I picked up this book because I’m interested in studying the believer’s authority and what I can learn from Scripture about it. I am also interested in Andrew Wommack’s ministry. I have seen some videos he puts on YouTube and wanted to see what his books are like. I have mixed feelings about this book, and I will describe them in this review. The book is 26 chapters long, so I will summarize some of the main points and give my impressions of the book. He starts by suggesting that Christians don’t realize the authority they have in Christ. This is an accurate statement as I see many studying the authority of the believer. He puts the discussion of Christian authority in the context of spiritual warfare. I think he’s right about the way we react to situations. When we don’t understand our authority in Christ, we speak and act in ways that do not show the authority we have. He edges on Word of Faith points when he talks about how our speech can release spiritual forces. He suggests you can open inroads to the devil by the way you speak. I think this could be true in some instances and we need to be careful of our speech, but I don’t think it’s so easy for the devil or demons to get to Christians. The author goes back to the Garden of Eden and says that God gave Adam and Eve authority over the earth but they gave it to Satan, and now he is the god of the earth. Nowhere does Genesis 3 give us this idea. He follows by saying that you have to give Satan authority over your life. The general idea he presents is that God gave us authority and we can give it to Satan. I think this is moving toward the edge of what we can understand from Scripture. He takes it a step further when he teaches that Jesus had to become a man to take authority back from the devil. Because God gave authority to man, and man gave authority of the earth to the devil, Jesus had to become a man to get that authority back. This is outright against Bible teaching. God has authority over all of creation. He cannot lose that authority because he is its Creator. Jesus didn’t have to get authority back from the devil of the earth.
The author doesn’t address the fact that Jesus before He was crucified gave authority over sickness and demons to His disciples when he sent the 12 and a 72 out to minister. He shows His authority over the devil in the wilderness when He was tempted. He came as a human being to atone for sins on the Cross. I think the author is really off-base here.
God still has authority over the earth over Satan. It was Satan who had to present himself to God in the beginning of Job. God regularly interrupts human history and does miracles occur against natural laws throughout the Bible.
The author spends a lot of time (and repeats himself) concerning Jesus’s limited ability to do many miracles in His hometown. He says this was because the lack of faith limited His power. When I read that passage, I see that faith is important for miracles to happen. But I doubt we human beings can limit God’s power in any way.
Wommack talks about authority over sickness in some of his chapters. He says that Jesus gave authority over sickness to us and we don’t have to pray for the sick. We can just command the sickness to go and it must leave. I am a quadriplegic, so I commanded my body to move. I have tried this every once in a while with little change. By his teaching, I either don’t have enough faith or I’m not taking authority over my body seriously.
If we have Jesus’s complete authority over sickness, why does James tell us to pray the prayer of faith? I think this kind of teaching could be dangerous to believers who are sick or paralyzed like me. This also borders on Word of Faith teaching and can be dangerous to the faith of a believer. It questions whether a person has faith or uses his authority properly.
He also teaches that Jesus gave us the authority to preach the gospel. We should not pray that a person gets saved as much as we should preach the gospel to that person and let Jesus save them. I don’t disagree with this, but I would not discourage a Christian from praying for people to be saved. Perhaps we need to adjust our prayers so that we are asking God how we can tell them about Him and ask God to work through our witnessing efforts.
In the same vein, the author says praying for revival is not necessary. Instead, as we exercise our authority against the devil and preach the gospel, revival will happen. We don’t have to ask God to move in a new way because He already wants to do that. However, 2 Chronicles 7:14 has God commanding Israel to pray for their nation so He can heal their land. He might say that’s under the Old Testament, but it still applies to us today. In that sense, it is the active prayers of God’s people that move His hand to bring revival.
Another concept from the book is believing and receiving. I don’t disagree with this part of the book. The only thing I would say about this concept is that sometimes people make a disconnect between believing God for healing and receiving that healing. If a person believes that God heals them, there is no reason to think they have a problem receiving that healing.
Wommack also teaches that we must declare our authority. I think doing this in prayer is just as effective as commanding things to happen. At the very least, you should declare this authority that stems from the relationship with Jesus in His name. Your authority as a believer comes out of your relationship with Jesus. It’s not just words you speak. He calls Christians to actively resist the devil and take their authority back from him. I would point more to Jesus giving us authority than having to take it from Satan.
He describes “law enforcement” as long as God made about authority that even He will not violate. We must know God’s laws for governing in authority. He finally talks about being in agreement with God in later chapters. I don’t know how this jives with already having authority and just using it.
The author disagrees with most of what is taught or practiced in spiritual warfare. He does not think we need to do spiritual warfare prayer, but rather take authority over the devil and demons. I can understand this point of view, and for the most part agree with it. I think there are excesses in what is taught about spiritual warfare. A lot of our spiritual warfare comes from our character as described by Paul in Ephesians 6.
He often distinguishes between the way God worked in the Old Testament and how Jesus has changed that as our Mediator. There is a difference in the New Testament, but the Old Testament helps us understand some of those differences. An example he continually brings up is that authority is different in the New Testament than in the Old Testament. He especially talks about how prayer is different. You don’t have to pray about things God has already given you authority about. I don’t think praying hurts your authority.
I like his final chapter that talks about temptation and how we cannot be tempted with what we don’t allow into our minds and hearts. I agree with this. We need to be careful what we allow ourselves to take in.
Wommack repeated a lot of the same principles throughout the book. This could be his teaching style but it got old after a few chapters. This made the book longer than it could’ve been. I didn't agree with his teaching on why Jesus came as a human. I think in some ways he was trying to be abrasive in his approach. The author hinges on the edge of Word of Faith teaching. When it’s hard to distinguish between the truth and possible falsehood in his writing, I would not recommend you read it.
