A Jezebelian Kind of Thing

Part 1 in the Series:

The Spirit of Jezebel

By Don Enevoldsen

I don’t usually give much attention to personal prophecy. They are usually uplifting, encouraging words (usually), but so general in content that they don’t really mean much. “God will bless you.” “You will have the victory.” That sort of thing. Maybe they’re from God or maybe they are fellow believers wishing me well. Either way they’re nice to hear, and spoken at the right time, they are valuable. But I wouldn’t make any life-changing decisions on the basis of most of them.

However, on December 12, 1993, I experienced something a little different. I should point out that while I’m a little skeptical of most personal prophecy, I have seen the real thing often enough and I’ve been both the recipient and the vehicle of such words enough times to be convinced there is something to it. Though it is often abused and even more often innocuous. Scripture is still the standard through which everything must pass. But there is a place for confirmation of biblical principles from other sources. December 12, 1993 was one of those nights.

The speaker was Michael Ratliff. He used to come into the Phoenix area a few times a year and hold meetings where he taught (usually for an hour and a half), and then spent another couple of hours speaking prophetic words over people that he called out of the audience. That night, he pointed to me as asked me to stand.

What made this prophecy different was the amount of intimate detail involved. This is not the place to go through it, but I will say that nearly all of it came to pass over the next few years. It was not so much a call to change the course of my life as a validation of the direction I was heading. Machael Ratliff could not have known any of the details he spoke. Indeed, no one in the meeting, even the people who knew me, could have known most of the details.

One sentence puzzled me, though, for many years:

“The Lord says I am breaking down the house of Ahab that’s been against your family and your forefathers for generations, and the Jezebelian kind of thing and disorder that’s been against many of your relatives.”

I had heard the term “Jezebel spirit” for as long as I could remember. (You can’t be in church every week from the age of 9 without hearing it at some point.) I thought I knew what it meant. Occasionally when people said it, they meant someone who taught false doctrine, but usually the phrase referred to sexual looseness or promiscuity. For most people, a Jezebel spirit is a spirit of seduction.

This idea derives from a couple of biblical sources. First is the story of Jezebel in 1 Kings and 2 Kings, as well as the reference to her in Revelation 2:20-24. Revelation describes her as “that woman, Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess,” and who “misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols.”

From this connection with sexual immorality, the description of her death in 2 Kings 9 was interpreted in the context of seduction. In that story, Jehu set out to kill her and her family.

“When Jezebel heard about it, she painted her eyes, arranged her hair and looked out of a window.” (2 Kings 9:30)

Jezebel was assumed to have put on her most seductive makeup and clothing in an attempt to lure Jehu away from his mission, taking on the image of a prostitute in the window advertising her wares. Hence the common phrase “painted Jezebel.”

These two passages of scripture were combined to give a picture of Jezebel as an immoral, sexual temptress. Most often, in church circles, the term was used in reference to a sexy woman who flirts too much, especially when the object of her attention is the pastor or some other church leader. A Jezebel spirit described a woman who tempted others, particularly leadership, to fall into sin through adultery.

This was my understanding of a “Jezebelian kind of thing.” And it puzzled me because as far as I knew, there was no adultery anywhere in my family tree. If there had been, then it was kept pretty quiet. We had black sheep in the family, just like everyone, but the influences of Jezebel were just not obvious. You would think if a “Jezebelian king of thing” was that serious, there would be more evidence of seduction.

So I set out to find how, where and when this attack came against many of my relatives, and what I could possibly do about it. The answer was not obvious.

Until last year (2014). As part of an ongoing study of Revelation, I spent a few months working through the message to the church of Thyatira, where Jezebel is mentioned. What I discovered has turned my understanding of the subject upside down, and made me realize I’ve encountered this spiritual manifestation frequently. As have many I have known, including my family.

That is the subject of this series. I hope to share my findings, and open the eyes of others to what I’ve seen. Over a few weeks, we will walk through my study, pretty much as I stumbled onto things, and I will show how Jezebel looked in the church to which I was attached.

For the moment, suffice it to say that a Jezebel spirit was not at all what I had thought. While sexual immorality might be attached, a Jezebel spirit does not, by definition, have anything to do with sex, except as adultery is a metaphor for unfaithfulness. There is certainly seduction involved, but the seduction is not sexual. It is the temptation of power, status, position and entitlement. Those are things that have come against my relatives for generations. And those were the things that defined the culture of the church where I was a member of the staff.

As I learned the real root of the problem, I realized that when Jesus spoke to the church of Thyatira about Jezebel, the real issue was the house of Ahab, her husband, not her. Jesus did not warn her. He warned those who tolerated her. That distinction, as we will see, makes a world of difference. As it turns out, I had spent a considerable part of my life tolerating Jezebel. But that has changed.

As you will see.

Next, Part 2: Toleration and Intimidation

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