Sound of Faith

Sharon Hardy Knotts: Greetings friends and new listeners and welcome to this program of the R.G. Hardy Ministries. I'm Sharon Knotts, thanking you for joining us today as we know that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Today's message by my father, Brother Hardy, is from his classic series, "New Creations Sons of God."

A hallmark scripture of Christians is 2nd Corinthians 5:17: "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature." And this new creature is a son of God or a child of God. You see, the term "son of God" in New Testament scripture is not a gender determiner, but rather a legal position, which Brother Hardy explains and so much more in this in-depth teaching, "New Creations Sons of God."

R.G. Hardy: Man, I can sing that song: home at last, home at last. Thank God almighty, I'm home at last. Before the Lord ever saved me, I just didn't feel comfortable in the world. I just didn't feel like that was my home. I was a sinner and did the things of sin. I tried all kinds of sin, but when I'd get done, I was just dissatisfied.

I thought, "Is this it? Is this what everybody raves and says is it?" Oh, I'm disappointed. I want something better than this. Thank God, God showed me there's something better. Hallelujah. And now He's put me in my right place: in Christ Jesus, with Christ Jesus, on the right hand of the almighty God in the kingdom where Jesus reigns and rules and where there's only righteous ones and righteousness.

I don't have to be afraid of anybody going to come up behind me, attack me, rob me, or do something unrighteous because everybody there is righteous. I've got peace. I'll tell you, one of the greatest things on the face of the earth in our day and time is peace. There is no peace. I don't know what the count of the wars are now. The last time they had a statistic, it was 40-some wars going on all over the world.

But I've got peace. They could drop bombs and blow and obliterate the world, but they haven't touched my home. They haven't touched where my inheritance is. For I have an inheritance reserved in heaven, incorruptible, undefiled, fades not away. Incorruptible means it cannot be touched by the ravages of time. Undefiled means it cannot be touched by sin. Fades not away means it cannot be touched by time.

Hallelujah. I'm going to be forever holy and righteous and in the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. Hallelujah. I have nothing to fear, and I'm enjoying Jesus. I'm enjoying my salvation. With the songwriter, I can say He's the joy of my salvation. Yes, He is. He is the joy. If you don't have joy in your salvation, you need to run to God and say, "God, I was shortchanged," because David said God's salvation has joy.

When David lost it, he returned to the Lord in sackcloth and ashes and said, "Return unto me the joy of thy salvation." Not mine, of thy salvation, because God's salvation has joy in it. When He gives you, you're going to have the joy of God's salvation, and the joy of the Lord is going to be your strength. Give Him a good clap offering.

Safe, safe, safe in the arms of Jesus. Safe in His power. Hid with Christ in God. Kept by the power of God unto salvation. There's Peter's term again: rapture, resurrection. Safe. Nothing can hinder me. Nothing can defeat me. Nothing can overcome me. For me to be overcome, I've got to want to be overcome. For me to be overcome by sin, I've got to leave God. I've got to come out from His kingdom.

Go over the line of demarcation and sin. But as long as I stay on the other side of the blood, as long as I maintain my faith in the Lord and His word, then nothing shall be able, no violent power shall be able to pluck me out of His hand and overcome me. Therefore, there is no fear in love. Fear has torment, and God has removed the torment out.

I'm not shook up. I'm not afraid. I'm not going around, "Oh, I want to do all right, and the devil's going to eat me up." I know that was the case of Sister Hardy when she first got saved. The devil came to her and said, "I'm not going to hinder you from serving the Lord. Go ahead, go ahead and serve Him." She said, "But when it comes time for you to die, I am going to snatch you out of salvation and take you to hell."

Sister Hardy was tormented by that as just a young convert. She never told me or anyone. I never knew anything about it. But God, He works all things together for good, so He was going to take that to strengthen her faith. So she went on fighting this battle, saying, "Oh my Lord, I don't want to go to hell, Lord. I want to serve You and the devil's going to break my faith and take me to hell."

I get a lot of letters from people who have the same type of mind, all shook up. "I want to do right." If you want to do right and you keep your faith in the Lord, then the Lord's going to keep you. The only way you can go to hell is when you want to do sin. You want to do it. The devil suggests it, you want to do it, you did it, and then you look for some weak excuse to justify yourself why you did it and some cheap excuse to stay in it and keep on doing it. If you do make a mistake, don't stay in it. Get up, let's go on. Return to the Father's house.

Well, time went on and then finally her stepbrother, who was a blue baby—his heart is not only on the wrong side, but it's turned upside down—he came down to be operated on and looked at by the doctor here in Baltimore at Hopkins Hospital. While he was there, Sister Hardy and I were going to visit him. On our way to visit him, we come out and we're going on our way to another Christian's home when all of a sudden, from the left, came a streak of metal and hit our car and totaled that thing.

If the angel of the Lord wouldn't have spoken to me, I don't know how bad the accident would have been. But as we were going up, I don't know if it's Madison or Monument. One goes one way, one way the other down there by the hospital. Anyway, we were on the one way going east and on Wolf Street, I guess that's north, came this car flying.

He ran the red light and hit me. The reason why he was flying, he was trying to take someone to the hospital that just had lye thrown in their face. He was racing. I was in that left lane of the one-way street where I would be in the intersection when he came. The Lord told me, "Spin the wheel."

I spun the wheel and I steeled myself. This streak hit us, but as it hit us, because I was turning the wheel, the momentum hit us and spun me like a top. I don't know if you ever, when you were a kid, ever went to the circus or whatever and had those bumper cars. You'd hit it and slam. Well, that's the way it was. He hit me and we were spinning like a top with all kind of traffic flying all around us. He kept going up until he hit another car and stopped.

Sharon was just little. I think she was about five years old. She was in the backseat. This happened just like that. It was just like lightning striking. It happened so fast you couldn't do anything but react. If it wasn't for the Lord telling me to spin my wheel and react, I wouldn't have been able to know what was going on.

Sister Hardy, she didn't know what was going on. She happened to be turning to look the opposite direction when that car hit us. I slammed into that door and by the Lord keeping me rigid, I didn't send my head through the glass and cut it off. In fact, the next day when they saw that car, they said I should have been the one to be hurt because all the damage hit my side.

I bent that car door like you would bend a bow for an arrow. The force was so much. When he hit it, that G-force was so great, it threw me into the car. Being steeled, I don't know what the Lord—it was the power of God. Bent the car and didn't hurt me. Didn't even have a bruise. Didn't have a bruise. Didn't have a pain and this door's bent, the glass is shattered.

The first thing I heard was Sharon in the back hollering, "What did that man do to my father's car?" You know her mouth. She's going to get on me. So I knew she was all right. I knew I was all right, and I looked at Sister Hardy. When I did, her eyes had rolled up in her head and she was doing like this as if you hit a spring and it was bouncing.

Spontaneous, the Holy Ghost fell on me. I didn't think, I didn't do it, the Holy Ghost fell and said, "Death, I rebuke you in the name of Jesus!" And she came to and looked at me, befuddled. Finally, by that time, there was a taxicab behind us. He had come and opened up the door and saw Sister Hardy was in that state and took her out and rushed her to the hospital a couple blocks back up the Hopkins Emergency.

The police came and he was trying to ask me questions. I want to know how Sister Hardy was. Who cares about the questions? Finally, I left the police and I went up and I got there just in time to the emergency room, and they were wheeling her out of the X-ray section.

The doctor was looking at the X-ray and said, "I don't understand this. This is something." He said, "I can't understand it. We took a couple shots and it's still the same." You see what happened when she turned? Then the force of that impact sent her head right behind her left ear into the dash and crushed her skull, and she actually died.

When they X-rayed it, it showed the swelling you could see, but the bone was healed. Underneath the bone was a scar on her head so the Lord could prove that she had been hurt, but He did a miracle. He healed the bone, left the evidence of the scar.

You know, it would have been better if I'd have known I was going to say this to have Sister Hardy come up here. Why don't she come up here anyway? Come on up here. Yeah. I hope she takes her high heels off or I'll have to stretch. Why don't you get that microphone over there and they can turn it on?

God had healed her of that accident and the only thing she knew when she came to—she'll tell you she came to in Hopkins Emergency Ward and said, "This isn't heaven." And when they asked her, the only thing she knew was her name, Sharon's name, my name, that I was her husband and Sharon was her daughter, and she was saved. That's all she knew. That's all you have to know. Hallelujah.

All right, Sister Hardy, you tell them what happened while you were out after the car hit.

Sister Hardy: Well, the first thing I saw was the greenest, luscious, grassy mountain that I've ever seen. I could tell that I was going up. I was being lifted up and I knew that when I got to the top of the mountain, I was trying to remember what the Bible says: whether the angels would receive me and take me to the Lord or whether Jesus was going to be at the top of that mountain.

I could feel myself going up and it was so bright. It was so green. In our mind, we have that death is dark and scary and the tunnel of darkness, but it wasn't like that at all. I believe the Lord allowed that to happen so that I could live the rest of my Christian life not fearing death, but looking for that day. Hallelujah, when I'm going to reach the top of that mountain.

Then what happened was I could see myself going up and then suddenly everything was white. Back in those days in the hospitals, they wore white and the emergency room was tiled white and the floors were white. But over in the corner were some glass flasks and I couldn't figure out what they were doing in heaven. I did think that the walls looked a little cheap.

I said to them, I said, "Where am I? This doesn't look like heaven." And the doctor says to me, he says, "You're not in heaven, miss. You're in Johns Hopkins emergency room." I said, "I am not." He said, "Yes, you are. You've been in an accident."

So then I had amnesia for a week and they took me in and of course they're asking you questions, they're trying to probe to see if they can jar your recollection. Of course, my little daughter was with me at the time and she was five years old. Time doesn't mean anything in the spirit.

They would ask me, they'd say, "What is your name?" And all I knew was my name was Durant. I didn't even know it was Hardy because you see, that is a natural tie. That's not a spiritual tie. I knew Peck and I knew Sharon and I knew I was saved.

They would ask me, "Where do you live?" I had no idea where I lived. No idea how old I was because you see, your spirit doesn't have age. All the Bible says, all the former things will be remembered no more. So I thought this was a good lesson to me and it's a good lesson to everybody to put our affections on things above and not on things of the earth below. Amen.

R.G. Hardy: I believe she left the part out. When she got near the top of the mountain, the Lord told her she had to go back. I tell you, I get that close, I'm going to protest.

So you see, the devil can't break your faith if you don't want it broke. He can't snap you out. She had no time for the devil to break her faith. She didn't know what hit her. That works the other way too. If you're not saved, you know what a lot of people say? "Well, I'll wait till death comes or I'll wait till the end and then I'll repent."

She didn't have a chance to repent. If she wouldn't have been saved, she wouldn't have had a chance to repent. I know it's easy to get saved for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, but she didn't have a chance. She didn't know what was coming. She just turned her head away and that quick, she was into eternity.

If it wasn't for the spirit of God speaking through this piece of clay to call her back because it wasn't God's time, she'd have been standing before God. If she wasn't saved, it would have been too late and too bad. But God did that to show her that the devil can't break your faith at the last minute.

You don't want to be lost, God's not going to lose you. To get lost, you're going to have to want to be lost. If you don't want to be lost, God's power is all around you to keep you. You're in His hand and no force can seize you out of His hand.

But not only of that, I've been elaborating on that place of safety. But in this first chapter and in these 20th and 22nd verses of Ephesians, we join Jesus in power because all things have been put under His feet and He is the head and we are the body and members in particular. And we are His feet.

In fact, I asked God many years ago, I said, "Lord, I'm not asking you for the greatest anointing in the world, the greatest ministry, the biggest tent." In those days it was tents. Now it would be the biggest TV broadcast. "But I'm asking You, God, to make me a heel. The biggest heel and put Holy Ghost on it, and then put the devil under my feet and then I'm going to stomp him to pieces." How many say amen?

Hallelujah. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Keep your faith in God for we are kept by the power of God through faith. And when it's all over and the Lord sounds the trumpet, we're going to be changed in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

Sharon Hardy Knotts: Amen. What an invaluable and eye-opening teaching by God's servant Brother Hardy, "New Creations Sons of God." The dynamic teaching which you have heard today is part of an entire series available to you on a three-CD set for a special love offering of only $15. Now let me tell you some of what you'll be getting in this complete teaching.

On CD one: "Who we are in Christ" refers to our position. If any man be in Christ, he's a new creature, and that new creature is a son of God or a child of God. Because "son of God" in New Testament scripture is not a gender determiner, but a legal position.

The second CD is "Where we are in Christ" and refers to our location. We have been translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear son. And there we have righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. We're no longer under the dominion of Satan and sin and bondage or fear. We are seated in heavenly places with Christ.

On CD three: "What we have in Christ," our possessions. Now if we are children of God, then we are heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. And the scripture says all things are yours. Our glorious inheritance is that of the firstborn son because we are the body of Christ.

You will also learn what it means to be born again, to partake of God's divine nature, and how to live the godly life in the midst of a perverse and wicked generation. All this and more is included in this three-CD set series, "New Creations Sons of God."