By: Gen. Jim – 3/13/26
Is there such a thing? Let’s see if there was/is an “evil spirit of God” There are references (rûah rā’â) in the O.T.: “Then God sent an EVIL spirit to cause problems between Abimelech & citizens of Shechem…” -Judges 9:23;
“But the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, & a distressing spirit from the LORD troubled him. And Saul’s servants said to him, ‘Surely, a distressing spirit from God is troubling you,” 1 Sam .16:14, 15, NKJV. Verse 17 also mentions this “spirit”, as does vs. 23.
This account tells us that the “Holy Spirit of God” departed Saul & an “evil spirit” went into Saul. 1 Sam. 10:1 we find the Prophet Samuel anointing Saul to be commander of God’s Army. Verse 6 says, “Then the Spirit of the LORD will come upon you…” (NKJV); The New Oxford Annotated Bible reads: “Then the Spirit of the LORD will possess you…” This divine spiritual experience “gave him another heart” vs. 9. Verse 10 finds Saul prophesying because of the Spirit “upon”/ “in” Him (upon is synonymous with within). We find this very same experience in Mt. 3:16 where Jesus had the Holy Spirit “alighting upon Him.” The Bible says that Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit, (Lk. 4:1) meaning the same as having the Spirit “alighting” upon Him.
1 Samuel 16:23
This verse tells us that “Whenever the spirit from God was upon Saul, that David would take a harp & play it with his hand. Then Saul would become refreshed & well, & the distressing spirit would depart from him.” Some translations have the word “evil spirit”.
[note: Prof. Adam Clarke comments on vs. 23: “The word ‘evil’ is not in the common Heb. Text, but it is in the Vulgate, Septuagint, Targum, Syriac, & Arabic, & in 8 of Kennicott’s & De Rossi’s Mss., which present the text thus: “raach Elohim raah, spiritus Domini malus,” i.e. “the Spirit of God”. Clarke says that the O.T. Greek leaves out Θεου, of God & have πνεύμα πονηροῦ, “the evil spirit”. He says that the Targum says, “the evil spirit from before the Lord”; & the Arabic has it: “The evil spirit by the permission of God.”]
Because of Saul’s disobedience, God permitted an evil spirit to vex Saul – the spirit came & went. Have we not witnessed this in ministers? I have. Even some of the ones we brought in & cast demons out of them, praying for them to receive the Holy Spirit (with evidence of “tongues”), play around with sin; therefore, vexing spirits would plague them. Some overcome; others fell back into the world of sin. We know evil spirits can afflict the body – diseases/sicknesses – as well as vex/torment the soul/spirit = natural & diabolical attacks.
The spirit which afflicts Saul is also called “rûal ‘elōhîm rā’â”, “an evil spirit of God” or “evil divine spirit” (1 Sam. 16:15, 16; 18:10: “And it came to pass on the morrow, that the evil spirit from God came upon Saul…”, “rûah YHWH rā’â”, “an evil spirit of Yahweh” (see also 1 Sam. 19:9, “And the evil spirit from the LORD was upon Saul,” meaning it manifested physically so as to cause Saul to hurl a javelin at David in a fit of anger. I’ve seen these kinds of fits as well (see our PX2/PX3 Files).
(Pt. 2)
Rûah
This Hebrew word was commonly translated “spirit” and has primary meanings of “wind” & “breath”. Spirits retain the character of winds inasmuch as they move about invisibly. Winds that affect human fortunes are described in Mesopotamian texts in terms of a contrast between the “good wind” (sāru lemnu or sārulā tābu), the latter being exemplified esp. By a group of 7 evil spirits deemed responsible for a variety of human afflictions & miseries. (a good source of info. Is Devils & Evil Spirits of Babylonia by R.C. Thompson, 1976).
I’ve written lots of articles on demons/devils / evil spirits as well as angels & warriors for God. (see AC.Net, p. 1 under Witchcraft Articles, Curses & Drugs, Spiritual Warfare & Revolutionary Articles).
The Heb. word rûah/spirit, wind, breath of Yahweh is often mentioned in the O.T. as a vehicle of divine intervention in human affairs (see 1 Kgs. 18:12; 2 Kgs. 2:16 et al.). The Spirit of Yahweh enables individuals to assume roles of leadership (Num. 11:17, 24; Jud. 3:10); the Spirit of God inspires them to prophesy (Num. 24:2).
On the other hand, on a small number of occasions, He sends a spirit that is harmful/hostile, that is, “an evil spirit” – “rûah rā ‘ā). Remember the Scripture I started out with – Judges 9:23 = “God sent an evil spirit to cause problems…” What? Would a “loving”, “forgiving” God do this? Yep! Sure would & sure did! Verse 244 says, “God DID THIS so that the bloody violence committed against Jerubbaal’s 70 sons would happen to Abimelech & citizens of Shechem. Citizens of Shechem had helped Abimelech execute his brothers.” Verse 56 & 57 tells us: “Thus God repaid the wickedness of Abimelech, which he had done to his father by killing his 70 brothers. And all the evil of the men of Shechem God returned on their own heads, & on them came the CURSE of Jotham the son of Jerubbaal.”
We Are IN WAR!
We get our fair share of criticism for spending so much time on the “negative”. Well, dear ones, if more Christians would stand up for Christ & fight the good fight of faith, we would not seem so negative. What we teach – Spiritual Warfare – is lacking in today’s La-la Land Laid Back Church. Enough already! Enough of playing Church… acting like Christians while at the same time fellowshipping the works of evil. I believe evil (religions) spirits have replaced God’s Spirit & in & among these worldly churches that cover our land here in the U.S. In fact, the West is infected with such demon spirits & the people don’t even discern it.
The Spirit of God departed from Saul – once anointed with the Holy Spirit – after God REJECTED him (1 Sam. 16:14). So, the “evil spirit” serves in the narrative as an objectification of God’s abandonment of Saul; especially in contrast to David who was chosen to replace Saul.
We wonder HOW MANY ministers that once were appointed & anointed by God have now been rejected by God… & they don’t even perceive it. DUMB!
(Pt. 3)
We’re living in an age of phenomenal progress in man’s CONQUEST of the universe. Meanwhile, the Christian’s conquest to sainthood is at an all-time LOW! Churches once filled with eager believers are becoming empty year-by-year. The after life – where one will spend his/her eternity after death – is no longer on the minds of the “saints”. Oh, no, the stuff-and-things have become PREEMINENT! Many of today’s Churchgoers have become more & more skeptical & apathetic toward Biblical Christianity, becoming dull & dumb Churchites who wouldn’t perceive evil spirits at work if their life depended upon it. Churches have become more & more STRANGE, queer, morally evil, unbelieving. Many who profess faith in Christ question the existence of a personal devil and casually relegate “evil spirits” to the trash bin of folklore & superstition. We’ve got ex-members out there (lost in the world!) that once saw casting out of demons demonstrated in our midst. Some even had demons cast out of them. But now they are “lovers” of the world, pimps & prostitutes for Satan. They MOCK the deliverance ministry. They mock the “army” message, i.e. the “overcoming” message that the N.T. teaches. These ones I write about once saw such beautiful things as salvation, deliverance, Holy Spirit baptism, missionary work among the nations. But now they are filled with unbelief, bitterness, hate! … relentlessly attacking us because we are still doing what God called us to do. Their lives are filled with fear. We heard the other day that one such one (female) lives in fear of us – “They will come and get me!” HA! This particular ex-captain (female) was asked to leave our training corps for adultery. Tell me, why would we want to drag her back here? We got rid of her. Another one (female Lt.) says “The Greens are in my dreams.” Well, just maybe, God is trying to show her something, since she made up some pretty outrageous LIES about how we supposedly told her to “BEAT MY BABY with a Belt!” Yeah, right!!! Troubled, vexed!
Personification
Prof. P.K. McCarter, Heb. Scholar, writes: Neither the evil spirit in Judges 9 nor the evil spirit in 1 Sam. 16-19 is personified… The former manifests itself in an attitude of hostility; the latter in King Saul’s unstable psychological condition.” Well, I’ve seen demons manifest in both of these ways plus in many other ways – pity, depression, fear etc. Those who work or have worked in deliverance – casting out demons – KNOW that demons cause their victims to act out the most BIZARRE & STRANGE ways. Deborah & I once worked with a pretty young female (early 20s) in Miami where she would take a knife and hack her arms up & down. She had the most god-awful scars! We met with her on 3 occasions. We heard later that she died by this way – 911 was too late to save her!
Lying Spirit
In 1 Kgs. 22:20-24 speaks of a “spirit”, a “lying spirit” standing before the LORD: “The LORD said to him, ‘In what way?’ So he said, ‘I will go out & be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ And the LORD said, ‘you shall persuade him (Ahab), and also prevail. Go out & do so.’ Therefore, look! The LORD has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all those prophets of yours, & the LORD has declared DISASTER against you.”
What are we to make of this? Here we have God’s true prophet vs false prophets. The false prophets said that king Ahab (wicked king of Israel) would have victory, but God had other plans for him: defeat! Micaiah (true prophet) knew the other prophets were false. This is what false prophets do – lie! The explanation given here, therefore, is that the LORD had deliberately deceived them in order to lure wicked Ahab to his death! Yep!, to his death! Do you think if a man or woman is not in control of their own faculties, e.g., a prophet, a “spirit” is at work?
Centuries later, in the days of Paul the Apostle, he writes: “And for this reason, God will send them STRONG DELUSION, that they should believe a LIE, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” – 2 Thes. 2:11, 12, NKJV. So, in both the Old & New Testaments we find God & lying spirits working in those who do not want to live upright. Isaiah 66:4 says that God “will choose their DELUSIONS… when I spoke they did not hear; But they did evil before My eyes & chose that in which I do not delight.” God will choose their delusions!, the same as “strong delusion” in Paul’s epistle.
This is not all. Paul writes: “And even as they (homosexual men) did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a DEBASED MIND…” -Rom. 1:28. What we see in today’s LGBTQ+ churches is strong delusions & debased minds. These whorehouses are not of God but are of Satan!
Delusion: Heb., ta’alûwl, vexation, caprice, abuse, afflict, defile, mock; Gk., planē, a straying from orthodoxy or piety, deceit, error, an imposter, deceiver, seducing. The Bible speaks much about this, using terms like delusion(s), beguile, error, deceit, all evil spirits at work in & through those who do not, will not live up right in the Lord.
(Pt. 4)
The full development in the O.T. (concerning prophets) is that true prophecy is inspired by “the Spirit of the LORD”, rûah ‘adhônāy, & it is this phrase which foreshadows in the O.T. the Holy Spirit of the N.T.
Destroyer
If one studies the Bible carefully, one will discover that God is righteous but uses “evil” when necessary. Isaiah 45:7 is a case-in-point: “I form the light, & create darkness: I make peace, & create evil: I the LORD do all these things” (see my articles on this text). Another version reads: “I form light & create darkness, I make weal & create woe…” The word “evil” in the KJV is (in Hebrew) ra’, meaning adversity, affliction, calamity, harm, misery, sorrow etc., etc. It never means moral evil but physical evil – râ ‘âh. This Heb. word comes from râ ‘a’, a prim root meaning to spoil (lit. by breaking to pieces) make (or be) good for nothing, harm, punish etc.
We have been criticized by both the Church & by the secular media for teaching that there are only 2 “forces” in the world: God’s & Satan’s. Well, according to Scripture this is true: light/darkness – good/evil. If we go back to Isa. 44:24 we read: “… I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone…” Isaiah continues: “That frustrateth the tokens of the liars, & maketh diviners mad; that turneth wise men backward, & maketh their knowledge foolish,” vs. 25. Read up to vs. 28. Vs. 28 calls Cyrus (a pagan king) “My shepherd, & shall perform all My pleasure…” I’ve written articles about how God uses both righteous & pagan kings/armies to do His will. The allusion to a “shepherd has numerous analogies both within (2 Sam. 5:2; Jer. 3;15; 23:1; Ez. 34:23; Mic. 5:5) & outside the Bible, e.g., Sumerians, Akkadians, & Egyptians; see also Homer Iliad II.243.
The words “My pleasure” are correctly worded, “My purpose”. God’s purpose was to free His people from Babylon. “God”, Israel’s God was about to challenge “Morduk”, Babylon’s god. Isa. 45:1 Cyrus is called God’s “anointed”. He was called & anointed to deliver Israel from Babylonian captivity. “My Messiah” is the same as “My Anointed”. Cyrus is God’s agent, “… whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations…” Isa. 45:150, God can use “evil spirits” or human beings to work/war for Him, (see also 41:13 & 42:6). The LORD GOD can work or war however He sees fit. The imminence of redemption, the divine sovereignty in creation (light/darkness – peace/evil), revelation & revolution all come from Him. We find terms like the ones above, plus “bird of prey”, “man of My counsel”, “he whom the LORD loves” et al. God uses demons & foreign/pagan men outside His covenant people Israel. Besides Cyrus, the Bible speaks of other foreign monarchs as agents of God, e.g., the Assyrian monarch in Isa. 10:5 = “O Assyrian, the rod of My anger, & the staff in their hand is Mine indignation”; God use s dictators & tyrannies for campaigns. Do you think Prez D. Trump is one such person God is using in history at this time? The Right see him as a “savior”, the Left as a “dictator”.
Let me say it again: God IS the dominant factor in history, He is the Chief factor in everything that happens, favorable or unfavorable, good or evil. He is NOT the author of (moral) evil but permits it. I do not deny the part men/women play in unfolding events, for God has given men/women a “free will”. Even when they choose evil (moral), He always permits it. There are always times when God forbids evil by His Creation, hence, judgment & punishment. (see my articles on “The Wrath of God!”). The conditions of welfare & warfare God oversees.
It was Plato the Greek thinker who penned this: “God, if He be good, is not the author of all things, as many assert, but He is the cause of a few things only, & most things that occur to men; for few are the goods of human life, & many are the evils, & the good only is to be attributed to Him; of the evil other causes have to be discovered.” (The Republic II. 379). Some may disagree with him, others may agree. But if we’re to believe Isa. 45:7, which emphatically proclaims God creator of both “peace & evil” or “weal & woe” as another translation reads.
Prof. H.F. Henderson, who wrote Erskine of Linlathen (1899) states: “Is it not a mystery that God should be omnipotent (all powerful) love, & yet that the world should be just a vast cauldron boiling over with violence & pollution & misery?” Sounds like this man is writing about 2026! (his quote is found on p. 285).
Tragedies always remain a problem to one’s faith in the love/goodness of a sovereign God. I wrestle with this all the time, but I do find in Scripture where God permits, even sends such things. If all we do is wrestle with or try to explain the presence & prevalence of EVIL, we will not press onward & upward in God.
Some grapple with the idea of Christ vicariously dying for the sins of men, the cross of shame & pain – for sinful humanity. Yet EVILS in the world & in men’s lives remain inexplicable – Isaiah 45:7 ends with “I the LORD do all these things.” Isa. 45:7 ends with a confession of the LORD’s active role in ALL that occurs.