#446

Exposing The Ahab Spirit

Is There Really A Spirit Of Ahab?

I probably should have addressed this when I mentioned the Jezebel Spirit, but not everyone is onboard with what some are calling “designer” demonic spirits. They say that people who are into deliverance ministries are making a lot of money and getting a lot of attention from sensationalizing spiritual things not too unlike psychics and mediums. So, are we even wrong to actually discuss what I believe to be demonic activity by calling them by what they are doing? Are we really just lifting up the memories of so called “spirits” of people who died long ago much like King Saul who went to the witch of Endor to talk to King Samuel? I can tell you that a simple online search questioning such teachings will garner a few doubters, but the vast majority of results go right back to supporting the existence of such things. I think there is a lot of extremes on this and it really isn’t that big of a thing, but when people get a bug in their bonnet about spiritual things regardless of their persuasion it stirs up supporters and detractors alike.

Influence More Than Possession

I can’t speak for anyone else, but when I talk about the Spirit of Jezebel I only think of people acting like her and then demons encouraging the behavior of these people. That’s it. If someone is going to be delivered from this influence it very well could require that demonic influence being told to leave, but it also means the person owning up to their own actions even if means inviting a demon or demons to work in them. At the end of the day, we are all given free will and we need to admit that we not only are acting like say Jezebel or Ahab, but we enjoy it. The down side of believing we need to be delivered from a spirit of anything is that we blame it for what we ourselves are doing. It is true that when we open our lives to Satan he can and will cloud our thinking and make it difficult for us to see what we are doing so much so that when we are confronted on it we literally don’t recognize it. And the unsaved person can be possessed by a demon in ways a saved person could never be. To deny this sad state of affairs is going to take away the various tools needed to bring true freedom of thought and living for many people. As with many things, avoiding extremes is the best advice I can give you.

Jezebel And Ahab Are Dead

They both died for their reprehensible actions as we see in the Bible accounts which we can find in 1 and 2 Kings but no one I know actually believes they are able to live through anyone now or in the future. Demons may want you to think that, but the Bible certainly doesn’t teach it, nor should you either believe it or promote it yourself. However, we can and should see the characteristics of both of these people and resist the urge to mimic their actions or worse, build upon them. As pilgrims in a strange land that is not our home, we are still susceptible to our fleshly failings and weaknesses and even in tiny ways act like Jezebel or Ahab or one of a myriad of sinful people in the Bible. When I say we need to deal with the spirit of people in Scriptures I am not intimating that it is about that person still being able to “live” in us in any form or fashion. In some cases a demon can inhabit bodies and Jesus and His disciples had to cast them out. But demons are liars and want to be seen as anything than what they really are so clouding the spiritual view of their activities is always going to happen. Can demons influence believers? Most definitely they can, but it is only with our permission. But we also need to own up to our cooperation with them or just our outright fallen actions of not renewing our minds from years and years of sinning and allowing the world to mold us into its image. If we see that we acting like Ahabs or Jezebels we need to take the Barney Fife approach and nip it in the bud.

And About Ahab

Then he made other idols and did more to anger the Lord God of Israel than any of the other kings of Israel before him. (1 Kings 16:33, TLB)

If you thought I forgot my original intent of exposing what an Ahab spirit of influence looks like, I didn’t. I just felt the need to set the table for things. As we see from just this one verse, Ahab may not have the reputation that his wife Jezebel had, but in God’s eyes he was still a bad dude. Here is a brief summary of Ahab from gotquestions.org:

Ahab was one in a line of increasingly evil kings in Israel’s history, starting with the reign of Jeroboam. King Ahab “did more evil in the eyes of the LORD than any of those before him” (1 Kings 16:30). Among the events chronicled in Ahab’s life that led to his downfall was his marriage to an evil woman named Jezebel who had a particular hatred for God’s people (1 Kings 18:4). Because of his marriage to a pagan woman, Ahab devoted himself to the worship of the false gods Baal and Asherah in Israel (1 Kings 16:31–33).

The article goes on to give us more history about this king:

The evil of King Ahab was countered by the prophet Elijah who warned Ahab of coming judgment if he did not obey the Lord. Ahab blamed Elijah for bringing trouble on Israel (1 Kings 18:17), but it was Ahab’s promotion of idolatry that was the true cause of the three-and-a-half-year famine (verse 18). In a dramatic confrontation between Elijah and Ahab’s false prophets, God proved to Israel that He, not Baal, was the true God (1 Kings 18:16–39). All of Ahab’s men of Baal were killed that day (verse 40).

King Ahab also disobeyed the Lord’s direct command to destroy Ben-Hadad, the king of Aram. God set it up so that Ahab would lead Israel to victory, but Ahab made a treaty with the king he was supposed to kill (1 Kings 20). “Therefore,” God told Ahab through an unnamed prophet, “it is your life for his life, your people for his people” (verse 42).

His fate was guaranteed by coveting a vineyard that wasn’t his:

he event that sealed Ahab’s doom was his murder of an innocent man (1 Kings 21). Ahab coveted a vineyard belonging to a man named Naboth. The king offered to buy the vineyard, but Naboth refused, because the Law forbade him to sell it (1 Kings 21:2–3; cf. Leviticus 25:23). While Ahab sulked about it in his palace, his wife arranged Naboth’s murder. Once the vineyard’s owner was out of the way, King Ahab took the vineyard for himself. Elijah came to Ahab and told him the Lord would deal with him by cutting off all his descendants. Also, Ahab himself would suffer an ignoble fate: “In the place where dogs licked up Naboth’s blood, dogs will lick up your blood—yes, yours!” (1 Kings 21:19). Upon hearing this, Ahab “tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and fasted. He lay in sackcloth and went around meekly” (verse 27). In response to Ahab’s repentance, God mercifully postponed the destruction of Ahab’s dynasty until after Ahab was dead (verse 29).

Ahab Had A Small Amount Of Conviction Left

At least he still had some semblance of a conscience left in him in the end. Ultimately, it wasn’t enough to stay God’s hand of judgment as we see in the rest of the aforementioned article:

The prophesied judgment against Ahab came true exactly as Elijah predicted. God used Ahab’s own false prophets to entice him into going to the battle at Ramoth-Gilead, where he was hit by a “random” arrow and slowly bled to death in his chariot. Later, “they washed the chariot at a pool in Samaria (where the prostitutes bathed), and the dogs licked up his blood, as the word of the Lord had declared” (1 Kings 22:38). After Ahab’s death, Jehu killed Jezebel (2 Kings 9) and all of Ahab’s descendants (2 Kings 10).

King Ahab was justly judged by God because he disobeyed the Lord’s direct commands, he abused his responsibility as Israel’s king, and he led God’s people right into idolatry. In the end, “there was never anyone like Ahab, who sold himself to do evil in the eyes of the Lord, urged on by Jezebel his wife. He behaved in the vilest manner by going after idols” (1 Kings 21:25–26).

Nowhere in all of this is Ahab given a pass for his willful actions. In the end he had only himself to blame for disobeying God, a God who gave him warning after warning to change, but he listened to his wife rather than his creator. And he listened to those “prophets” who told him only what he wanted to hear. In a small aside, even wayward people can change if only they surround themselves with advisors who speak the truth to them. Or at least they can soften the blow of their judgments if they are open to hearing such counsel. Ahab would have been better off had he made significant changes when prompted to.

Signs Of An Ahab Spirit

The first thing Ahab was known for was being passive when it came to his relationship with God and the laws of God. He didn’t stop obvious wrongs when he should have. Or he was tolerant of sin which is what we see the church of Thyatira evidencing as they allowed a Jezebel to work in their midst for so long that Jesus had to send them the message to address it. People who act like Ahab may be liked and even loved, but in the end they won’t be revered because they simply won’t tackle the hard issues in their lives or those they are responsible for. Another characteristic of Ahab was that he was entitled as some who are born into royalty or into good conditions. We actually see this in America now as young people are protesting while attending prestigious and costly colleges and universities. Ahab was spoiled and was used to getting his way simply because of who he was and the position he inherited. And he got his way by acting like a child and crying because he didn’t get what he wanted. He liked to be pampered by his wife and those who served him. Another thing Ahabs do is manipulate others with emotion which we see in his life all the time. If it got him what he wanted he would yell or pout whichever worked. Unfortunately people like Ahab are given to sensual lusts and perversions. Going back to the account in the book of Revelation we read this:

Yet I have this against you: You are permitting that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach my servants that sex sin is not a serious matter; she urges them to practice immorality and to eat meat that has been sacrificed to idols. (Rev 2:20, TLB)

Ahab was also a king with a double mind. He vacillated between doing the right and wrong things all the time and his wife Jezebel took full advantage of his indecisiveness. He sulked about seeing the wrong thing being done, but never stopped it.

Overcoming The Spirit Of Ahab

Really the key to defeating the influence of a Jezebel spirit starts with defeating the Ahab spirit because Jezebel had no power other than the power Ahab gave her. She worked because no one stopped her. I turn to an article from Intercessors For America for help on overcoming this deadly influence:

The spirit of Ahab—that spirit of weakness and permissiveness toward evil—is rampant in the USA today.

And the spirit of Jezebel can only operate because the spirit of Ahab allows it. But, what would happen if we all allowed ourselves to be so filled with God’s Holy Spirit, and with His valor, that we no longer permitted Jezebel to operate?

The word “valor” is defined as “strength of mind or spirit that enables a person to encounter danger with firmness: personal bravery.”

And if that kind of strength and bravery is not a manifestation of God’s Holy Spirit, I don’t know what is! Think of it! What would America look like if we rose up in the strength of the Lord, and in the power of His might, to say NO to witchcraft, sexual perversion, and the worship of Baal? If we did that, then perhaps …

Our pulpits would thunder with the truth of God’s Word again, rather than being filled with compromise.

Our airwaves would be filled with the sounds of praise, worship, and testimony again … rather than with propaganda and perversion.

Our cities, towns, and villages would be places where people gather for holy prayer meetings from house to house; where the fear of the One True God falls on every person … and where the Lord would add to the church daily such as are being saved.

O friend. Will you rise up today and pray for every person in the USA to be filled with God’s Holy Spirit of valor, and for both Jezebel and Ahab to be cast down and destroyed?

The article gives us a lot of prayer strategies and I encourage you to go it and get the full version of these intercessional points, but I will end with this portion:

Father God, in Jesus’ name, we ask that You would pour out Your Spirit of valor on every person in America. And as You do:

Let every person become indignant about injustice and unrighteousness.

Let us love righteousness and hate lawlessness and wickedness of every kind. Fill us with that strength of mind and spirit that allows us to encounter, confront, and defeat wickedness. Let us not tolerate the workings of Jezebel any more! Help us to rise up, cast down, and cast out all weakness that allows evil to triumph over what is right and good in Your sight. Lord God of Heaven and earth, we claim Your promise in Joel 2:28 that You will pour out Your Spirit on all flesh. Father God, in Jesus’ name, we agree together and pray that You would pour out Your Spirit of valor upon all flesh. Like Jehu, let us rise up in Your Spirit and in the power of Your might to cast down Jezebel in America. Lord, we ask that Your supreme reign would be manifest, tangible, and evident in this nation. Cast down the evil spirits of both Ahab and Jezebel. Dethrone and destroy the worship of Baal and of Satan. Take up Your holy throne over our nation, and let God arise and His enemies be scattered.

Thank You, Abba Father. In Jesus’ most holy and precious name we pray, amen.”