> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.belonging.house/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Pride, Jezebel, and Leviathan - URL: https://www.belonging.house/pride-jezebel-and-leviathan/ - Published: 2025-10-27T11:21:53.000Z - Updated: 2026-07-25T00:50:13.000Z - Description: Continuing the series on spiritual warfare for artists. - Author: Christ John Otto - Tags: artists, Jezebel, Spiritual Warfare, Leviathan, Podcast, #Migrated-1784940061448, #Import 2026-07-25 00:49 Pride, Jezebel, and Leviathan 0:00 /200 1× ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ed/59/ed590bfa-368b-4bcf-b1f2-6ba9ca9abcdb/content/images/2026/07/999f8e01-567a-4b09-9859-3c46f554d69c_1280x750-heic.jpg) Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedEverything we do in the life of discipleship is spiritual warfare. And if you want to overcome in the spiritual battles we face you need to be on God’s side. The heart of all spiritual warfare is this: God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. A lot of people dealing with spiritual warfare are fighting God, and their resistance to God opens them up to demonic influence. At the heart of all spiritual warfare is the root of pride. Pride is the heart of rebellion. Pride is the core of resistance. Pride is the engine of the demonic world. Pride is the first of the seven deadly sins: Pride, Greed, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Wrath, and Sloth. Pride is the root sin of all the others. Pride is the most dangerous of all sins. Pride makes you believe the root lie: I will be like God without God. I will be exalted above God. Pride is what defines the Anti-Christ spirit. We do not need Jesus, we can do it all ourselves. As Milton put into the mouth of Lucifer in *Paradise Lost*, “it is better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.” As we saw in today’s gospel, the Pharisee could not see himself honestly, because he was blinded by pride. Pride is dangerous because your beliefs in your own rightness and superiority prevent you from being honest and seeing the truth. Religious pride double blinds you because you think you are right, and then you think that your actions make you superior to others. This was the heart of the Pharisees. It is unfortunate that Jesus talks about the Pharisees, because then we judge them. It would have been much more helpful to say the evangelicals, the traditional catholics, the gospel centered churches, the progressives, or the orthobros. Any person who looks at their label and their grid and says “I am fine and everyone else is wrong” is deluded by pride. This is why I talk in my latest book about why it is not about you. A lot of people in the arts, and especially in the prophetic arts world, are all about them. Artists by nature are designed to serve others and to serve the culture. It’s not about you. A person under the deception of pride will never be able to repent, but will always either find fault with someone else, or they will justify themselves based on their own “superior” beliefs or their religious performance. And this tendency shifts the focus from God and others to me. Everything becomes food for narcissism. And when this begins to happen, the door is opened to the demonic, and this is how we get people who operate in what is called the Jezebel spirit and Leviathan. Many people miss the heart of the book of Job. Job begins with a prosperous man who loses everything because the accuser has come and attacked him. God lets this happen. And then Job’s friends chastise him for about 35 chapters with conventional religious ideas, about how Job must have some sin because he is suffering. And then, at the end, God appears and for two chapters talks to Job about Leviathan. The Lord’s speech ends with this line: “Leviathan is the king of pride, and prince over every high thing.” And in the end, Job forgives and prays for his friends and his wealth is restored. Job is about religious pride. So when we talk about spiritual pride, we open the door to “a leviathan spirit.” It is very dangerous to go around labeling demonic things, because people then start to label other people. The spirit over greater Boston is a Leviathan spirit, and many of the things I am going to describe happen regularly in New England. We see it in the church, and in the dysfunctional politics, and it is why Harvard keeps appearing in the news. When you deal with lots of people in a particular sin, you will deal with a spiritual power. Leviathan is the spirit of pride. It is the ancient symbol of chaos and confusion. Leviathan manifests in confused communication, where you say something and someone hears something else. You will also see people who hard hearted, ungrateful, and not generous. Wherever this spirit manifests you will see spiritual dryness. And you will see people embracing completely non-sensical ideas as truth, and they will get aggressive if you challenge them. Both willful ignorance and intellectualism are the fruit of pride. Leviathan is exhausting. When you deal with this, you feel like something is sitting on top of you draining your strength. The second spiritual force rooted in pride is the Jezebel spirit. This is the spirit of witchcraft, and it operates in both men and women. The core earmark of this spiritual force is the use of manipulation and control in order to dominate. And just like Jezebel who opposed Elijah in the books of Kings, Jezebel appears and tries to silence the true prophetic. Someone operating in a Jezebel spirit will target true apostolic and prophetic ministries and try to get them to either be silent or stop following the direction of the Lord. A person who operates in this will first try to ingratiate themselves to you, in order to gain favor or control. If this doesn’t work, they will then go behind your back to others, and try to undermine you through half truths and innuendo, in order to create a power block against you. They will try to divide and conquer your community, and they will either use intimidation or sickness to gain dominance. A person who uses sickness is often the most dangerous, because they will use sympathy to gain control. The person operating in this spirit will be weaving a web in the hope of strangling you and controlling you. And eventually they will come right out and try to control or curse you to your face. And because these things get into the church and often operate through Christians who are prideful, you have to handle them very carefully. You cannot confront or face them directly. If you say “no” to someone operating in a Jezebel spirit, they will go into “kill mode” and try to destroy you. The cure for all of these situations is the same. Humble yourself and the Lord will lift you up. Go low. Empty yourself. And the heart of humbling yourself is listening to the Lord and doing what he tells you. If you listen to God and do what God says, you are essentially saying, “Lord, you know better than me, and I am going to let go of my will and my control and I am going to listen for your solution.” Whenever I come into a difficult situation with people tapped into spiritual forces, I begin there. I sit with the Lord. I fast. And I wait. And God will give you the direction. The enemy depends on you trying to attack and get the upper hand and then you are wrestling with the leviathan serpent or you are facing off with a bunch of Jezebels accusing you or playing the “he said, she said” game. The core of all spiritual warfare is humbling yourself. It is not about praying a particular prayer or learning a particular method. It is about living a life of repentance. Overcoming in life happens by having your mind transformed day by day by the word of God. And when you do this, you give God the ability to fight for you, and to heal you, and for you to receive grace. And when you look at God day by day, the Lord gets bigger and your enemy gets smaller. The most powerful thing you can do in spiritual warfare is to look at Jesus. And as you ignore the demonic that is feeding on your attention and your rebellion, the demonic realm begins to get starved for attention and just goes away. The most powerful thing you can do is not lose the plot. This is humility. God opposes the proud. But gives grace to the Humble. [Subscribe](#/portal/signup)