Abraham said, “I am the father of many nations,” and not “I will be the father of many nations.” Abraham’s confession was exactly what God promised and it was a contradiction to reality. Faith was stronger. He confessed he was already the father of nations before it was true. This is not a lie, because faith in God’s promise is both truthful and is a stronger power than reality.

Jesus’ exchange with the Sadducees, about the resurrection, showed Jesus pointing out a category fallacy with present tense and past tense. The scripture said God present tense, “I am the God of Abraham and Isaac,” even though they had died many years before. But the Sadducees’ presupposition was the passage was recorded in the different category of past tense, “I was the God of Abraham.” After this Jesus publicly shamed them and shut them up. This passage from Jesus shows us how important logic is; it shows us you cannot violate the laws of Contradiction and Identity and have category fallacies.

The importance of this is significant for faith. Faith is assenting to what God has said. You cannot assent to what God has said, if you change the tense of verbs, because then you change categories and thus change the meaning.

What if Abraham said, “I will be the father of many nations?” If he said it, then it would be a confession of unbelief in God’s promise not a faith confession.  Faith, as shown above, is only faith if it confesses what God said, it is not faith if it changes what God said.  Even such a small change, as a verb tense, Jesus shows that you are greatly mistaken about God’s word and power. One change to a verb tense and you have different doctrines. You cannot confess in faith, while being greatly mistaken about the word you are confessing.

Isaiah 53 says in the past tense that Jesus bore our sin, but also past tense bore our sickness and then present tense by His stripes we are healed.  There is no future tense. Regarding our sickness they have been and are healed.  Thus, Peter in his letter says, 1 Peter 2:24, that we were healed by His stripes.

This is why the faith teachers are correct when they teach you to confess, “By the stripes of Jesus I WAS, or I AM healed,” and not that I will be healed somewhere in the future.

Lastly consider Jesus’ teaching on faith itself.

“And Peter, remembering, said to Him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree which You cursed has withered away.” So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. 

Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.” (Mark 11:21-24 NKJV)

Jesus teaches us that when we pray that we are to believe (past tense) that we have received what we asked for. He says if you believe that you (past tense) have received, then you will (future tense) receive them. As with the fig tree, they found it, the next day dried up from the roots. It took a day for the full 100-fold manifestation to appear. The presupposition for Jesus is that God’s promise to give us anything we ask for is a past or present tense application, and not future. Even if the answer appears to be delayed, the example of Daniel, shows us that it was answered the moment Daniel prayed, but was delayed by demonic attacks. Thus when you pray believe you have received what you ask for.

This does not mean we never say, “this will happen,” for in some context this would be appropriate, or that God never answers a prayer if the verb tense is wrong; however, we should always strive for perfection in our understanding of God’s promise and speaking it in the same. Faith is assenting to what God has promised, not category changes to it.

Think about Abraham and his confession of faith that he “is” the father of many nations before it happened. This is what faith does. The Israelites shouted and praised God for the defeat of Jericho, before the walls fell down. Faith gives a victory shout before it happens, because we know when we prayed it was answered.  Faith is the contradiction to what we see, but because faith gives us direct contact with God and His power, we know faith is stronger than reality. Because God is sovereignly faithful to fulfill His promise, we know when we ask, God has already given it to us.