"The Bondage Breaker"
by Neil T. Anderson
Neil Anderson’s The Bondage
Breaker works off the foundation he laid in his previous book, Victory Over the Darkness. In the first
book Anderson looked at why Christians so often fail to live the life God wants
for us. One of his main arguments was that Christians fail to perceive
themselves as they really are in Christ: forgiven, sanctified, redeemed, chosen
by God, adopted by God, alive in the Spirit, no longer condemned but alive to
God. In that book Anderson argued that one of the reasons we fail to comprehend
who we truly are in Christ (and consequently fail to live the victorious life
Christ has secured for us) is because we are deceived by the devil, who is the “father
of lies.” The devil and his minions are opposed to God and His people, and they
work day and night to draw us away from God or, at the least, to make us
impotent for the kingdom. The Bondage
Breaker takes these tenets and fleshes them out. Here Anderson argues for
the existence of a spiritual realm that is all around us, and he explores the
nature of Satan and his compatriots, how the devil works against God and His
people, and how Christians can stand against Satan’s lies and deceptions. He
writes:
“The kingdom of God is a major theme of the Bible, but it has to be
understood in contrast to the kingdom of darkness. The battle from Genesis to
Revelation is between those two kingdoms, between the Christ and the
Antichrist, between the Spirit of Truth and the father of lies, between the
prophets of God and the false prophets, between the wheat (sons of the kingdom)
and the tares (sons of the evil one—see Matthew 13:38). Wrestling against dark
spiritual forces is not a first-century phenomenon, nor is it merely optional
for the Christian today. The kingdom of darkness is still present, and the
devil still ‘prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour’ (1
Peter 5:8). In light of this, Peter instructs us to ‘be of sober spirit, be on
the alert… resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of
suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world’ (1
Peter 5:8,9). If your biblical worldview does not include the kingdom of
darkness, then either God or you will have to take a bump rap for all the
corruption Satan is foisting on you and the rest of the world.” (19)
There is a lot to be commended in The
Bondage Breaker, though Anderson is quite repetitive at times (though this
may not be a bad thing, as repetition promotes retention). Here are a few “subjects”
Anderson addresses and some quotes pertaining to them:
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