As a woman, who has been standing for Biblical truth for quite some time, I have been accused of having a Jezebel Spirit. I’m sure many Christian women have been called a Jezebel at one time or another in their lives. It is possible that some women have been accused of having a Jezebel spirit because they have characteristics, or personality traits similar to Jezebel, and then other women may have been accused because their accuser was attempting to silence their critics. This blog post will be partly my personal story, and the biblical response to whether or not the Jezebel Spirit is a real thing.

In 2016, as a recently divorced woman, I was accused by my Pastor, from the pulpit, of having a Jezebel Spirit, by implication. That was an interesting Sunday, needless to say! Of course, there is a definite back story leading up to that false accusation. But the long and the short of it was a few weeks prior I had been asked out on a date by a guest minister, a very close friend of the Pastor. Unbeknownst to me, when I accepted the date, that the guest minister was married and had been extremely deceptive. He had claimed he’d been divorced for two years. We had one date and I told him at the end of it I wasn’t interested in pursuing a relationship with him. When he was still extremely persistent after the date, I had done a bit of detective work, via google, and had discovered his beautiful, talented wife. I made his sin known to my Pastor, to the director of missions in his area, and to his wife. In the end, it was discovered that the guest minister had over thirty affairs on his wife and had made a practice of preying upon single women while guest ministering at different churches. This incident, along with all the gossip surrounding it within the church, spread by the Pastor himself, inspired my Pastor to preach his sermon on the Jezebel Spirit.

“The Jezebel Spirit likes to attach itself specifically to single, divorced, attractive women”, he shouted from the pulpit. I sat there stunned as I realized that he was talking about me. I looked around the room and saw the only other single, divorced woman in the church duck her head. I wanted to cry. I was shocked, bewildered, and wondering where in the world all of this came from and immediately knew it was spiritual abuse. This was a bully pulpit and I had experienced it once before. There was more stuff that he said in that sermon that was wrong, but that was the part that kept going through my mind and that was most memorable. One thing, that I knew for certain, was that what he was saying wasn’t found in scripture! First off, Jezebel was married. She wasn’t divorced and it’s only assumed that she was attractive. Her beauty isn’t actually talked about in scripture. Her beauty is implied since she does dress herself up to try and entice Jehu into not killing her. She tried to entice Jehu to take her as his wife as was the custom of conquering kings, but that’s beside the point. The bulk of the sermon was not biblical in the least and it was based solely on conjecture and opinion, none of which was based on any biblical text. The implication was that I was possessed by a demon because I was single and divorced.

This false doctrine of the Jezebel Spirit is probably one of the most spiritually abusive doctrines towards women in the church today. In preparation for this blog post, I actually listened to a number of sermons and podcasts regarding this topic of the Jezebel Spirit from both sides: those who are proponents that it exists, and those who are proponents that it does not. In every single sermon or podcast that believed the Jezebel Spirit exists, they all had opinions based on experiences with difficult people as their proof rather than scripture. All of them, did however agree that the Jezebel Spirit could inhabit a man or a woman, but it’s mostly women. All of them believed that those with mental illnesses probably are possesed by a Jezebel Spirit. Also, all of them implied the Jezebel Spirit was permanent within the individual and they would refuse to repent. Very little, or not at all, was sin mentioned or these individuals being accountable for their sin. The only sin that was mentioned was the sin against the speaker themselves, and how they had been sinned against by the person with the Jezebel Spirit.

Mark Driscoll had twenty-nine characteristics of the Jezebel Spirit. Some of his defining characteristics included: if a woman had control of the checkbook (once she has control of the checkbook she will control the children) , if she had ever been abused at any point in her life, if she was close to the pastor in relationship, if she ran a business or was involved in managing a business, if she was energetic and seemed not to need much sleep (demons don’t sleep….), if she was attractive (he advised the single guys to flee from all attractive single women), if she loves God and loves church (he claims that Jezebel is highly spiritual and knows her Bible), if she has a blog (he called them all keyboard warriors), if she dislikes Mark Driscoll, if she had a poor upbringing/childhood, or she’s talkative. This is obviously not all twenty-nine characteristics from his sermon, but none of these characteristics are found in scripture. I, myself, have a lot of these characteristics including not liking Mark Driscoll. The proverbs 31 woman has a lot of these characteristics. Okay, I doubt that she had a blog. Blogs, obviously, didn’t exist in biblical times, but she was a respected woman. To say that a woman with these characteristics have or even may have a Jezebel Spirit is downright abusive. Not only that, but in every single sermon that claimed the Jezebel Spirit existed, those leaders were attributing that spirit to believers in their churches! All of them were claiming that Christians can be possesed, indwelt, and/or oppressed, controlled and or influenced by a Jezebel Spirit. (Dear Reader, Christians cannot be possesed or have in their bodies, a demonic spirit!) They also implied this spirit was a permanent fixture in these people’s lives because Jezebel doesn’t ever repent! So where is the hope of the gospel then if what these teachers are claiming is true?

In Robert Moriss’ sermon (Gateway church), he made one very true statement, that nowhere in the Bible would you find the term Jezebel Spirit. Despite that, he still claimed the existence of a Jezebel Spirit that possesed, oppressed and inhabited people. His sermon had more biblical texts than Mark Driscoll’s, but a lot was still conjecture based on personal experiences with difficult people or people that confronted him. That was a theme throughout all the pro-Jezebel sermons. If people rose up to confront, then they had a Jezebel Spirit.

So what does the Bible say about Jezebel?

Jezebel is first mentioned in the book of 1 Kings 16:31 when she marries Ahab. Her name literally means: Baal exalts, Baal is husband to, unchaste, or Princess of Baal. Jezebel was a devouted worshiper of Baal. The account of her life ends at the end of 2 Kings chapter 9 and it is quite the interesting read. She really was a wicked, unrepentant woman who lead people into idolatry and exerted influence over her weak, petulant husband. Jezebel is not someone anyone should wish to emulate. She was murderous, domineering, manipulative, coniveing, idolatrous, unrepentant, set herself up in false authority, a thief (stealing Naboth’s vineyard), a false accuser, a seductress, and someone who lead others into idolatry and sexual immorality.

There’s one other place where Jezebel is mentioned, which is Revelation 2:20-23. This is the passage that all the pro-jezebel spirit sermons use as their proof text for why the Jezebel Spirit exists. So, let’s take a closer look at it. I encourage you Dear Reader, to go read the rest of the passage in context. You will notice that nowhere does Scripture say it’s a demonic spirit.

Revelation 2:20-23 NASB
But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman, Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads my bond-servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, and she does not want to repent of her immorality. Behold, I will throw her on a bed of sickness, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of her deeds. And I will kill her children with pestilence, and all the churches will know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts; and I will give to each of you according to your deeds.
Here’s the set up for these verses; the verses in context are warnings from Jesus to the seven in churches in Asia minor. Some of the churches receive warnings as well as commendations and others only commendations. It’s a great study if you want to dig into it. But these particular verses are part of a warning to the church of Thyatira. This church, the leadership, had allowed and tolerated a woman who proclaimed herself to be a prophetess. She was teaching and having authority over men in the church when she shouldn’t have been, and they let her. That church was being rebuked because of it. Not only that, but she was teaching and promoting idolatry and sexual immorality in the church. From verse 19 of the chapter this was a church that loved God and they did a lot of good deeds and service. There was fruit in this church, but still they allowed this woman to usurp and place herself in a position of authority. Everything about her the leadership of that church tolerated and allowed. They allowed her sin and her influence to continue.

I don’t believe for one second that the woman’s name in Revelation 2 was actually Jezebel. I believe Jesus was using that name as a correlation to the person of Jezelebel in 1 Kings and 2 Kings. I really don’t think anyone would disagree with me there. I do not think that there was a demon inhabiting that woman of Revelation 2. There’s no indicators in the text to suggest that at all. What is in the text is some simularities or characteristics that Jesus wants us to focus on. That’s all this is about! Don’t put women in leadership over men, especially those who are involved in sexual sin and have self-proclaimed titles like Pastor, teacher, Prophetess, Apostle, ext….. 1 Timothy 2:12 comes to mind. When it comes to church, the qualifications for Biblical Leadership is listed in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. God has clear order for His church and while I do believe that women can serve as Deacons in the church (deacon literally means servant), I do not believe the Bible gives women license to hold a called office in the church. They can most definitely serve in the church. In our church, we do not ordain women, even when they serve within the church as a deacon. But when it comes to called by God positions, such as Pastor or Elder that is a male position with strict qualifications dictated by God. I will say this: every single sermon that I listened to that was Pro-Jezebel spirit missed that point of the text about a woman usurping a role within the church. Keep in mind Dear Reader, the context is “IN CHURCH”. I don’t want nasty comments saying, “well what about the four daughters of Philip who prophesied?” I am not saying that there were not women who prophesied. I’m saying there is a biblical order which God clearly lays out in 1 Timothy and in 1 Corinthians 14 for Church services. The context is “In church”. Whether Jezebel of the church of Thyratira was prophesying in church or out of church it doesn’t matter. The leadership knew of her sexual immorality and she was allowed to teach and have authority and all of it was tolerated. Regardless, nowhere in the text does it indicate it was a demonic spirit. To say it was, really is reading into the text and putting your own ideas onto it.
So there’s one more thing that I wanted to look at quickly. I wanted to address the concept of other “spirits”. People throw this stuff around all the time. I had one young adult talk to me about his hurt over someone saying that he had been told that he had a leviathan spirit all because he had some anxiety about some circumstances going on in his life at that time. What a wicked thing to say to a brother or sister in Christ going through a trial! So, I did a simple word search in my literal Word bible app. I put the words “spirit of” in quotations, just like I did here, so it would only give me the search results with those two words right next to one another. I was willing to be proven wrong. Maybe there are other named spirits, like Leviathan, Ahab, Absalom, Athaliah or even a religious spirit. There were 121 verses, many of which had to do with the Spirit of God, or the Holy Spirit. There were references such as Exodus 28:3 where God says to Moses to speak to all the skillful persons whom God had endowed with the spirit of wisdom to make the priestly garments. There are other references that are along the same vein about knowledge and craftsmanship. I do not think God is saying that those individuals have a literal spirit or demon possessing them giving them that knowledge. The Hebrew word Ruah is used in all those instances and the meaning of the word is “wind, breath, mind, spirit”. Looking at the context of the verses, it’s clear that God is saying they have a God given mind of knowledge and craftmanship. God gifted them with wisdom. There were also other references where it said things like in Isaiah 19:3, “then the spirit of the Egyptians will be demoralized with them”. Often the references talked about the minds of the people groups, whether it be the Assyrians, Egyptians, the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, etc… all of it was in regard to their state of mind or attitudes, not an actual spirit. Again, I believe that’s putting onto the text something that isn’t there. Something, that I’ve noticed by those who are claiming that these spirits are real is an over spiritualization of the text, and this fear mongering. Never do they claim that there’s these good spirits that inhabit people, it’s always in the negative and usually it’s a weapon used to demoralize and shut down the critics.

When it happened to me back in 2016, it did demoralize me. I went home that day and I wept for hours. I couldn’t help but wonder if some of the characteristics about Jezebel were true about me, especially having just come out of an abusive marriage. That day, I turned to scripture and started looking at the truth and somewhere in the midst of my searching I began to question the motives of the man behind the pulpit. Scripture painted a very clear picture of Jezebel that wasn’t who I was. I’d only been at that church for about three months at that point. I’d been promised a position with pay in the church for my work with the music department and I’d not yet received it, but never brought it up and served happily. So, I really began to question why I was being targeted from the pulpit specifically. I hadn’t spoken out against my Pastor or confronted him in anything, I had only exposed his friend in his sin. I did a google search and that was all it took for me to see the truth. The church itself was a new church plant only six months old, but it wasn’t the first ministry of my pastor. He had originally come from a different state, and someone had created an entire website, complete with documentation, broken lease agreements, court documents, even fake UniBersity degrees, outlining his cons and theft. I intentionally misspelled the word University because the degree that my former Pastor had framed on the wall was from a diploma mill and the word was spelled exactly that way. My former Pastor was himself, a conman, with a fake doctorate in Psychology. He may not have been preying upon women specifically like his friend had done, but he was preying upon the needy and downtrodden. He was setting up ministries, fleecing the people and he’d take off for a new town. It then made sense to me why I became a target. After this discovery, I called up a witness to accompany me to the church that evening and I removed all my music equipment from the church. I turned in my church keys the next Wednesday, speaking only to the Women’s ministry leader, and I left the church. Less than a month later, the church closed its doors for good. I didn’t have to confront anyone or talk to anyone. I intentionally kept it all to myself and just left. No one from the church contacted me. I can only assume his attack on me was a preemptive strike to shut me down before I exposed him as well. People left on their own when they realized that he was preaching falsely. I wish all false teachers were shut down so easily.

I encourage you Dear Reader, in all things, be like the Bereans, searching the scriptures to see if what someone is teaching is true. The gospel is the good news of the freedom that we have in Christ when he conquered sin and death and its wages, by Jesus’ propitiation for us upon the cross. We, who are in Christ, are sealed by the Holy Spirit and are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. We are not and cannot be bound by demons and don’t need to fear demonic possession if we are in Christ. Confronting a sinful leader does not mean that you are demon possessed even if they say that you are. Be comforted in the truth of the Gospel.

Disclaimer: I’m not at all saying that spiritual warfare isn’t real. I’m not saying that demons don’t exist.