And it came to pass, when Joram saw Jehu, that he said, Is it peace, Jehu? And he answered, What peace, so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many? - 2Kings 9: 22 (KJV)
As Christians we often have a tendency to over-Christianize things. To seek overtly spiritual reasons for everyday occurrences. I am sure we see this all the time in church or have been guilty of it ourselves. Far too often the phrase "the Lord showed me" is really just Christo-speak for justifying our own feelings and the desires of our own hearts. It turns out usually to be a pretty good deal for God as everything positive is attributed to a work of the Holy Spirit and everything negative is usually associated with an attack from Satan. Often however it is actually neither. It is just life. This phenomena is what I often refer to as the convenience of false believing. Just as the world encourages a victim mentality, so does the church often times. It is rooted however in taking pious sounding snippets and blowing them up beyond the scope and reality of the Bible.
While this is merely problematic on a personal level it can become dangerous when dealing with false teachers and wannabe prophets. That is because when they apply it with nefarious motives it can result in swaths of Christians being falsely indoctrinated into a belief that is extra-biblical. Once rooted in these false beliefs it can be very difficult to break through with the truth of the Word of God. It is always difficult to admit to oneself that we have been snookered. I remember when writing about the fallacy of "slain in the Spirit" that while liberating to finally know the biblical truth it was embarrassing to have to admit I was wrong for so many years. So it can be as Christendom is littered with extra-biblical teachings and concepts that pollute the body of Christ. That often get our focus off of Jesus Christ. One of these is the notion of the "Jezebel Spirit." Anyone who was raised in charismatic churches has certainly heard this phrase uttered before. The problem is it is often stretched way beyond the parameters of the actual role Jezebel plays in the Bible. Because it is convenient. It is easier to sound deep on a spiritual warfare level than it is to do actual warfare and admit where we are perhaps wrong. So let us reason together and first see who Jezebel actually was.
Jezebel was the daughter of Ethbaal, King of Tyre and Sidon, who was also the priest of the Baal cult. Baal is probably to most infamous of the false gods recorded in the Old Testament. The worship of Baal was known for its lewdness and sensuality. Jezebel would end up marrying the King of Israel, Ahab. There are two main storylines reported in her account that Jezebel is known for. The first is her battles with the Prophet Elijah. When she became Queen, Jezebel turned against all of the true prophets of the Lord and instead set up shrines to worship Baal. Not content with that; she sought to remove all vestiges of Yahweh worship throughout Israel. She ordered all of the prophets of God to be executed. This culminated in the famous encounter on Mount Carmel between Elijah and the 450 prophets of Baal. Even though God slew those 450 prophets, Jezebel was unrepentant and swore she would have Elijah's head.
The second major storyline involved a man named Naboth. He owned a vineyard that Ahab wanted because if its proximity to the palace. Even though the offer was fair, Naboth informed Ahab that the Lord prevented him from selling the vineyard as it was his father's inheritance. This hearkened back to the law given in Leviticus. Ahab was upset and was sulking and whining about it to his wife, so Jezebel resolved the issue by framing the innocent Naboth resulting in the stoning of himself and his sons. Thus the land reverted to the king as property with no legal heir. That is it beloved. These are the two major scriptural stories involving Jezebel. So what can we learn from these stories? What would constitute today a "Jezebel Spirit."
The first thing we must understand is we are not speaking about an actual spirit like we see in many Hollywood depictions. A Jezebel spirit is not a ghost of Jezebel. She is not walking around the halls of your church at night dragging noisy chains behind her. Her spirit refers to the qualities she embodied being allowed in your church or life as Ahab once allowed it in Israel. It is important however to not exceed the Biblical account. Based on the Bible, we can safely conclude that a "Jezebel Spirit" could include some or all of the following:
* A vicious choosing of the falseness of idols over the truth of God; a blind zeal for the false
* A reversal of the God ordained gender roles
* An antagonistic view of true prophecy
* A reckless pursuit of what is evil and wicked to achieve what you want
* A blatant disregard for the laws of God and the Word of God
Beloved these strike me as the main points. There may be sub points but everything else should come back to one of these. When we see mega church prosperity preachers constantly compromising the Word of God to sell temporal riches they are essentially operating in a Jezebel Spirit. The Baal they worship is money. When we continue to see a butchering of the Bible to excuse women taking roles the Bible has clearly said they are not to take, you can argue this stems from a Jezebel Spirit. When false prophecies are widely sought after as they are in the modern Charismatic church, you can refer to this is being influenced by a Jezebel Spirit. I have personally witnessed church members, pastors, and elders pursue their own desires through the most wicked and evil schemes and means possible. The foundations of all of this however is the same thing propping up anything that is anti-Christ and that is a blatant disregard for the laws and Word of God. The new hyper-grace teachings of Joseph Prince actually teach believers to not worry about the Ten Commandments. That you can do anything you want and God will never be angry. All streams of false teaching however flow from a disregard for the Word. That is why there is such a vicious movement underway to pretend unity is more important than doctrine. That discord comes from those who want pure doctrine instead of from those who sow falsely. These are all elements we see in the story of Jezebel. With this as the backdrop, let us examine now how this can be misused.
"The Bible talks about Jezebel and her witchcrafts in 2 Kings 9:22. I believe infirmities are part of Jezebel's witchcrafts. Witchcraft is a spiritual force, one of the powers listed in Ephesians 6, that the enemy uses to attack us." - Jennifer LeClaire
False Prophetess LeClaire has written yet another article for Charisma News, where she serves as an editor. The title is, "Can Jezebel's Witchcraft Really Make You Sick?" It seems that Jennifer became ill six times while writing her first book about Jezebel and since she believes erroneously in on-demand healing from God, she is forced to find a convenient excuse for her apparent lack of faith. Thus this thesis statement, which we must now examine in the light of Scripture to see how much is the Bible and how much is Jennifer. Firstly the Bible does mention the witchcrafts of Jezebel in the verse she references, which is also our key verse for today. It does not however "talk about" these witchcrafts. It merely references a statement from Jehu about the idolatrous stranglehold Jezebel still held over Israel. Here is the note from Gill's Exposition of the Bible:
so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many? which may be understood both literally of corporeal whoredom, and diabolical arts she was addicted to, and figuratively of idolatry, often called whoredom in Scripture, and of the wicked arts and methods she made use of to inveigle and entice persons into it; and both these very often went together; see Nahum 3:4 and of which Joram was guilty, at least in part; he connived at all in her, and did not attempt to restrain her, and therefore had no claim to peace, protection, and safety. - Gill
