Triumph 7: The Faith Of The Word Of God part 3
The Faith of the Word of God part 3
A Summary Study Guide
Shingi Mudyirwa
‘Faith is the present continuous state of spoken persuasion.’
— the governing thesis of the teaching
This is a condensed companion to the guide on The Faith of the Word of God, Part 3. It distils the teaching’s thesis, its method, its biblical architecture, and — because the longer guide is a critical study and not merely an exposition — the principal scholarly questions the teaching raises. Scripture is cited briefly in the KJV; the aim is a map the advanced student can hold in view while listening to the teaching.
1. Introduction and Overview
The teaching opens the series with a single practical question: how does the believer overcome — how does one triumph over “the attacks of this season”? Its answer is that the decisive instrument of triumph is faith, and that faith, rightly understood, is the spoken word of God. The governing definition, repeated as a refrain, is that faith is “the present continuous state of spoken persuasion.”
The whole structure rests on a single axiom drawn from Hebrews 11:3: the worlds were framed by the word of God. If reality was spoken into order, then change in any circumstance likewise comes through faith — faith treated not as vague sentiment but as a definite, learnable, repeatable principle.
“The worlds were framed by the word of God … things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” — Hebrews 11:3 (KJV)
2. Methodology and Hermeneutics
Three interpretive commitments drive the argument:
- The two-or-three-witnesses canon. Following Deuteronomy 19:15, the doctrine of the spoken word is established by a triad of testimonies — Paul, Jesus, and Moses — rather than a single proof-text.
- Original-language philology. Meaning is fixed by appeal to the Greek and Hebrew — rhēma, pistis, homologeō, Hebrew amar — to recover what the inspired wording precisely says.
- A pneumatic epistemology. Drawing on 1 Corinthians 2 and Ephesians 1, the teaching holds that spiritual things are spiritually discerned: this knowledge comes by the Spirit’s unveiling, not by natural research.
3. The Conceptual Core: Belief and Faith
At the centre is a distinction between an inward state and an outward act. Belief (pisteuō) is seated in the heart — a persuasion, a “thinking to be true” — necessary, but inactive until it is voiced. Faith (pistis) is that belief enacted through confession (homologeō), the operation of the mouth: on this reading, faith begins when the mouth opens. The rhēma — the specific spoken word — is what frames and reframes a world. Romans 10:9–10 supplies the anatomy: belief in the heart, confession with the mouth.
| Belief — pisteuō
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Faith — pistis / homologeō
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| Seat
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The heart — spirit and soul.
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The mouth — the spoken word.
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| Nature
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Inward, cognitive assent — “thinking to be true.”
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Outward, sustained, vocal declaration.
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| Status
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Necessary but latent / inactive.
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The activation; faith ‘begins’ when the mouth opens.
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| Marker | “with the heart man believeth” (Rom. 10:10) | “with the mouth confession is made” (Rom. 10:10) |
4. The Three Witnesses — and the One Set Aside
The biblical architecture is built from three corroborating voices, with a fourth deliberately held in reserve.
| Witness
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Texts
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What it establishes
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| Moses
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Genesis 1
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“God said” — the faith of God; creation accomplished by speech, with no intervening ‘work.’
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| Jesus | Mark 11; Mark 5
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The God-kind of faith — commanding the fig tree and the mountain; “whosoever … shall have whatsoever he saith.” Demonstrated in the woman with the issue of blood and Jairus’s daughter. |
| Paul | Rom. 10; 2 Cor. 4:13 |
Faith speaks; the mouth–heart anatomy; “the spirit of faith” received by revelation.
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| James (set aside) | James 2 | “Faith without works is dead” — addressed to the twelve tribes and treated as a single, uncorroborated witness; the guide reads the ‘work’ as the declaration itself. |
A personal account threads through the demonstrations: a prolonged toothache, the teacher reports, was permanently resolved only when general prayer gave way to a specific, undoubting command grounded in Mark 11:23 — “Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea.”
5. Critical Scholarly Engagement
What makes the full guide a study rather than a sermon transcript is that it submits the teaching to scholarship. Four questions deserve the advanced student’s attention:
- The genitive in Mark 11:22. Is it “have faith in God” (objective) or “the faith of God” (a God-kind of faith)? Most translations favour the former; the teaching’s reading is defensible but contested, and it is the argument’s load-bearing move.
- λέγω vs. εἶπον. Is the distinction between these verbs of ‘saying’ a genuine lexical difference, or are they suppletive forms of one verb — a caution pressed by Barr and Carson against over-reading word choice?
- The James question. Must James be subordinated as a lone witness, or harmonised with Paul — faith and works read as two moments of one living reality?
- The rhēma / logos distinction. Is a rigid technical split between ‘spoken’ and ‘written’ word lexically sustainable? In actual usage the two terms overlap heavily.
On its own premises the argument is internally coherent; most of the weight rests on the genitive reading of Mark 11:22. Naming these debates is not to settle them but to let the student hold conviction and scrutiny together.
6. Pastoral and Practical Reflections
Practically, the teaching frames confession as cognitive renewal — the “renewing of the mind” of Romans 12:2 — in which sustained, undoubting declaration reprograms the heart from doubt to belief. Three cautions keep the practice healthy: it should not require denying physical or medical reality; it should preserve the sovereignty and freedom of God rather than reduce faith to a mechanical formula; and it should guard against self-condemnation when an answer is delayed.
7. Conclusion
The full guide does two things at once: it systematises the teaching faithfully — axiom, witnesses, lexicon, method — and it equips the student to test it. The thesis stands restated: faith is the spoken word of God, the present continuous state of spoken persuasion. The advanced reader is left able both to expound the teaching and to interrogate it — which is precisely what doctoral-level study requires.
Glossary of Key Terms
| Term
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Sense in this teaching
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| rhēma
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The specific spoken word/utterance; the word that frames worlds (Heb. 11:3).
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| logos
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Word, message, discourse; broad term overlapping heavily with rhēma.
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| pistis
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Faith; here, belief brought to sustained utterance — spoken persuasion.
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| pisteuō
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To believe; the heart’s inward persuasion, “thinking to be true.”
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| homologeō
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To confess, to ‘say the same thing’; faith’s verbal enactment.
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| legō / eipon
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Verbs of ‘saying’ whose alleged distinction is debated (see §5).
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| apokalupsis
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Unveiling, revelation; the means by which spiritual knowledge is delivered.
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| pneumatikos
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Spiritual; the mode of understanding by which the things of God are discerned.
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