Some people are manipulators and controllers. They use various techniques of deceit and intimation to get others to do what they want them to do. Some of them claim to be prophets. They pretend to give "words" from God, but that word is simply their own directions coming from their own motivation to manipulate and control. What they do is a very bad thing, and God will hold them accountable as false prophets. But this is not what we are talking about in this lesson. We are talking about when a demon gives false words to manipulate or control other people.
The devil and some of his demons like to deceive, manipulate and control. I am not an expert on demons, but from my limited experience, it seems like many of them specialize in a given area. For instance, some are called "spirits of infirmity" and they specialize in making people sick. Some are called "spirits of rage" and they specialize in making people angry and acting inappropriately from that anger. Some are called "spirits of offense" and they specialize in stirring up contention between people.
There also seem to be some demons whose specialty is to use false prophesy in an attempt to manipulate and control people. They work through one person who acts as a "prophet" -- only the prophecies that person gives come from the demon instead of from God. We have a Bible example of a demon operating this way in 1 Kings and 2 Kings.
The demon operated through a lady named Jezebel. She was a Sidonian princess and she married Ahab, king of Israel (1 Kings 16:31). This put her in a position of great power and authority, making her an ideal candidate for this demon to work through. The first/second Kings account of Jezebel makes a great case study of someone who was controlled by a prophetic and manipulating demon. In fact, she was such a famous example of this that many people now refer to this type of demon as a "spirit of Jezebel." This manipulative and controlling demon seeks to destroy the true prophetic and replace it with it's own perverted counterfeit.
You can see characteristics of this demon from the life of original Jezebel in 1 Kings 16 to 2 Kings 9. Here are some of Jezebel's characteristics:
- She was in a position of authority (1 kings 16:31).
- She manipulated leadership to do ungodly things (1 Kings 16:32-34).
- She tried to destroy the true prophets of God (1 Kings 18:4, 1 kings 18:13).
- She financially supported and lead the false prophets (1 kings 18:19).
- She threatened God's true servants and tried to make them afraid (1 Kings 19:1-2).
- She manipulated others for her own gain (1 Kings 21:1-16).
- She thought nothing of destroying godly people's reputations and lives with false accusations (1 Kings 21:18).
- She stirred people up to do her bidding (1 Kings 21:25).
- She practiced witchcraft (2 Kings 9:22).
- She called herself a prophetess, but she did not speak for God (Rev 2:20).
If someone has a Spirit of Jezebel today, you would see some of these same traits operating in their life. In general, they manipulate and control a lot, using whatever technique works for the moment. At times they will be flattering and sweet and seem wonderful, so you just want to please them. At other times they will threaten and bully and apply overt pressure. At yet other times, they will try to make you dependent on them and then withdraw their friendship/approval if you don't do what they want you to do. They will often tell you that they are looking out for your own good or your own spiritual growth as they control and manipulate you.
They often act like it is very important for you to trust them, and at times they will tell you that if you are not trusting them, then you really are not trusting God because they are acting as God's representative. They will tell you that God is displeased with you when they are really the one who is displeased with you. They will do what they can to get you to enter into a co-dependent relationship with them, where they are the leader. After they do get you dependent, they will threaten to "go away" if you don't listen to them and do what they want you to do.
People with a spirit of Jezebel will often wrangle for authority. They will do what they can to climb higher and higher in position and authority in whatever circle they operate in. Some make it pretty high in the authority-chain and others don't. Those who don't get their own position of power will work hard to manipulate someone who is in a legitimate authority position, and try to control things through that person. That position and control is very important to them, it is one of their primary goals.
When the spirit of Jezebel starts to loose control in a given environment and they realize that they can't manipulate any longer, they usually sever all ties and leave quickly. They tend to cut off most or all existing relationships in that group and simply disappear or "go away."
People controlled by a spirit of Jezebel often desire to mentor those who move in the prophetic. They want to try to convince that prophetic person that they are not capable of hearing God clearly or moving in their destiny without the mentor's help. Some will even try to convince the prophetic person that they aren't moving in their own prophetic anointing, but under their mentor's anointing.
At first the mentor will seem wonderful. They will speak all sorts of encouraging things into the person's life and tell them "secrets" that help them in move more accurately the prophetic. The mentor seems like a best friend. But that doesn't last. The relationship soon changes. The mentor begins to make demands contradict what God is saying directly to the person. They tell them how to run their lives, their ministry, their finances and their own personal devotions.
The mentor begins to "punish" their "mentee" for very minor offenses. Some mentors give their prophetic mentee all sorts of tricky tests that are hard or impossible to "pass." When the mentee can't pass it, then they have to do something for the mentor to get back in their good graces. The mentor will work hard to convince the person they are mentoring that that they really can't hear God without their help. They do what they can to make the prophetic person dependent on them, then they use that dependency to manipulate them.
It is a surprisingly common tactic and there seem to be a lot of spirits of Jezebel running around practicing it. In fact, the internet has become a popular hunting ground for these spirits to pick up young prophets to "mentor" (e.g., to manipulate and control). The person controlled by this demon hangs out in prophetic chatrooms and in prophetic bulletin boards. They don't speak much into the main room, but they watch and look for perspective targets. When they find someone who looks like a likely candidate, they speak to that person in private chat. At first they prophesy all sorts of encouraging things to them, telling them how special and how gifted they are. Then they begin to offer advice to the person and after that they offer to mentor them.
[Of course, spirits of Jezebel are not limited to the internet. They hang out in churches as well, looking for vulnerable prey to take under their wing. Once they have their person, they try to get that one to become dependent on them, so they manipulate and control him/her. If your church has a prophetic ministry team, individuals with the spirit of Jezebel will often be drawn to it--but they won't be content just to serve on the team, they will want to lead it, to be in control of it. They will usually start to have conflicts with the one already leading the team. They will sometimes try to con another leader in the church into challenging that person so they can move in and take over that position of leadership. Or they might target leading another ministry in the church, but they will want to be in some form of leadership and they will try to manipulate their way into it.]
Let's look a bit more at the mentor scenario, because so many with the spirit of Jezebel want to mentor someone. Most of them will try to get those with a legitimate prophetic gift to look to them for mentoring. At first, they will seem loving and caring, concerned only for the good and growth of the one they are mentoring. For a short while, they act like they want nothing in return. But soon they begin to make subtle demands on the person who they mentor. Perhaps they request the person to misuse their authority on their mentor's behalf. Or perhaps they ask for a financial favor. Or perhaps they ask the mentee to begin promoting their mentor to others.
If the person caves to the initial demand (and most will), then later they begin making stronger and stronger demands, pushing the person more and more under their control until they are overtly manipulating them.
If the mentee resists the initial subtle attempts at manipulation, the mentor will do their best to convince them that the request comes from God and not from them. They begin to equate disobeying them to disobeying God. If they can't manipulate the person they are mentoring after exerting a certain amount of pressure, then they drop that person and go look for a different victim.
They spirit of Jezebel is drawn towards the true prophetic, and they want to manipulate and control it, twisting it for their own evil purposes. Sometimes this demon inhabits a very talented individual, who becomes an effective con-artist under the demon's auspices. Other times they go for the overtly wounded. That person lacks the interpersonal skills to be well grounded, but they do manage to do a lot of damage before they either leave or are kicked out.
Sometimes people with a spirit of Jezebel will operate in "power," but that power comes from the devil instead of God; it is a form of witchcraft.
A Real Life Example
Our last lesson talked about how some demons try to use the prophetic to manipulate and control people. We often refer to those demons as a "spirit of Jezebel." One of the things spirits of Jezebel like to do is to find someone gifted in the prophetic but not mature in their gifting, and "mentor" them, which is really an excuse to control and manipulate them.
When I was young in the prophetic I was so hungry for someone to mentor me that I fell prey to someone with a spirit of Jezebel. It soon became the biggest area of bondage in my life, and it took years to fully break free from the effects of it. I personally experienced much of the stuff I described in the previous lesson. At first I thought I was the only person experiencing it. But I had this friend from Maine, and she had a similar experience with her mentor at the same time I was going through it with mine. After a while we began to compare notes and the stories were very similar. I began to realize that my situation was not an isolated case. Later on, after I was no longer with my "mentor," I began to hear a very similar stories from person after person. After a while I began to realize that this was a demonic strategy, and that a lot of demons were using it.
I am going to share bits and pieces from my experience, but I don't want to use my "mentor's" real name, so I will call her Cindy.
At first Cindy was like a best friend to me. I could not believe how much we had in common. She lived on the east coast and I on the west, but we would talk on the phone daily, and send each other numerous emails. I also flew Cindy out (at my own expense) a few times to work with me personally and to be involved in various ministry endeavors.
Cindy would prophesy to me frequently and her words were very encouraging to me in the early days. I was enthralled with her prophetic ability, and I wanted to be like her in the prophetic. But one day, about a month into our relationship, she told me that God showed her that two people on my email discussion list who had "bad spirits." So she asked me to remove them from the list, even though they had not broken any of the rules or done anything inappropriate. I told her I could not do that unless they broke some rules or did something wrong. She began to exert more and more pressure on me to get rid of them.
After a while, she told me that I was disobeying God and that God would take the ministry away from me and give it to someone else if I did not obey Him. I prayed about it a lot and I did not hear God say any of the things that Cindy was prophesying to me. She threatened to end our mentoring arrangement if I would not listen to her. We parted ways for about a month.
Then Cindy suddenly came back into my life, saying God sent her back to me. She asked me to do several little things that did not feel quite right to me, but were not overtly wrong. I did what she asked just to avoid conflict, because I really wanted to be mentored. Part of the mentoring she gave me was truly helpful. Some of it was actually destructive to my prophetic walk, but I did not realize it at the time.
Cindy worked very hard to make me dependent on her and for a season she even convinced me that I did not have any prophetic gifting of my own, that I merely operated under her anointing/covering. I won't go into all of the horror stories of various ways that she tried to manipulate me, but I need to share a few to give you the flavor of the relationship.
Cindy was constantly punishing me for the most minor of offenses. For instance, one time we were in a chatroom (operated by my ministry) and someone in there was very troubled about something and wanted prayer for it. Cindy had been sort of informally leading the room, but she was not helping this troubled person who was so desperately asking for prayer. After waiting about 5 minutes, I lead the room in a prayer for this person. The Lord showed me what to pray for them and when it was over, they said that they felt very ministered to. In fact, others in the room began to comment on the prayer and how powerful it was. It seemed that everyone in the chat room was delighted with the prayer--everyone except for one person. Cindy was furious with me. She contacted me privately and said that I usurped her authority by breaking into the prayer before she had a chance to prophesy to that that person. She said I had destroyed the spirit in the room and that God was mad and left because of my insensitivity to her leading in the room. She punished me over that for about three days, constantly reminding me how I had usurped her authority in the room and how I had destroyed the Holy Spirit's moving in there.
In retrospect, I don't think I did anything inappropriate or quenched the Holy Spirit in any way. But at that time she had me convinced that I ruined the whole session by not being more sensitive to the Spirit's leading and sensing that Cindy wanted to prophesy to that person before I prayed. The fact that I was the head of the ministry that ran that chatroom was irrelevant to her. That fact that I had waited five minutes for her to do something before leading the room in prayer for that person was also irrelevant. She turned that trivial thing into a major offense and punished me for it for days. And that is typical of how a spirit of Jezebel might act.
Later, Cindy began telling me how to run the GodSpeak ministry. Some of what she was telling me directly contradicted what I was hearing from God on my own. I told her that I had to go with what I heard God say directly to me over what she prophesied to me. In her eyes, that was disobedience and rebellion to God, so she began "working" on my character. She began to prophesy all sorts of negative and horrible things to me, telling me how God was about to disqualify me and maybe even kill me off. She would tell me that my only potential "salvation" from imminent destruction was to do what she directed me to do. She wanted me to obey God by obeying her. I began to question and reject her words, so she disappeared (became unreachable) for about six or seven months.
We went through that type of cycle over and over again for a three year period. Looking back now, I can't see how I subjected myself to that abuse to many times. But something would come up in my life or ministry that I did not understand or know how to handle, and I'd find myself yearning for a mentor. Then Cindy would suddenly be back again, willing to mentor me. I would tell myself that our relationship would not fall into the same pattern this time...but it always did. She was always nice and helpful for a short season, then pressuring and controlling and manipulating again. She had made me emotionally dependent on her, so I put up with a lot of stuff from her.
It got to the point where I could not hear God clearly about her any more. One time I would hear God tell me, "She's My prophet, trust her." Then another time I would hear God tell me "She has a spirit of Jezebel and she is manipulating you against My wishes." She had me so confused that I could not hear God clearly when I asked Him about her. I had to turn to others, such as my pastor, for advice and counsel on what to do with her.
In the meanwhile, her behavior kept getting worse and worse, until others could observe that she was acting inappropriately. The straw that broke the camel's back (so to speak) was when she and I were scheduled to co-lead a woman's retreat for my church. She was to fly out on a Thursday afternoon and the retreat started on a Friday. My church had paid her airfare. I went to meet her plane, but she was not on it. I tried to call her, but she would not answer the phone. However, I did get an email from her that arrived about the time the plane landed. It said that she had a fight with her husband so she wasn't coming. That left me and the retreat in a lurch. Fortunately, we were able to find someone from Oregon (an hour flight away) to fill in on short notice. But my pastor put his foot down and said that if I wanted to minister in his church I could not be closely affiliated with people who behaved like that.
He was right and I knew it. Her behavior was hurting my ministry. I ended up severing all ministry relationships with her, including removing her from a position of leadership with GodSpeak. I offered to still be friends and to pray for her as she was experiencing difficulties with her husband. Of course, that could not work for her. She either had to be in complete control, or she wanted no relationship at all. So our relationship terminated.
Even after Cindy was out of my life, I still struggled with her in my thoughts. I struggled with resentment and I debated if she operated from a spirit of manipulation/control or if she was really representing God and someone I accidentally missed God by disobeying her mandates. Sometimes I was glad she was out of my life and other times I missed her and wanted her back in it. She seemed to be in my thoughts far too often. I would bring it to God. I would choose to forgive her. I would break soul ties and I asked God to help me have attitudes towards her that were pleasing to Him. Over time she became an occasional struggle instead of a constant one, but she never left my thoughts entirely. A week could not go by without my thinking about her and struggling with my emotions over her.
This whole thing continued to be a big and unresolved issue in my life for over four years. I viewed this as the biggest issue in my life, and I really cried out to God for help--for four or five years. God finally orchestrated a situation to set me free from this.
He allowed another person controlled by the same type of spirit to contact me. Let's call her Jean. Jean's initial contact was to complain about someone in the chatroom, telling me how God had showed her the person's evil motives and suggesting I ban that person for the room. That reminded me a lot of Cindy, but I did not make the connection that she was controlled by the same type of demon. I wrote her a polite reply that basically brushed off her request. She wrote back an attacking and rebuking email, and she seemed to think that she had some sort of spiritual authority over me.
Something about her email reminded me very strongly of Cindy. So I reread it carefully. I noticed she used several of the same phraseologies as my old mentor used to use, and the same type of arguments. Jean also said, "I knew you a very long time ago from another list and know who you are and what you were and are all about." But I was unfamiliar with the name she gave me and did not feel I had ever been in any type of relationship with her. Yet, that was precisely the type of thing my old mentor used to say. Was it possible that Jean was actually Cindy trying to come back into my life incognito?
For a while, I was convinced that she was. But I did a bit of research, going to her web site and looking at her picture. She was much younger than Cindy had been. Jean acted just line Cindy, but she wasn't her. However, she was controlled by the same spirit that had controlled Cindy, and behaved the same way towards me. While I was processing this, Jean came into a chatroom I was in and started bawling me out for some imaginary non-offense that she insisted had taken place five years earlier. I had taken this abuse from Cindy because I was emotionally dependent on her. But I had not such relationship with Jean and her behavior appalled me. I had no intention of putting up with that from her and was about to tell her so.
Suddenly I had this moment of insight. I realized that Cindy had not been the source of my misery, it was the demon controlling her. That same demon was controlling this other person, Jean. It behaved exactly the same way through either of them and it even used some of the same phraseology through both people. All the issues I had in my heart towards Cindy broke off at that point. I saw the demon for what it was, then I rebuked it. It's power over me was broken and I was instantly emotionally free from what I had considered as my biggest issue for years.
This spirit of Jezebel is a nasty demon and it seeks out those with a true prophetic gifting while they are still young in it. The demon does this to try and gain control over them so it can manipulate them. I hope that sharing my story will help keep some people from falling prey to this thing because they know how it operates.
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