Kingdom Faith #3 — Those Things That Are Not As Though They Were

Kingdom faith, in this message, means doing what God does: calling those things that are not as though they were. Dr. William P. Hohman shows from Romans 4 how God named Abram a father of many nations before he had a single child, and how speaking what God has already said builds an image inside us until His promise shows up in our lives. This message continues from Kingdom Faith: Calling Those Things That Are Not as Though They Were.

Below you will find the full video, a structured summary, the Scriptures behind each point (linked to the New King James Version on Bible Gateway), a table of the names and meanings he teaches, a timestamped outline and practical steps.

Sermon at a Glance

This message was posted by NTC Ministries on January 31, 2022. Dr. Hohman explains that he began the series a couple of weeks earlier under the title Calling Those Things That Are Not As Though They Were, as part of a larger teaching on kingdom faith. This session deepens that principle, with Abraham as the main example and stories from the ministry’s early days in Merrill, Wisconsin.

The message ends with a prayer of salvation for anyone ready to receive Jesus Christ as Lord.

Two Kingdoms and the Five Senses

Dr. Hohman begins with two worlds: the kingdoms of this world and the kingdom of heaven. There is a realm beyond what we can see, feel, taste and smell. When Adam sinned, he says, he became enslaved to his five physical senses, and that is where fear comes from. People are not born with fear; they learn it, the way a puppy that has never known fear learns it through an experience.

Satan works through that fear, he teaches, and religion is one of the avenues he uses. Jesus told the religious leaders that by their tradition they had made the word of God of no effect (Mark 7:13). Many people love God, Dr. Hohman says, but they are never taught the principles of the kingdom. They reduce God to an icon and His works to stories, and assume He does everything.

That is not true, he says. The heaven is the Lord’s, but the earth He has given to the children of men (Psalm 115:16). God gave man dominion over the works of His hands (Psalm 8:6), and dominion is a kingdom word: to rule over a domain. Satan’s lie to Eve was that God was holding back and that eating would make her like God (Genesis 3:5). But God had already made man in His image and likeness (Genesis 1:26).

The same lie continues today whenever people say God made them sick, when Scripture says we were healed by the stripes of Jesus. Jesus went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him (Acts 10:38). Yet many Christians pray “Lord, be with me today” when He has already said He will never leave or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). The problem, he says, is doubt and unbelief about who God is and our place with Him.

He also contrasts the leading of the Spirit with relying on our own understanding. We are not to lean on our own understanding, but to acknowledge God so He can direct our paths (Proverbs 3:5–6), and those who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God (Romans 8:14).

A Kingdom of Gifts

God has given us everything that pertains to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him (2 Peter 1:3), and Dr. Hohman notes that the Bible holds more than 8,000 promises. What we need is to know how to bring them from His realm into ours.

Why does God give so freely? Because God is love, and love needs an object. He recalls with humor first noticing a freckle-faced girl on the bus. Love has to be expressed to someone, and that is why God created man. Satan said God was withholding, but love cannot withhold.

That is why the whole kingdom runs on a gift principle. God gave Adam dominion; Adam gave it away. To get it back, God gave another gift: He so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son (John 3:16). We are saved by grace through faith, and that is the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8). Then comes the gift of righteousness: not as good as God, he says, but as right as God. Those who receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through Jesus Christ (Romans 5:17).

Believers are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17). So how do we walk in it? First, stay away from voices that call you a worthless worm who will never have anything, because we live in the kingdom partly by image. If someone smells smoke and yells “fire,” everyone runs because an image formed in their minds. Satan builds invisible fences through our senses, like the buried wire that trains a dog to stop at a boundary even without its collar.

Dr. Hohman teaches that Hebrew has two words for hand, and one of them, which he links to the old phrase about being “cuffed” upside the head, is used for the enemy. It means to push down, hold down and keep back. The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy, but Jesus came to give abundant life (John 10:10). Christ is made to us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption (1 Corinthians 1:30), and wisdom, he says, is the proper application of knowledge.

Kingdom Faith in Romans 4: The Faith of Abraham

The main text is Romans 4:13–18. The promise that Abram would be heir of the world did not come through the law, the do’s and don’ts, but through the righteousness of faith. Jesus fulfilled the law, Dr. Hohman explains, as the last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45).

Verse 17 is the heart of kingdom faith. God told Abram, “I have made you a father of many nations,” when Abram had no children. Abram believed, though he did not know how it would happen. Paul describes this God as the one “who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did.” If we are made in His image and likeness, Dr. Hohman says, we can act like Him in this.

Abram was 75 when God called him out of Haran. Years passed with nothing. Then God brought him outside at night and told him to count the stars, so shall your descendants be (Genesis 15:5). That vision gave Abram hope against hope. When people told Dr. Hohman he had false hope, he answered, “Well, it is for you because you don’t see what I see.”

Still, the vision was not enough. By the time Abram was 99, the child had not come, and Abram and Sarai had begun to laugh at the idea. So God taught them to do what He does. He changed Abram’s name to Abraham and Sarai’s to Sarah (Genesis 17:5; Genesis 17:15–16), putting part of His own name into each. From then on, every time someone asked their names, they declared the promise. A year later Isaac was born.

Notice, Dr. Hohman says, that God did not say He was going to make Abram a father; He said He had already done it. The promises are not things we beg God to do; we live under the principles He gave so that they come into our lives, in health, healing and finances alike. Scripture says wealth and riches will be in the house of the one who fears the Lord (Psalm 112:3). By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made of things which are visible (Hebrews 11:3).

Names That Call It Forth

Throughout the message, Dr. Hohman points to names God used to call out what was not yet visible. He even mentions his own: William means defender of the family. The table below gathers the names and meanings he gives.

Jesus renamed Simon long before he matured (John 1:42). Peter still denied Jesus and cursed in the street, but in time the rock came out. Later, people were healed as Peter’s shadow passed over them (Acts 5:15).

The Lord leads us by calling out our potential, not our failures, Dr. Hohman says. If someone prophesies doom and gloom, that is not a prophet of God. If your mind only replays your mistakes, that is a stronghold, and you must cast down every imagination that exalts itself against the knowledge of God (2 Corinthians 10:5).

Gideon is his final example. While Gideon was hiding in a winepress, grinding a little wheat for his starving family, the Angel of the Lord greeted him as a mighty man of valor (Judges 6:11–12). Gideon went into battle with only 300 men armed with horns and torches inside clay jars. When they broke the jars and blew the horns, the enemy turned on itself (Judges 7:19–22).

Speak to the Mountain

This principle does not mean denying problems, Dr. Hohman stresses. You can say you are sick today and need prayer. But when you go to God, do not simply ask Him to do something. Jesus is seated at the right hand until His enemies are made His footstool (Hebrews 10:12–13); we are the ones meant to act. He was wounded for our transgressions, and by His stripes we are healed (Isaiah 53:5), so we can say, I am healed. The more we declare what His Word says, the more it builds an image inside us that comes to life.

He illustrates with everyday life. If your dog Fido is missing, you do not stand on the porch announcing that Fido is gone. You call him by name until what you cannot see comes where you can see it. When a couple learns they are expecting, they do not say they hope to have a baby one day. They tell everyone they are having a baby, and what cannot be seen grows into existence. We declare what God has provided, not just our wants.

Jesus taught the same. After He spoke to a fig tree and it withered from the roots (Mark 11:20–21), the apostles asked Him to increase their faith. He told them that faith as a mustard seed could say to a mulberry tree, be pulled up and planted in the sea, and it would obey you (Luke 17:5–6). Not “obey God,” Dr. Hohman notes, but you. In Mark 11:22–23, whoever speaks to the mountain and does not doubt in his heart will have whatever he says.

It is not a matter of counting how many times you say something. Someone once told him she declared she was healed yesterday and still was not. “You said it once?” he asked. It is about how long it takes to build the image of healing into your heart. This is how we are saved: confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead (Romans 10:9–10).

He shares that he has been healed of cancer twice, while adding that doctors are a help God has given us as we build our faith, and that anyone who needs a doctor should go. Without faith, though, it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). Whether life is going well or you need a breakthrough, he says, God wants it better, and kingdom faith begins with steps of faith.

God Works Through People Who Speak

Dr. Hohman tells how the ministry received its first church building. The congregation was meeting too close to a bar, and the city told them to leave. Around the corner, a small Covenant church building, moved into town in 1879, was for sale. The retiring pastor asked $89,000; Dr. Hohman could not offer even $18,000. When the denomination’s headquarters heard his name, they told the pastor to give it to him, and they did.

Later, the Lord told him the land where the church now stands was his, and he walked it on Saturday mornings. One day he met Ed Demersky, who was putting up a pole building there, and told him kindly that God had given him the land. The next day a new couple, John and Carla Demersky, gave their lives to Jesus. A week later John shared that his father had been born again. That father was Ed, who sold the nine and a half acres for $54,000 on a land contract with nothing down.

That is why reading the Bible matters, he says: you learn that the Lord directs your path. God’s plans are for good and not for evil, to give a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11). He once named a business Big Kingdom Business, because God does nothing but big kingdom business.

God moves in this earth through people who will speak His word. About 750 years before Jesus was born, Isaiah declared that a virgin would conceive and bear a Son (Isaiah 7:14). Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness (Romans 4:3), opening a door. The same is true for your needs, whether joy, peace, a business or a house.

Everyone who hears the Word, Dr. Hohman says, is pregnant with it. We are born again of incorruptible seed, through the word of God which lives and abides forever (1 Peter 1:23). You did not choose Him; He chose you to bear much fruit (John 15:16). And age is no barrier. Abraham was 99, and kings and the Savior came from his line.

Living by Kingdom Faith This Week

Dr. Hohman closes by leading a prayer of salvation for anyone who has never given their life to Jesus. These steps come from the message:

• Find what God has already said. Read your Bible for the promises that apply to your need, since He has already provided them.
• Call it, do not complain about it. Like calling a lost dog home, say what God says until it comes into view.
• Answer your name with His promise. Describe yourself the way God does, as Abraham and Sarah did, not by your failures.
• Cast down negative imaginations. Refuse thoughts that only replay mistakes or predict doom.
• Be patient with the image. Keep declaring the Word; it is about building the picture in your heart, not saying it once.
• Do not let age or circumstances disqualify you. Abraham was 99, and God still fulfilled His word.

Timestamped Outline

• 0:00 Two kingdoms; fear is learned
• 3:51 The earth He has given to man
• 5:59 Satan’s lie: God is withholding
• 8:23 Romans 4:13–18
• 11:40 A kingdom of gifts
• 14:16 Living by image; the invisible fence
• 16:40 The enemy’s hand and John 10:10
• 19:12 I have made you a father of many nations
• 21:06 Count the stars
• 22:08 Abram becomes Abraham
• 26:52 By His stripes we are healed
• 27:58 Here, Fido: calling what you cannot see
• 30:19 The fig tree and the mulberry tree
• 32:22 Mark 11: speak to the mountain
• 34:39 Simon becomes Peter
• 39:44 How God gave the first church building
• 41:41 The land and Ed Demersky
• 45:06 Jeremiah 29:11 and Gideon
• 50:52 Isaiah 7:14: God works through speakers
• 54:30 Prayer of salvation

Kingdom Faith Series

This message is part of Dr. Hohman’s Kingdom Faith series at NTC Ministries. Go back to the previous message or continue to the next:

• First message: Kingdom Faith: Calling Those Things That Are Not as Though They Were
• Previous: Kingdom Faith #2: Confession Leads to Possession
• You are here: Kingdom Faith #3 — Those Things That Are Not As Though They Were
• Next: Kingdom Faith #4: Kings and Priests Who Already Have the Blessing

Frequently Asked Questions

Does calling things that are not mean denying my problems?

No. Dr. Hohman says plainly that this is not denial. You can admit that you are sick and ask for prayer. The difference is what you do next. Instead of only describing the problem or asking God to do something, you declare what His Word has already said, such as being healed by the stripes of Jesus, and you keep declaring it until the image of that promise is built into your heart.

Why does the speaker say God does not do everything?

Because God gave the earth and dominion over it to man. Dr. Hohman teaches that God works in this earth through people who are willing to believe and speak what He reveals. He points to Abraham, who believed and opened a door, and to Isaiah, who declared the virgin birth about 750 years before Jesus came. God’s principles do not change, so He looks for people who will cooperate with Him.

Am I too old to start living by kingdom faith?

Dr. Hohman says age has nothing to do with anything in the kingdom. He speaks directly to listeners who think they are too old at 80 or 90 and points to Abraham, who was 99 when God changed his name and taught him to call those things that are not as though they were. Kings, including David, and ultimately the Savior came from his line because he believed God.

Scripture References

All passages open in the New King James Version on Bible Gateway:

• Romans 4:13–18 — calling those things which do not exist as though they did
• Genesis 15:5 — count the stars
• Genesis 17:5 — Abram becomes Abraham
• Mark 11:22–23 — speak to the mountain
• Luke 17:5–6 — faith as a mustard seed
• Isaiah 53:5 — by His stripes we are healed
• Hebrews 11:3 — the worlds framed by the word of God
• Romans 10:9–10 — confess with your mouth, believe in your heart
• Judges 6:11–12 — Gideon, mighty man of valor

How this summary was made: written with AI assistance from the sermon’s own transcript and checked against the Scriptures listed above.

Watch More Messages

If this message stirred your faith, there are hundreds more teachings from NTC Ministries waiting for you. Browse the full sermon archive and keep growing in kingdom faith.