I sat, reeling from what had just happened – desperate to know how I had left myself open to this searing pain again. The experiences of the three previous weeks had undone me – especially their eerie similarity to a far more excruciating and extended pummeling I had taken several years before.
In many ways, my five-year venture into a prayer network linked to the “New Apostolic Reformation” looked very different from a lifetime in the Southern Baptist Convention. Yet underlying issues in both systems are the same.
Ultimately, in both:
→ A small but influential group of church leaders, male and female, worked together to orchestrate the pummeling that suddenly erupted against me.
→ They did so in a way that created a profoundly confusing fog.
Both times, God rescued me, spiritually, emotionally, physically. As he did, he answered my desperate cries to see through the fog. The first time, he pointed me to the history of my own church culture – and sent me to search it out.
The second time, he pointed me to King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. He sent me to search their lives – and the life of Elijah, who overcame.
Working in tandem, like a two-headed snake
As a result, I’ve learned a lot about the three. I’ve written a lot about each of them. The more I’ve learned, the more I hear God saying: These are the days of Elijah.
For as the Lord has shown me what happened in that faraway time and place, I’ve realized what in the world was happening when I was abused in the church. I’ve recognized how pervasive the pattern is.
Ahab and Jezebel ruled the 10 northern tribes of the divided nation Israel during the time Elijah was declaring the word of the Lord. Both Ahab and Jezebel lived to control. Neither had any desire to be godly. Yet they were religious leaders, as well as government leaders, in that place.
Evil, oppressive, abusive,
the two worked in tandem,
like a two-headed snake.1
As I searched the Scriptures, the Spirit of God showed me things about both their lives that I hadn’t previously seen. Then, in time, he began to reveal how the two worked in tandem. Little by little, the Lord answered a question he had led me to ask:
What tactics created the dynamic by which Ahab and Jezebel worked together as one?
This post explores one tactic of the two-headed snake – one that both mimics God’s design for men and women, and turns it on its head.2
God’s design
In the beginning, “God created human beings in his own image … male and female he created them. Then God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it’” (Gen. 1:27-28 NLT).
From the start, the Lord created people to rule – but not to lord it over each other. He blessed them, male and female, to steward and oversee the earth and all the plants and creatures on it. He told them to govern together.
Sin sabotaged that blessing. In the fullness of time, Jesus came to restore it, and expand it.
Before he ascended back to heaven, the resurrected Lord told his tiny group of male and female disciples (and all who would come after): Go help people in all nations learn to be my disciples. So saying, he blessed his people to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” in a new way.
And he sent his people out to reign in life by grace. Our Lord does not send us out to make other people our disciples. He does not call us to “reign” by manipulating, or intimidating, or seeking in any other way to control other human beings.
The reigning and reproducing in God’s kingdom involve:
- Learning from, and living by, the Spirit.
- Growing in qualities like humility, patience, courage, faith.
- Walking in love – both receiving and giving God’s love.
Ahab’s and Jezebel’s agreement
When Ahab and Jezebel ruled God’s people, they reigned the opposite way. For one thing, both were incapable even of natural affection, much less godly love.
They cared nothing for other people, including the people they led. Indeed, the pair brutalized those who did not do what they wanted. And they corrupted those who loyally toed the line.
What’s more, Ahab and Jezebel did not love each other. Much in Scripture indicates that. For example:
- They had anything but a monogamous marriage.
- Neither did the other any good.
- And we rarely see them together.
Even when we do see them together, their interactions attest:
They did not enjoy, nor seek, each other’s company. They may have barely tolerated one another. Yet Ahab and Jezebel had made an agreement by which they worked as one.
Each could use the other
in order to control everyone else.
How Jezebel used Ahab
Jezebel blatantly aligned with evil. She openly destroyed anyone who would not bow to her control. She had no scruples and no endearing side.
But Jezebel would have had no authority in Israel if Ahab had not married her. To get power, she married a king. Then, she took the power and authority he handed her and used it to get her way.
How Ahab used Jezebel
Ahab did what God despises even more than blatant evil. Ahab practiced evil insidiously.
He chose a queen known for her witchcraft, a queen who would encourage him to manipulate, intimidate and dominate. Further, Ahab found in Jezebel a means to give himself completely over to evil – without appearing to have done so.
Typically, when Ahab wanted dirty work done, he did not want to take responsibility for it. To misdirect blame, he used anyone at hand. Ah, but his ultimate weapon was his queen. Ahab knew how to manipulate the woman who owed her power to him. If no one else would do it for him, Jezebel would.
Ahab and Jezebel in the church?
So why would God point me to an ancient king and queen who gave themselves to evil, when I asked him for insight into abuse in the church today? The ancient and the current might seem to have nothing in common.
And yet: Behind the façades, disguised by appearances, hidden in the fog, the same underlying issues lurk. To recognize them, we must humble ourselves. Keep looking. And pray for eyes to see.
Recognize the spiritual enemy behind the human abusers
At its source, the two-headed snake is a spiritual enemy. As Ephesians 6:12 says:
We are not struggling against human beings, but against the rulers, authorities and cosmic powers governing this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm. (CJB)
Evil originates in the spiritual realm. So it’s not limited to any one earthly time or place.
The “spiritual forces of evil” are not God. They cannot create. But they are incredibly adept at deceiving and alluring. So they can reuse the same tactics and patterns, tweaking them as needed. And people down through time can and do become their pawns.
Some people initiate grievous wrongs, deliberately, relentlessly. Some who would not lead out in evil repeatedly collude with it.
What’s more, any time we lean on our own understanding, we too can get lost in the fog that evil produces.
Notice abusive tactics and dynamics
Ahab and Jezebel did not struggle against evil. They colluded with evil. What’s more, each worked the other – and each enabled the other – to play selfish, ruthless games with people’s lives.
So: Who did Ahab and Jezebel spend their lives working to control?
The sobering answer: People God had called to be his people.
The same spiritual dynamics that Scripture exposes in Ahab and Jezebel’s day can show up any time, any place, where:
- People identified with the Lord have been taught to equate faithfulness to God with loyalty to a system.
- People who want to be leaders have set their hearts on power and control.
- Men and women work in tandem to stay elevated and in charge.
Ah, but we may miss the duo, if:
- We’re looking for one man and one woman.
- We’re looking “out there” at “them,” rather than letting God show us our part of the church, our leaders, us.
- Or, we’ve realized how often abused women are falsely accused of abusing – and now will not consider: Women can be abusive too.
A personal testimony
I’ve been abused in more than one church culture. So I know DARVO, gaslighting, victim-blaming and a lot of other abuse tactics, firsthand.
What’s more, I know what it’s like, as a woman, to try to speak up and lead out, because God has told you to do it – and to be shunned and called “Jezebel” and other awful things, as a result.
Yet I can also attest: Women seeking power and control may participate in, and even lead out in, abusing other people. If we want to help others, or ourselves, overcome abuse, we need to see that part of the picture too.
The Ahab-Jezebel dynamic
→ Multiple leaders of both genders can collude with one another in ways eerily like the Ahab and Jezebel of old.
→ In particular, an Ahab-Jezebel dynamic can emerge in a hierarchical church culture that expects men in leadership to rule – and women to know their place.
Watch how male and female leaders interact
Women who want status and power in such systems need men in power to “authorize” them – or at least to be willing to look the other way.
If the men don’t come to them, female power-seekers may go to the men in charge and make some kind of “mutually beneficial” offer. If desperate, confidant and bold enough, such women may even resort to threats. That is, they may suggest ways they might undermine the men’s power, if the men don’t include them in it.
Men who want status and power gravitate to hierarchical systems. In church systems, though, they need to appear godly. Thus, controlling male church leaders who share power with select women have two prime concerns:
- Will she make me look good, thus securing my power in this system?
- Can I get her to do my dirty work, and to take the heat for it?
As long as both answers are yes, such men may exempt the women they empower from rules that other women must follow. The men may also allow their female cohorts to treat other people any way they choose.
Using one another vs. loving one another
Jesus said, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you use one another.” No, wait! We all know that’s not what he said. Indeed, that mindset takes what Jesus said and turns it on its head.
The night before his crucifixion, Jesus declared:
Everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (John 13:35)
Yet how often are we taught to think we can substitute the one for the other, even in the church? “You do something for me, and I’ll do something for you. I get what I want. You get what you want. And it’s all good.”
But it is not good or godly to use another person to get what I want. To “use” a person is to treat another human being as an object. Oh, it may seem – and I may even want to believe – that I’m acting in the other’s best interests. But the truth is: The other person is a means to an end. I’m seeking what benefits me.
Mutually agreeing to this dynamic does not make it better. Rather, it creates a fog that can obscure the truth even more, as I use you and you use me and we end up working as one, to get other people to do what we want.
Initially, the behavior that results from that tactic may not look anything like the destruction Ahab and Jezebel wreaked in the lives of the people they worked to control. But if we persist in using one another, our consciences become seared. Ultimately, we too can collude in behavior that is abusive, cruel, evil – in order to get our way.
When we let Jesus open our eyes
The Lord does not ignore or excuse such behavior. He calls us to stand firm in him against grave wrongdoing – and to repent when we have taken part. He calls to account anyone who persists in wickedness.
If we will let Jesus open our eyes, we can recognize the vast difference between using one another and loving one another. We can see when we’ve substituted the one for the other. We can turn from the counterfeit and learn to love with God’s love.
And we can know: When men and women in church leadership regularly get what they want by using one another,
They crush your own people, Lord!
They abuse your very own possession. (Ps. 94:5 CEB)
That’s not following Jesus at all.
This post is excerpted and adapted from The Elijah Blessing: An Undivided Heart, updated 2025.
Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay
These are the days of Elijah
- Spiritual schizophrenia and the two-headed snake
- Masters of misdirection and mesmerizing fog
- Obsession with power, in the church
- Spirit, power, blessing and an undivided heart
- Whatever happened to loving one another?
- The silencing of women and the snorts of God
- Checklists, idols and loving God
- Witchcraft in the church
- Behind the façade in the SBC
- Behind the scenes at Living Proof Live
- Christ alone: Counting the cost, going with God
Footnotes
- Quoted from The Elijah Blessing: An Undivided Heart. I also quote this sentence – and explore other insights related to it – in the post, Spiritual schizophrenia and the two-headed snake. ↩︎
- It’s a favorite ploy of Satan, you know, to take God’s design, and desecrate it. ↩︎
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