that’s so important. Secondly we talk to them and give them a biblical overview of the principals of blessing. And then we teach them on why they should bless their children and then we teach them what the patriarchs knew, how the patriarchs imparted blessing. And then we show them the redemptive power of the blessing. There is tremendous redemptive power and it’s all played out in the life of Jacob in the Old Testament, we show them how that is done. Then we have a chapter on how to bless your children showing them how to impart blessing to them and then a chapter on how to break the curse, the spoken curses over their lives. You see there are two types of curses in the Bible. There is the curse of the law that’s broken by the blessing of the Blood of Jesus, of Yeshua. And then there is spoken curse that can only be broken by the spoken blessing, we teach them how to do that. And then in the last chapter in the book we show them how to plan a special blessing service just like a Birthday Party and to have that service one at a time for each member of the household.
Sid Roth: Well, you know when in Jewish circles that’s a time for presents too, so I mean that sounds better than Christmas to me, our Bar Mitzvahs. Well, you’ve been to Jewish Bar Mitzvahs, those are happenings. So it’s got to me a happening when someone has opened up to the blessings of God and the name of God is invoked on them; what a blessing, better than a fountain pen. Ha-ha.
Bill: We were at a Bar Mitzvah for one of our own church members. One of the boys in the church Sid, while we were in that blessing that boy the parents were there, the grandparents, the friends and neighbors with their pastors the Lord spoke and said to my wife, “Well, you are finally doing what I wanted you to do all the time.” And that’s why God put it on my heart in 1973 to be a part of restoring the principals of the spoken blessing to the church and to the families in America and other places in the world.
Sid Roth: Missing, missing, missing, but no longer will it be missing for you. What the Jewish Patriarch knew… – Its Supernatural.
