Sid: My guest Martha Kilpatrick and I’m featuring her new book “Chariots of Fire – Elijah the Last Days” has keys on how you can be red hot for the Messiah. There are things going on in the invisible realm that are actually stopping you from being the man or the woman of God that God has called you to be. This whole concept… you know when I hear Jezebel I think of a domineering woman, but a man can be a Jezebel as much as a woman. When I hear Ahab I think of a wimp of a man because it was a man the original Ahab, but it could be a woman that is this Ahab. Where the rubber meets the road, how does this thing operate and what problems does it cause us in our intimacy with God in our accomplishing what God has for our destiny if we don’t recognize this number 1, and number 2 know what to do about it?
Martha: I think ultimately you lose your life, physical life, you lose your destiny if this is not dealt with. I’ve said I believe every believer will face it in one form or another. Let’s start with Ahab because our focus is always on Jezebel. On our website Shulamite.com, we get a lot of hits looking for Jezebel, we get very few looking for Elijah, and none looking for Ahab. Ahab is the weakness that allows Jezebel to rule.
Sid: So if Ahab is dealt with that’s a bigger death blow to Jezebel than binding all those spirits around Jezebel.
Martha: Exactly, exactly.
Sid: And people think the opposite.
Martha: Exactly and I wrote in the book when Jezebel is allowed to besiege you over all of it is the one with blazing eyes who wants to destroy your yellow streak of cowardice.
Sid: How does this Ahab spirit literally get hold of a man or a woman, and the Ahab spirit is someone that is fearful and intimidated, and afraid to stir up things because there might be bad consequences?
Martha: Exactly it is to avoid the suffering of arousing the Jezebel rage. I find as I get in the scriptures about it, it’s more than fear it’s also laziness, and irresponsibility. Ahab believed it was easier to let Jezebel have the throne than to do it himself. He…
Sid: Laziness is part of it?
Martha: Laziness is part of it.
Sid: Huh!
Martha: He was made king of Israel and when the scriptures deal with Ahab and Jezebel, Ahab died first and God pronounced judgment on the house of Ahab down to the last member of that house was annihilated. God held Ahab accountable for what he allowed another to control him to do. He was fully accountable for what he gave Jezebel.
Sid: Doesn’t that go all the way back to the Garden of Eden?
Martha: Exactly.
Sid: The woman made me do it! (Laughing)
Martha: (Laughing) Exactly it’s a repetition really of a worse scenario. He allowed Jezebel to murder to gain him something he was greedy for and wouldn’t work for.
Sid: But it doesn’t start out that way, it doesn’t start out with an Ahab spirit and a Jezebel spirit… we really are the ones that give the platform for this.
Martha: Exactly, exactly it begins with flesh. It begins with indulging yourself and not being willing. In the Christian life is called to lose your life that is the basic call of the cross.
Sid: Well that’s taught in every pulpit in America obviously.
Martha: And when you don’t live it…
Sid: Let me tell you the opposite is taught in every pulpit, not every one but most pulpits of America. It’s the seek sensitive, is this whole seeker sensitive because the results are so good? The churches are flooded with people, BUT… you must end by noon, you can’t have more than 3 songs, and you can’t make a big deal over the offering, and you must entertain the people, but the results are good. What’s wrong with this?
Martha: The results appear to be good. In the time of real crisis and crunch that will not sustain a life because the… you gain your life by losing it not by indulging it. Both Jezebel and Ahab are those who refuse to lose their life for Christ, that’s when it comes in. Even to face Ahab and Jezebel requires a loss of life. It’s the loss of your safety to… on either ground. Ahab’s weakness has to go and it was the first to die, God took Ahab out before He took Jezebel with the same type of death.
Sid: Okay, I’m going to ask you a tough question and that is, Jesus said “Love your neighbor as yourself” what’s the fine line between practicing what Jesus said, and being an Ahab and being a wimp?
Martha: The only way to live that out is by the power of the spirit, but if you look at Jesus His love took the form many times of tremendous confrontation. He was often rude, by some standards, He did not conform to convention, He gave scathing confrontation to the Pharisees. So He was capable of enormous compassion and enormous confrontation the turning of the money changers tables over, for instance. He was capable of both.
Sid: Tell me a little bit more about Ahab.
Martha: Ahab is a spirit of control as well…
Sid: Really?
Martha: Because it acquiesces to control the Jezebel spirit. All of it is about control.
Sid: And the question is, who’s going to control you? It’s a battle it’ just like Elijah and the prophets of Baal, it’s a battle of who’s going to be God.
Martha: Exactly. That’s precisely the battle.
Sid: Isn’t it idolatry to acquiesce like that?
Martha: Yes it is, exactly. It’s… to what you bow that’s your god, and the one you fear is your god. Those things like I’ve said have to be overcome in the human heart.
Sid: There’s such a deception that there are people listening to us that see the Jezebel in someone else, see the Ahab in someone else, but they’re blind to see it themselves. How can we see this?
Martha: Well I know a lady very high in Christian circles. She took this book on a weekend away, she spent the entire weekend on the floor repenting. You would not have seen any control or fear in her, it would not have been evident. It shocked me that she could find anything in this book that would convict her and bring her to such repentance. But she really did see in this book that those tendencies in herself, and enormous repentance and change in her life.
Sid: And that’s what I really see the purpose of the book because all of us have blind spots.
Martha: Yes.
Sid: And your book, I believe, was written in such a fashion, I mean how can you repent of sin if it’s a blind spot?
Martha: You can’t see it.
Sid: Well tell me more about Mr. Ahab.
Martha: Well his way of death was very interesting. It told the whole story of who he was. He was peace at any price, he was in a battle and he tricked King Jehoshaphat to dress up as king, but he dressed as a common soldier so that he would not be seen by the enemy. Ahab is always hiding, and always putting someone else in the line of fire to save his skin. So Ahab is, save yourself at the cost of anyone else. Of course by the judgment of God an arrow found him and he did die in that battle and Jehoshaphat lived. So he… and he acquiesced before that, he acquiesced totally to the king of Assyria who demanded first his wives and children, he didn’t fight that. Then the king said “I’m going to demand everything. We’ll come in your house that you treasure.” And he finally went to the elders over that one and they agreed to fight the king of Assyria, but Ahab gives in everything.
Sid: So it’s almost like when you give in to the spirit of Ahab to save yourself it may be a very minor little thing, but that little thing will build and build, and build and build until it becomes as you say a… literally a principality over your life.
Martha: Taking you over and controlling you.
Sid: Can someone be controlled by a spirit of Ahab literally every fiber of their being if they keep acquiescing?
Martha: Yes if they keep acquiescing. I don’t believe if that you ever lose your choices. I believe you can have your “no” to the enemy and to yourself. I don’t believe you ever lose that capacity. But you can give such control to that principality that you are literally living it out.
Sid: How does the Ahab – Jezebel deal operate in a church?
Martha: Well if there’s any tendency towards irresponsibility or fear the Jezebel spirit can come in a person. I know of ministries where it has come in by flattery, by seduction, by the promise of help, and the promise…
Sid: Where the pastor relies on that elder, man or woman…
Martha: Exactly.
Sid: …more than God.
Martha: Yes and the subtle takeover from the Jezebel spirit of the leader and turning that leader into an Ahab weakling, then the ministry or the church begins to disintegrate.
Sid: What about the other side, what I see here in America in the large churches is a pastor that has control over everything is under his thumb. Now he’s a good pastor, he’s doing this to protect people but it’s going to the point where it’s controlling people.
Martha: Yes, yes it’s a misunderstanding of the role of the leader. The role of the leader is not to control, and wherever there’s control in the Holy Spirit then the Holy Spirit is out, and God is off the throne. So control absolutely destroys the presence of God.
Sid: So how does this play out in a family?
Martha: In much the same way, where one person who has the desire control the whole thing exerts that control through aggression and intimidation, subtle threats, seduction, and takes over. Then the family experiences spiritual death. There has to be an Ahab weakling to sustain a Jezebel tyrant.
Sid: But the way you approach it to get rid of this is different than I’ve heard anyone else do.
