The Attack of Jezebel

Dr. Ray: Hello and welcome to Self Talk. I'm your host, Dr. Ray Self. Very glad you're with us. I have a very exciting and interesting, and important show coming up. The show is sponsored by the International College of Ministry, a Holy Spirit-filled seminary. The International College of Ministry, we're enrolling right now at icmcollege.org. That is icmcollege.org. If you're called to the ministry and you have not finished your equipping, ICM is the college for you. 

Dr. Ray: So today, this show is going to be a very exciting show, very serious show about that spirit of Jezebel, and so I have a very interesting guest today, Dr. Steve Whittmann and without any further ado, let's get into the show.

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Dr. Ray: Hello, welcome to Self Talk. So today, I'm very excited to have a special guest, my best friend, Dr. Steve Whittmann. Hey Steve, glad you're here today.

Dr. Steve: Hello to everyone.

Dr. Ray: Uh, let me introduce Steve to you a little bit, I mean, I call him Steve, he's known as Dr. Whittmann. Steve is the um, first off, he's an amazing Christian, he's a, is an author, he's an artist, he's the IT director of the International College of Ministry, uh, he's a veteran of the Air Force and actually, a former nuclear missile programmer for the Air Force. Very intelligent guy, Holy Spirit-filled guy, an amazing friend, and wrote a very important book called Unchained and Undercover. Unchained and Undercover, that's by Dr. Steve Whittmann. It's available at amazon.com, you should check it out.

But you know, last week I was talking about, and began to talk about, the spirit of Jezebel attacking pastors. Well to me, Steve might be the resident expert about this topic. In your book, Steve, you have a chapter about the spirit of Jezebel and I know, and you know, we've talked about it a lot, we're in the Central Florida area and numerous heads of churches have fallen into sexual immorality, have ruined their lives, ruined their families, caused all kinds of problems, hurt the church, hurt the body of Christ and even now, we just saw another case just maybe a couple of weeks ago.

But in your book, you talked about this and I just kind of wanted you to, to share what, what is the spirit of Jezebel and why should we be concerned about it. What's Jezebel doing?

Dr. Steve: Well, Revelation is really clear on this is that Jesus says that “the spirit of Jezebel leads my bond servants into committing acts of immorality,” and when we see all of these pastors that have fallen, at some point along the way they have this common thread of acts of immorality. Now, I think I have the whole, I have a whole chapter in the Unchained and Undercover in, it, it, it details on a lot of what's happened. In fact, I was, I received a little bit of caution when I was writing this because a lot of times, the church doesn't look like to look at the dirt, it likes to sweep it underneath the carpet. But if we don't understand how this spirit operates and therefore can, and recognize it when it's present, that she's going to keep um, taking out the leadership in the church. And I use the word she, or I use the pronoun she, simply because it's a, a female name. And that's not to imply that there's a gender in the spirit.

Dr. Ray: Do you know the question, do you think we're taking this too lightly? The spirit's there, the spirit's attacking, but the church is overlooking it, are not aware of it?

Dr. Steve: Jezebel has this way of very, kind of operating in a clandestine way. She attacks, and I've used this metaphor before, it's sort of like a mosquito bite in the mind and, and, and you'll find this, this uh, description in, in the book Unchained and Undercover.

Um, you know how you… let's say you're out camping and there are some mosquitoes around. Well, you might just brush them away, brush them away. But one, you know, it lands on you and you count but you're busy so you don't really notice it and then next thing you know, you turn around and there's that mosquito. Its abdomen is bloated, it's full of blood, and it's too late it's, already got you. That's kind of the way that Jezebel works. 

It's um, it um, it'll get you before you really realize it. It starts off with a, like, just a little temptation, a little tickle. Uh, it'll grow a little bit more. It'll come back later then it'll be nothing. It'll come back more and before you know it is, it is grown into a full-fledged um, uh, stronghold.

Dr. Ray: And so Jesus said again in the book of Revelation that, and I kind of want to go back to that because this is what we're talking about, Revelation 2 20. Let's read it, “nevertheless, I have a few things against you because you allow that woman Jezebel, who calls yourself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants to commit sexual immorality,”

Dr. Steve: And sexual immorality is at the heart of the issue so- one of the fastest ways to recognize the fact that you're dealing with Jezebel spirit, I mean, look, some of the examples I put into the book are just phenomenal. You have this pastor from Central Florida and he booked a flight to New York. He went into a high-rise hotel room, called call girls and drug dealers and kill- and, and overdosed in the hotel room surrounded by, by call girls and, and cocaine. Do you really think that he woke up one morning and said “you know what, I think today I'm just gonna throw it all away. I'm gonna destroy my ministry, I'm gonna hurt the people, I'm gonna,” and do all this stuff? Um no. That, that, that's the, that's the fruit of the Jezebel spirit at work.

Dr. Ray: Yeah, and I think, I think that's a really good point because the spirit's active, the spirit's attacking uh, the leaders are not aware of it until maybe it's too late and then we see the havoc and we see the, the wreckage and we go what happened? How could this happen, you know? How, how could this take place? But underneath it all, we have Jezebel doing her work.

Dr. Steve: Doing her work so I- Unchained and Undercover is um, one of the required courses at ICM and I also have opportunities to teach the course in other places. A few months ago, I was asked to teach the whole, the whole course at a local church, and everybody was very eager and enthusiastic to receive the teaching, but I noticed something is that once the teaching was over, it's kind of like okay, we've, we've put this behind us and we've moved forward and now we're ready for something new. But the reality is that you can't just take Jezebel and put it behind you. The Jezabel is an ongoing, continuous threat that looks to target the leadership in the church and case in point is that just a few weeks ago, uh, another pastor uh, in the, in the Central Florida area was arrested um, without going into detail, he, the, the headlines of the, the news report says the Florida pastor exposed himself at Starbucks in Kissimmee and apparently he was um, committing lewd, lascivious acts in public in, in view of the public. Um, again, you just don't have a pastor that says, that wakes up one morning, he says, “you know what? I think I'm going to do this, destroy my life. I'm going to get labeled as a sexual predator, I'm going to be, well, get myself locked up, thrown in jail. I'm going to destroy the ministry,” I'm not going to do these things today, you don't have that happen. There has to be some other compelling, overwhelming, um, controlling spirit that drives someone to do that and that's the Jezebel spirit. 

And don't misunderstand the Jezebel spirit. The Jezebel spirit uses cunningness and intelligence and uh, temptation, uh, to gain the upper hand, to gain control, to drive a church leader to destruction. That's her game plan.

Dr. Ray: And…you know, Paul warned us in Corinthians that we should not be ignorant of Satan's schemes. And Jezebel is something that we should be aware of and maybe, perhaps what you're saying is if we were more aware and more discerning about this spirit and we went into spiritual warfare sooner and protect our church leaders, this, this stuff wouldn't happen. Now, I know, you know, just because it’s a demon doesn't excuse them because, you know, they had to cooperate with the demon. But I guarantee you the temptation was obviously very strong for these guys or they wouldn't have done it. And so you can remove that influencer, you know, Jezebel. You can get rid of Jezebel.

Dr. Steve: Well you know, it's real common to see a reluctance to study the uh, the ways of the enemy. But God's word is really clear, is that we should not be ignorant of the schemes of the enemy, and also Hosea tells us that God's people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge. And so we have to have the knowledge of the things that God has determined to be important. Jezebel is directly addressed in the scriptures which is, is kind of rare because there's only a very few um, spirits in the entire bible that are identified by name, and Jezebel is one of them.

Dr. Ray: That's interesting. And Jesus identified this spirit, 

Dr. Steve: Correct.

Dr. Ray: Himself. And I'm just thinking about the ministry of Christ, in his three-year ministry he never avoided demons. He dealt with demons. Now, he, he wasn't focused on them but when he was around anything demonic, he took care of the problem. And so I think there's a problem and it's like the old expression, there's an elephant in the living room and we need to get, to get this elephant out of the living room. And too many churches are falling and too many churches are being hurt by these fallen pastors and I think if I were the devil and if I wanted to hurt the body of Christ, I would go after the pastor, go after the church leader, embarrass him, humiliate him, discredit him so I could somehow hurt that church.

Dr. Steve: Absolutely and that's just the game plan, uh, that, the Jezebel spirit uses. For example, one of the churches that I went to and I did detail this in the Unchained and Undercover, uh, the pastor, uh, was having a three, four, four, three or four years, uh, was having an affair with um, an extra marital affair with uh, one of the administrators in the church and he was he keeping this hidden, you know, and, and right there is an open door for Jezebel. Eventually it came out but it wasn't just he that was hurt, I mean, his whole family was hurt his, his wife was hurt, the entire church was just devastated. We're talking hundreds and hundreds of people that were injured and wounded because of the acts of Jezebel on that one pastor.

And um, and then we have another church in the Central Florida area, we have a young pastor that again, was driven into an extramarital affair and was so… his, his situation was involved more than just the spirit of Jezebel. This was a whole cluster, what they call a grouping of spirits. He had, there was the spirit of accusation, the spirit of um, uh, condemnation, the spirit of illegitimacy, the Jezebel spirit, the, the twisting, uh, Leviathan spirit and the spirit of depression and the spirit of suicide and collectively, they put together this hit squad. And one- after this one pastor. And they not only, not only drove him uh, destroyed, drove him to come to into these uh, this ongoing extra-marital affair, but all of the other spirits drove him to confess it, um, and then uh, drove him eventually to commit suicide. So they literally took out the leadership of the church and destroyed the entire church and everyone who was in there and that, that was a collective way that the enemy targets the leadership.

Dr. Ray: The Apostle Paul told us that we battle not against flesh and blood and so we see the devastating effects of Jezebel, I mean… And it's a horrible, it's horrible, I mean, these, these cases you're talking about made the newspaper and I remember the Orlando Sentinel, one of these cases was headlines in the newspaper. So not only did it hurt the church, hurt the family, hurt his friends, but it also hurt the reputation of Christianity and the reputation of the church. So the problem is serious but what, what would you advise as a typical average church goer, who- what should we do as Christians? What should our response be, okay? We've identified a demonic attack against pastors so what do we do?

Dr. Steve: Well, as a, as a church goer, you should be keeping the leadership of your church in prayer but to be truthful and faithful with God's word, and God's direction, we should be uh, protected through the armor of God, and I detail that in the Unchained and Undercover book. Um, we, we tend to think of the armor of God as something that's there but we don't actually take into consideration that God's instruction is a command to put it on. He literally says pick up the armor and put it on, and it's, it's not a request. And yet, far too many don't really understand that and don't practice it, and leave themselves open and vulnerable to these spiritual attacks. 

Dr. Ray: And you know, that's the subject for another show but I really, uh, it's fascinating when you're listening to the show, folks. Uh, Dr. Whittmann actually, actually spiritually puts on the armor of God and actually taught me how to do it, walked me through it one time about putting on the helmet of salvation, the breast plate of righteousness, and it's really interesting. But we are commanded to put on the armor of God to protect us, so that's one thing we can do to combat this. And I know also, we're told to submit in the book of James, submit to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. So we are commanded uh, to resist the devil which is Jezebel.

Dr. Steve: That's correct. Um, I mean, the Undercover has a, has a guide in there that will help those that are unfamiliar with the process.

Dr. Ray: Wnd what I, what I like to tell my, my students and uh, is that we're in a spiritual battle whether we want to be or not. So you need to know how to fight the battle, you need to understand your authority, you need to understand the word of God, you need to understand your delegated authority, that “these signs will follow those that believe in my name, they will cast out demons,” and so we, not only we have a responsibility and a delegated authority to cast out demons, but one, that one gift that you have that I think sort of separates you. And it's a gift that we should all pray for, it’s the gift of discernment because basically what you're doing here, even in this show, is you're using the gift of discernment that the Holy Spirit has given you and you're discerning the spirit and I think that's a gift that we all need because once you discern a spirit, it's much easier to cast it out.

Dr. Steve: Well, that's true, but I found over the years is that um, you know, spiritual gifts tend to manifest differently in different people.

Dr. Ray: Yeah.

Dr. Steve: Um, you know, God gives you a spiritual gift to, to use uh, you know, to serve the body of Christ but the way that it operates in you may be entirely unique to you. Um, one of the ways that you know, Dr. Self just said, the spirit, I mean, uh, discernment, the gift of discernment, but what I kind of experience is something that's a little bit closer to um, Elisha back in the book of Kings. Um, that, that was the uh, the scene where the, the servant is in the panic and he wakes up and sees the, the city surrounded. And notice the, the calm reaction of Elisha, he just goes “oh, this servant. What are we gonna do with him? Oh Lord, just open his eyes so he can see.”  You know, in, in his attitude was “I see the spirit realm so well, so clearly all the time.” That was his gift. That… it was common and normal, commonplace for him and his attitude towards it was “there's nothing to worry about,” and the Lord just opened his eyes so…But what we see with him is the way that that gift of discernment manifested in him is that he was able to see into the spirit realm. And too, at a little bit of a degree, that's kind of how I experience the, the um, uh, the gift of discernment. And so it just works in me the way God wanted it to work in me for what he's called me to do.

Dr. Ray: Well, and, and I know your, the gift is very strong on you and of course, the bible tells us to earnestly desire spiritual gifts. So the gift of discernment will help you but one interesting thing about gifting is if you do not have that gift, that's why other people have it. That's why in the body of Christ, we have various gifts that are distributed to different people, you know, all for the benefit- so maybe you're not discerning the spirit but you, but there's other people who are and so you can kind of lean on them and um, but I think the thing that's really obvious here is it's obviously a demonic problem. It's obviously a demonic attack upon the church and we have a responsibility to resist this attack, to take authority over this attack, to pray and to pray and also take authority and pray protection over our pastors. And I want- if you're a pastor, a church leader listening to me, sexual temptation is rampant among church leaders and the devil knows that sexual temptation is a really easy way to take down a pastor. And so be aware of that. Be aware. If you're a church leader, be aware. I've not ever met a pastor who's honest who will not say he has not been tempted in this area. I know a lot of people are but I think especially pastors and church leaders. And Jezebel loves to, to manifest this temptation and to destroy and ruin the reputation of a pastor and hurt the body of Christ. So any final words of encouragement? Maybe to our listeners, Steve? And, um… 

Dr. Steve: Jesus said “I give you power and authority over serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall by any means harm you.” Everything that you need to be victorious has already been provided. All you need to do is to reach out in faith and receive it.

Dr. Ray: Oh, that's a good word. That's a good word. So Heavenly Father, I thank you for each person listening today. Father, thank you that, that we can reach out in faith and receive everything we need, Father, to, to combat this evil spirit of Jezebel that's been upon our churches and attacking our church pastors and church leaders, Father. And Lord, I thank you. You've given us authority. I thank you for giving us power. I thank you, Father, you've given us your wisdom and your gifts, so touch each person listening, Father and if this spirit is attacking them, Father, we stand with them, Father, to resist this spirit and command it to stop in the name of Jesus Christ. In the name of Jesus.

You know, Steve, I- as we get ready to close, I know there's so much to spiritual warfare that we could get into but basically, it is a battle. But, I think summarizing, Jezebel has just been making headlines.

Dr. Steve: Oh yeah.

Dr. Ray: And causing a lot of problems not only in Central Florida, but all over, all over the country. And so it's time to say no to Jezebel and stop it. 

Dr. Steve: So I know… yeah, I agree.

Dr. Ray: Steve, this has been great having you. Again, this is Dr. Steve Whittmann and he spells Whitman W-i-t-t-m-a-n-n, and his book is Unchained and Undercover on amazon.com. And usually I give out his cell phone number for 24-hour service. 

Dr. Steve: Ha, ha, ha.

Dr. Ray: That's our standard joke. But anyway, we love you much. Thank you for listening.

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Dr. Ray: Thanks for listening to today's show, Self Talk, with my special guest Dr. Steve Whittmann. Don't forget to order his book, Unchained and Undercover. Also, I have a very special offer for you. My course of the month, it's an ICM course called Counseling Victims to Freedom. It's a six-lesson course that covers a lot of very serious counseling topics. This is available to you on our website which is icmcollege.org/selftalk. On our website, all you have to do is click the link. it's the $35 donation to our scholarship fund and you will have in your possession, a download to this course. It's called Counseling Victims to Freedom. If you want to go deeper with Holy Spirit-filled counseling and deal with some serious issues, we’re making this course available to you. Thank you so much for listening. Uh, this is Dr. Ray Self and God bless you.