Going Through the Book of Revelation Part 2 - Jezebel

Celebrating 29 years of marriage and 4 wonderful children. This is the man of God who stuck with me through it all. Just like the Lord, he never left me or forsook me. 

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Continuing Chapter 2 regarding the Jezebel Spirit

I ended Part 1 talking about the spirit of Jezebel and although my original intent was to get right into chapters 3 & 4 I feel the need to share more about the spirit of Jezebel which has been wrongly taught through the church. This spirit is not male or female as many suggest and have often used against women who believe they are called into ministry or simply women who are strong and confident in the Lord. The Jezebel spirit is prevalent in the church and the world, but it most definitely deceives you if you believe it only works through women. I clearly see when a spirit of Jezebel is working through someone. Why? Because it is not just a domineering or controlling spirit but in Revelation, we are told that she calls herself a prophetess (meaning trying to say she is Godly) so that she can teach and seduce God's servants to commit sexual immorality. 

Revelation 2:20

Nevertheless, I have a few things against you, because you allow that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce My servants to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols.

In order to really understand the Jezebel spirit, I do believe that you should read more about her in 1st and 2nd Kings. Jezebel was the daughter of a King herself who worshipped Baal and was given in marriage to Ahab. Now for just a minute let's look at this a little further before I continue into verses 3 & 4. We have believers (often men) who like to call women Jezebel's yet usually they are calling a strong woman of God who is truly seeking the Lord and partnering with Him to do His will and the work of the ministry. Her total commitment to God and stand against anything demonic somehow comes across as a controlling person so therefore she must be walking in a Jezebel spirit. 

As I mentioned in my previous writing/blog Going Through The Book of Revelation Part 1 (sheryllyork.blogspot.com) about this, I myself after only being born again for less than a year, newly married and pregnant with my first child was kicked out of a church and labeled a Jezebel and it gets much worse as my new husband was told that he had to leave me. Yes, I'm gonna go there. I have rarely ever spoken about this. I am not a gossip and will not slander anyone. I will not name names here. I have forgiven this long ago as I have grown in the Lord and have realized that we have all sinned and fallen short. I cannot expect every Pastor, Prophet, Apostle or leader to be perfect. I had to come to a place where I even said, 'forgive him Father for he knew not what he was doing.' We all make mistakes and just as God did for Joseph, we learn that although horrible things happened to us along the way God can take them all and work them together for our good. He has a plan and uses those things for our benefit if we allow Him to. For a short season I was devastated. I remember at the time struggling with praying and even asking the Lord, 'why did you bother to save me at all if you were just going to cast me away within only months?' but God's truth and love delivered me through one scripture, but first I feel to share my story and help you to see the difference so that you NEVER throw around the name Jezebel against anyone because you might just need to look deeper within yourself.

MY STORY...

As I shared previously, I'd only been saved for less than a years' time. I was newly married and 4 months pregnant (I got pregnant on our honeymoon). Previous to our getting married My husband was a part of a church that he really loved, and I was a part of a Vineyard church which I really loved. I honestly didn't really have any desire to go to my husband's church but once married, I felt to submit to what he desired as head of household and follow him to his church. Very quickly it seemed I'd been accepted. A huge wedding reception was given to us. I met everyone and they truly were like a huge family, and they soon became like family even to me. They helped us financially, gave us carloads of food when we struggled as a new couple financially and at first it seemed I'd been wrong about not wanting to go but it didn't take me long to see that something was off just as I'd originally thought before we married. Looking back now I do think that it had to happen this way so that my husband could see what was really going on. It's one thing to experience difficulties yourself but when others start hurting those you love you see things quite differently.

The church practiced church discipline and a young woman who was single and very close to my age who'd been faithful to the church for years went to a conference and came back with some questions for the Spiritual Leader. I very quickly found out that the way this church was set up was that you were only allowed to sit under the teaching of this one man and he would not tolerate you getting any teaching elsewhere because it could go against what the Lord was speaking through him so to discipline her (remember now she'd been with this church for years and even had other family members who attended this church so they had some history) he decided to excommunicate her for a time until she repented. I myself was young in the Lord and she had been one of my good friends there. Other ladies seemingly accepted me, but they were older, and I just had so many things in common with this young woman that she was kind of special. I was devastated by his kicking her out and just couldn't understand it. I had never seen anything like this other than in TV movies and to me it was a huge RED FLAG right away. Why would a loving Father (I am now speaking of God the Father) and a man who she considered to be her father on earth cast her out of his church for simply going to a conference and hearing the teaching of another? I didn't agree with this. I couldn't just leave her alone to cry and be so lonely feeling she'd committed the unpardonable sin when all she'd done is go to hear a preacher preach the word of God. It wasn't like she'd been found in a brothel or committed adultery or something. The Apostle Paul does show us that church discipline might be necessary, but it was not for listening to the preaching of others. It was for a man who was sleeping with his stepmother I believe. 

One day at work I called to check in on her. She was doing well, and we just chatted. No biggy. No gossip. No slander of others. Just her and I talking on my lunch break to see how she was handling being away from the church, her friends and even family members who attended because everyone was warned not to speak to her.  Within a few days the entire thing BLEW UP and my husband received a phone call. He was told that I was a Jezebel. That I refused to listen to leadership and had contacted this young lady behind his back and that I could not come back to the church unless I kneeled and apologized to him in front of the congregation. Ok, so does it make me a Jezebel that I said, Heck no... lol If I truly felt in my spirit that I had actually done anything wrong I would most definitely have humbled myself but all I'd done was try to be a loving person to comfort her in a very difficult situation. I hadn't come out against his leadership or anything of the sort. I sat on the phone and listened to her. That was it. Another thing was this church had been practicing church discipline for years. In fact, I found out that my own husband had been cast out and accepted back several times for different reasons. 

THINGS GOT WORSE...

So now I am expected to go back to church and get on my knees to apologize to the Supreme Leader in front of the entire congregation in order to be accepted back. Accepted back to what I thought? I already knew something was off before I began attending. How much worse or better could it get if I did bow down not to mention that I believe Jesus is the only one we bow down to. Whether this Spiritual leader was the headship of this church or not he was still a man and not deity. I honestly took it to prayer. We were both now shunned as well. My husband had been attending church there and had been one of the founding members for over 7 years. This was his family, and they were his friends. His closest friends were not allowed to even talk to him anymore because of what I had done. It was pretty hard on him.

I was not given much time to repent so to speak. By the very next evening my husband received a call from the Supreme Leader (this is the title I am giving him not one he called himself). He was told that a church member would be coming to pick him up to attend church without me. He should bring clothing and expect to stay with a church member until things could be worked out. My husband said, 'my wife is pregnant, I'm not just gonna leave her.' He was told that it might be the only option. I am still to this day so proud of him for standing up. You have to understand that he'd been there and known these people for literally years. Even before the church formed. As I already mentioned he was a founding member as they'd all left another church to form this new one and he'd been taught that without that church and the leadership there he had no calling and now he was being told that he had to go back to the single life and leave his new wife and unborn baby simply because I talked to someone else that the Supreme Leader had excommunicated. My husband even asked, 'what happened to Biblical church discipline found in Matthew?'

Matthew 18:15-17

15 “Moreover, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. 16 But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that ‘by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.’ 17 And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector.

Other than the two phone calls from the Supreme Leader no one ever even came to me personally. He told my husband that he had announced from the pulpit that I had been cast out as a Jezebel and no one was allowed to talk to me or even him. No one ever talked to me about what I had supposedly done. My husband was called and told I was a Jezebel and not allowed back to the church. No elders came to visit or tried to talk to me to work anything out. Nothing! Just one phone call casting a newly saved and pregnant woman out of the church for what he saw as rebellion and expecting my husband to leave me and remain with the church in fear of losing his calling. Needless to say, my husband stood up and said, 'cancel the ride, I'm not coming.' Have I forgiven? Yes, in fact the man that the Supreme Leader (who has now passed into glory) was sending to our house to pick up my husband that day is after all these years still in our lives and is flying states away to come visit us within the next few days. He and his family were later kicked out of the church as well as countless others who eventually came around and began calling us again. 

So let me ask you now. I am speaking the exact truth of what happened. I have not embellished or made up even one thing. Who was walking in the spirit of Jezebel if you simply see that spirit as a controlling or domineering spirit? It was him and not me. He felt the need to control everyone and everything. He pridefully wouldn't even practice the Matthew 18 version of scripture to discipline me if it was necessary. This pride eventually destroyed his entire church and I have to say he had some of the most awesome people in his church. Wonderful men and women of God who had huge callings and giftings. Terrific and stable marriages. Families whose children even attended school there. Leaders who are still serving the Lord today but ALL left and/or were cast out for something minimal that he didn't like. They had set this man up as a Spiritual leader yet very quickly fell into the pit of not having accountability for him or his actions at all. This scripture just came to me as I was writing this...

Matthew 18:6

“But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

It's hard to believe that a millstone (losing his church & ministry) could have been hung around his neck because of what he did to me personally and I've never taken it that way because he'd been practicing church discipline with many for years, but he did hurt one of God's little ones. I was a babe in Christ, and he cast me away caring not that I would be fatherless. Only God knows. My husband too had forgiven him and loved him greatly. In fact, before his death, he and my husband still talked on the phone often as he lived states away. I knew my heart had been healed early on when my husband began speaking to him again and it didn't bother me in the least. I do remember having thoughts occasionally when I would hear them on the phone of, 'after all these years he's never once felt that God might want him to apologize to me?' He'd had plenty of opportunity and could have at any time asked my husband to pass the phone to me, but it never happened. That was on him, not on me. But what saved me through it all, besides my wonderful husband standing with me?

HE LEAVES THE 90 AND 9...

One day I was driving home from work still shaken by all of it and with crocodile tears running down my face literally. I could barely see to drive feeling rejected by God and man. Was I rebellious? Was I really a Jezebel? Was God really throwing me away less than a year after I'd gotten saved? I was EXTREMELY confused to say the least and I was on the offramp to get to my house where my husband and newborn daughter were waiting, and I heard this as clear as if God was sitting in the car with me. "Daughter, I said I would never leave you or forsake you and I haven't. Didn't I say that I would leave the 90 and 9 to go after the 1?"

Matthew 18:12

“What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine and go to the mountains to seek the one that is straying?

Knowing the word of God and getting it down into your heart is imperative to having a relationship with Him. I'd have never heard this come up in my spirit literally like the blowing of a shofar (that loud) if I didn't know the word of God. It was deliverance and I was full of joy and forgiveness right away. That experience in the car truly changed my life, attitude and outlook. 

In closing the spirit of Jezebel is neither male nor female. It can and does try to work through anyone who allows it to. So don't let it work through you. 

I am sorry I did not get to the verses I was planning for today, but I do my best to write what I sense the Lord wants me to write. I will try to get into chapters 3 & 4 in Part 3.

In His Love and Mine,

Sheryl York

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