[OBW]

CMW,

I hate to say this, but I read the Jon Hamilton article on The Spirit of Jezebel again and had some of the same questions as I did before.

I admit that Jezebel was a wicked woman in the OT, and see that God referred to an influence in the NT as being from allowing Jezebel. But much of what Jon writes is his conjecture and add-ons. He adds one statement after another of what “a Jezebel spirit is,” yet only a few of those are from actual observations in scripture concerning the ways of the historical Jezebel, at least that are cited as such.

Then he goes on to state that this spirit is “the force behind” so many of the ills of American society. Yet Revelation is only concerned with what is being allowed into the church.

But the thing that is most troubling is the story concerning the Welsh revival and his version of the story of Evans Roberts and Jesse Penn-Lewis. Even if the chronological accounts are correct, the cast of evilness upon JPL is not substantiated. The reasons for the changes in Evans may have been true and spiritual.

It might have been that his leading of such a revival was more like phenomenon of the kid preacher (can’t remember his name) decades ago in the US. He could speak strongly and it wowed a lot of people. Many actually came to Christ as a result. But he had no actual conviction of his own — at least not one that would make him a viable preacher.

In any case, the character and reason for the events is stated as fact, yet there is no evidence that Jon has done more than cast his opinion about those events. Given that there is nothing more than an opinion about what happened and why it happened, it looks more like someone who has an ax to grind and can make his case by tricking us into believing his stuff as fact.

Even if there is some truth in the general premise of the article, the biggest problem I have is the kind of “watch out, there’s a snake under every rock” attitude that comes out. While we can argue that Satan is behind all the evils of the world, when you start to treat it as something about the spirit of the humans who practice the evil and some common denominator among them that must be avoided, it tends to make you want to run to the hills, build a private compound, stock up lots of food and water and retreat from all contact with them. It is the start of another separatism movement within Christianity. It will strike out at other Christians who do not see what they see. And having just read some of the other things on Jon's homepage, there is some hints at the truthfulness of that assessment. There's too much focus on the enemy. I will admit a prejudice of mine in saying that, in the contxt of the rest of what I read, the fact that he and his wife are homschooling their 8 kids adds to the picture that I suspected. (I have nothing specific against homeschooling except for some of the reasons given for doing it, expecially by people who have no business being the source of knowledge for kids that will need to know more than their parents know.)

We are to be wise. But we are also to be in the world, just not of it. Each day has enough evil for itself. If we start to put all the evil in the world into some huge interlinked web that is after us, ... well let’s just say that we don’t need to worry about the fact that all the world lies in the evil one. The scripture didn’t put this kind of fear into the believers about the world. Why should we accept it now. Surely Satan would try to destroy the church and our testimony. But that was true without a boogeyman in the form of a “Jezebel spirit.” Just don’t let it in the church.

I could be off with respect to the general message of the article, but what I see is to much of the things that I observe in some other "off the reservation" teachings, including Lee's.