Confronting Jezebel: A Book Review

Confronting Jezebel by Steve Sampson is a book that I do NOT recommend for anyone to read!  Never before have I read a book that was intended to help me spiritually that left me feeling so negative towards the church and basically people in general!

Sampson wrote this book to help people to identify those with a Jezebel spirit – mostly in the church but in other situations as well.  However, Sampson seems to spend a lot of time in the book simply “tattling” on situations that he either heard about or saw happen to some of his “closest friends.”  Rather than point the reader to biblical references, there seems to be a lot more of “he shoulda/coulda/woulda done things differently.”

There also seems to be a lot of promotion for his accompanying book, Discerning and Defeating the Ahab Spirit, and he seems to refer the reader to that book several times instead of simply giving the solution in the book you currently are reading!

There were also several points I had to disagree with on a doctrinal level, and he seems to thrive in promoting himself as a prophet.  There did not seem to be an air of humility about him at all (but I am just guessing this based on my interpretation of what I was reading).  He also seems to think that the Jezebel spirit is a demonic spirit that must be cast out, but he often refers to Christians who need to repent of this spirit.  If it is a demonic spirit, then I don’t believe that the person who has this spirit is a Christian.  We Christians are not capable of having a demonic spirit dwell within us.

Sampson seems to be making a case for a spirit that he has created out of his own imagination (though I DO believe the spirit of control is alive and well).  There does not seem to be any true biblical basis for naming it a “Jezebel spirit” or claiming that a spirit of control is demonic in nature.

I do, however, agree that we need to identify the controlling people in our churches and lead them to a path of working within the body of believers to glorify God.  But I would have loved to see more biblical references in this book on how to properly handle these types of people.

Overall, I cannot in good conscience recommend this book to anyone.

*Special thanks to Bethany House Publishers for sending me this book to review.  The thoughts and opinions are mine, and I did not receive compensation for my opinion.