Sound of Faith

Sharon Hardy Knotts: Greetings friends and new listeners, welcome to the Sound of Faith program. I'm Sharon Knotts, thanking you for joining us today because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Our message today is an eye-opening teaching that I believe is sorely needed in Christianity today. It is Predestination vs. Fatalism.

Much of what is being heralded as destiny by many preachers and teachers is really fatalism, that God has chosen certain people and chosen certain destinies for them that will happen regardless of what they do or don't do. If you've been confused by the terms predestination, election, or just the latest buzzword "destiny," you will be helped by this message, "Predestination vs. Fatalism."

R. G. Hardy: So God gives us free choice and He foreknew that we would choose Jesus and so He predestinated our destination. And our destination is heaven. Once we choose Jesus, we are now on a new path, and the final destination is to be glorified with Christ as we saw here. God in His foreknowledge sees it as already done. That's why He allowed Paul to write in Ephesians that not only is Jesus seated at His right hand, on the majesty on high at His right hand, but He said we are seated with Him.

We're seated with Jesus. Amen? God sees us in our final position. Jesus said that if you will suffer with me, you're going to reign with me. If you overcome like I overcame, you will sit down with me in my throne like I'm sitting down with my Father in His throne. Now if it was automatic, why would Jesus write those seven churches those letters and say to every single one of them the same condition, "If you overcome"? To him that overcometh. If it was already chosen and a done deal, what do we have to overcome? Amen.

So Jesus, when He left, He said, "I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come back and receive you unto myself that where I am, there ye may be also." Hallelujah. He's been working on that place for over 2,000 years. He's been preparing a place for those who choose Him. Hallelujah. And Peter said we have this place, we have this inheritance; it's undefiled, it fades not away, it's reserved in heaven for us. My name is already on that door. My name is already up there on that title. It is just as done as if I was already there because I chose Jesus and I'm going to go all the way.

So knowing who will choose Christ, God foreknows who would choose Christ, so He predestinates, He gives us the destination at the end of our journey. And He calls us. Amen? He calls us. And when we answer the call and we say, "Yes, Lord, yes, Lord, yes, yes, Lord," He begins the process of justification in our lives. Amen. And because we choose Jesus, then Jesus takes all of our sins, and He that knew no sin takes our sin that we may be the righteousness of God in Him. Amen. So there's a great exchange. We could write another verse to that song we sang: "I'm trading all my sin, I'm trading all my iniquity, I'm trading my filthy past, and I'm taking the righteousness of Jesus Christ, His holiness, His purity." Amen.

So He's beginning the process now of glorification. Now the ultimate is what we've already alluded to, when we are glorified with Christ, seated at His own right hand. And this is how Paul put it in Philippians. He said our citizenship is not on the earth, our citizenship is in heaven. We are already citizens of heaven. Yes, we are. I haven't even been there yet. I haven't seen it yet, but I'm already a citizen of heaven because in fact I was born from above. Because the word "born again" means to be born from above. Hallelujah. Amen. He said we are citizens of heaven, from whence we look for the Savior.

Who, when He comes, He's going to change, He's going to transform our vile bodies. The word there means our bodies of weakness and humiliation. They've been humiliated by sickness and disease and old age. Old age is humiliating. It takes what God made to be beautiful. You take a young woman or a young man in their prime, in the prime of their life, 25 to 30, let's say, somewhere in there, and they have not abused their bodies. They've taken care of their bodies. And even though it's still under the curse of this world, and we see really beautiful women or beautiful men, and we have to appreciate beauty. Every time I see someone who looks like a perfect specimen of a beautiful woman or a beautiful man, I think of Adam and Eve and how much more beautiful and how much more handsome they must have been before the beauty was marred by sin.

Oh, and old age comes along. I don't care, you see some of those beautiful stars that we see, and we see when they get older, it's humiliating. It's worse for them because they were so beautiful and so handsome. Amen. So when old age comes and does its thing to you, you know, it really is a sad thing. Oh, but one day He's going to transform all of that. Hallelujah. And He's going to give us a body fashioned like unto His glorious body. And then John said, "Oh beloved, now are we the sons of God." What manner of love God's bestowed upon us right now. Here and now we are the sons of God, but it does not yet appear what we shall be. But we know that when we see Him, we shall be like Him. We're going to appear with Him in glory. Hallelujah.

So God is going to change these bodies, but it's a process. He's doing the inner work before He does the outer work. And see, some people, they're so busy on the outer work and they're not realizing God wants to work on that inner man. Here's one of my favorite verses, 2 Corinthians 3:18: "But we all, with open face," and there open face simply means with no veil on the face because earlier in the chapter, it talks about when Moses came down from the mountain having been with God for 40 days. What happened? His face literally shone so brightly they couldn't look on him. Now you talk about some kind of glory. They had to put a veil on his face so they could talk to him.

He says, "But now we, we don't have a veil, we're looking in a glass, we're looking in a mirror, and we're beholding the glory of the Lord." And as we look and continue to look—and I want you to know this is a present tense in the Greek; it means you continue habitually looking into that glass as you're looking at the glory of the Lord—you are being changed into the same image from glory to glory to glory to glory. Oh my God, if you live to be 90, if you live to be 100, whatever you live to be, you're constantly being changed so one day you're going to see Him and you're going to be not almost, not 99 and three-quarters, but you're going to be just like Him. In all of His glory. Amen, just like Him.

But He's starting now on the inner man. 2 Corinthians 4:16: "Though the outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day." Hallelujah. Every day God is working on the inner man. Glory to God. And if we will allow Him to do that, then one day we're going to make the great exchange and we're going to receive our glorious body that's fashioned just like Jesus. Now some of you may be thinking, or it may occur to someone, "If God knows exactly who is going to answer the call to accept Christ, say, I understand what you're saying to this point, Sister Sharon, I got it now. God chooses us because He knows we would choose Christ." Amen.

He chooses us because He knows that we would choose Christ. So if He knows that, if He knows already in His perfect foreknowledge who is going to accept Christ, then why bother preaching, going into all the world and preaching the gospel unto every creature? Why bother doing that? If He's only going to... certain ones are going to accept Christ, then why doesn't He let us have the spirit of discernment and zoom in on the one that's going to accept Christ and preach to him? And find all the... let the Lord lead and guide us to all the ones that are going to accept Him and preach to them? Why go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature? Amen. How many want to know?

Well, first of all, like we've already said, God gives everyone free choice. The only way you can call free choice "free choice" is if you give people the opportunity to choose. It's not free choice if I don't get a chance to choose. Amen. So in order for God to be just, in order for Him not to be a respecter of persons, He has to give everybody the right to choose knowing that many will say no. Knowing that many will reject it and not receive it. But in order for it to be free choice, He's got to freely offer it to all. Amen.

So that's one reason. He's not a respecter of persons. He calls everyone even knowing that many of them will not receive, will not answer His call. This way God is without any blame and they are without any excuse. They're not going to stand before God and say, "Well, I didn't know." Or, "You never gave me a chance." Most people have had more than their share of chances in America. In this nation. I don't know how anybody justly can go to heaven and stand before God the judgment seat from America and say, "I didn't know." I just don't think that's going to work. Why, you know everybody has some kind of money, you got a dollar bill in your pocket? Look on the back: "In God we trust." So did you trust in God? Amen. You're not going to be able to stand before God and say I didn't know; they will be without excuse.

And how many know we ourselves, we've often had certain things, it could have been a party, it could have been a get-together, it could have been a reception, and we invite people to come that we know are not going to come. Do you do that? And you put on their RSVP and you know the RSVP's going to come back, "I decline." Well, why do you bother to send them an invitation if you know they're not going to come? Why? Because you want to show them that you are giving them respect and not showing impartiality. You're offering them the opportunity to come, even though, for instance, when Sarah got married and, you know, we had the reception and we had to keep it to 100 people, that's all we could fit in the room.

So you know, when you can only have 100 people, it gets really hard. You've got to give the groom his side, and that only leaves a bride her side. And so you know, it really gets tough. Who you're going to ask to come? Amen. You don't... there's people you don't want to leave out, but there's people you've got to invite. Now we have, I shouldn't say we have, but Benny has relatives in Louisiana because that's where he was born and that's where much of his family are. And when his mother died, Sarah went to Louisiana because that's where she was buried and she got to meet all her relatives on her father's side, and they fell in love with her. They really loved her. And so you know, there was a bond that was made there and a tie.

Well, when she was going to get married, when she was getting married and we had the reception, we knew that we had to send invitations to all those relatives in Louisiana. But we knew that they weren't going to come. Because for most of them, the trip would be too arduous. Many of them are up in age and there was no way they would be able to make that trip to come up here. But we sent them an invitation anyway. Because if we had not, we would have been insulting them and offending them. Amen. And we knew they were going to send it back RSVP: "Sorry we can't make it, congratulations, but we can't make it." So we sent that invitation. And that's how it is. God knows that many of them are not going to choose Jesus. They're going to reject Him. They're going to choose their own way. Amen. But God is not going to show any respect of persons. He's going to send them an invitation anyway. Amen.

That's why we've got to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Because you don't know—God has not given you except for once in a while in a very limited way—you don't know who's going to receive Him and who won't. In fact, there have been people that have said yes to God I thought would be the last people that would ever get saved. Have you ever seen people get saved and you thought they would never, ever? And what happens? Something... God does something in their lives. God turns their little apple cart upside down. God brings them to a crisis and all of a sudden there's nowhere else to look but up to God, there's nowhere else to turn but to God.

So you never know. You've got to pray just as diligently for that hard-hearted one if not more because sometimes they're hard-hearted because they are trying to put up a front and a hard facade because the fact is on the inside they're like Jello. The Holy Ghost is all over them, conviction is all over their case, and they are trying with every last little bit of strength they have to resist. But don't give up. Keep pouring on the prayers. Amen. Keep sowing the seed and watering it. Because God knows the ones that will come. Amen.

So one reason is so that God will not be a respecter of persons and so that when they stand before Him they will be without excuse. Amen. Now, that brings me to the question. What about those that do receive Christ, that do say yes to the Lord, and then they turn around and backslide and go back? Go back into the world and reject Jesus. What about them? If God knows that these people are going to backslide and go back out into the world, why bother with them? Why bother to call them if they're only going to come and say yes and go back out into the world? What about them?

Well, first of all, they serve as a warning. They serve as a warning to others. Amen. Watch out. Be careful. Don't neglect so great a salvation because some people, when they do, they don't realize it that they open up the door to the enemy and they fall away. Amen. There are some that Jesus said, He said in the second shortest scripture in the Bible, the first one being "Jesus wept," and the second one is Jesus said, "Remember Lot's wife." I think that's Luke 17:32, somewhere around in there. "Remember Lot's wife." He didn't even have to preach a sermon. He didn't have to be like me, long-winded and stress every point and tell you every word and explain the Greek meaning. He didn't have to do all that. All He had to do was say, "Remember Lot's wife."

That's all the sermon sometimes we need. Sometimes when you are on the hook and you're getting carnal and you're becoming disenfranchised from the Lord and you're listening to the wrong spirit and giving the wrong attitude and you're just getting a chip on your shoulder and you're just not happy with the way things are happening and you think somehow God is neglecting you and you get all of these turmoils in your soul, you better remember Lot's wife. Amen. You don't want to look back because if you look back, you may not come back.

Now thank God for the prodigal son. Thank God that Jesus gave us that message of hope and grace and mercy. One reason why God chooses those who He knows is going to backslide and go back into the world is because He knows like the prodigal son they're going to come back home. He knows that even though they go all the way into that pigsty of filth and they get so far away from God, they lose every blessing, they lose every good thing that God has ever done for them, and they wake up one day and say, "My God, what am I doing here? Eating the pig food when I could be in my father's house, sitting at the banquet table, feasting on the manna from God. What am I doing here like this?"

We'll come to their senses and say, "Lord, if you'll receive me, I'm coming home." And the Father says, "I've been waiting ever since the day you left. I've been looking down the road. Every day I've been going down to the mailbox and I've been looking down the road to see if you were coming back." Amen. Amen. Because if you read the Greek, what it means in that story that Jesus gave that the Father was looking for the son. It means that every day He was looking expectantly. He was looking, waiting for the son to return. Amen.

The very heart of God is moved. Have you ever had a loved one, maybe it's your husband or wife or one of your children, that they were supposed to be home at 10 o'clock and now it's midnight? And they're not home and you haven't gotten a call? And you try to call them and they don't pick up? And they don't return the call? And now it's 1:00 AM and you're walking the floors and you keep going to the window and you look out the window like somehow if you look out the window, it'll make them come? How many know that feeling? If maybe you look like that's going to make them show up? That's what it means in the Greek where the Father was looking for the son to return. Every day He was going looking down that long road and as soon as He saw the son, and He said, "I know that's my son," He ran to meet him.

One reason why God ministers and reaches out and chooses those who come to Christ and then backslide is because He knows like the prodigal son they will come back. Amen. And that's why we've got to keep that backslider in prayer and allow the Holy Spirit to use us to minister to them. Amen. And tell them, "Hey, remember Lot's wife. She didn't make it back. You're counting on being like the prodigal. When you get good and ready, when you've had enough, you're coming back. Maybe you won't get back. Maybe judgment will fall on you like it fell on Lot's wife."

You see, the scripture tells us that he that wins souls is wise. Not wise to win souls, but it takes wisdom to win souls. And Jude said, "On some people you have compassion, making a difference. But on other people, you save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garments that are stained by the flesh." And the Holy Spirit gives us the wisdom to know which to do. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:11, he said, "Knowing the terror of God." Wow. Amen. Does that sound like your God? That's what it says: "Knowing the terror of God we persuade men."

Why? It's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God when He... you don't know Him as your Father. Amen. When you know Him as your Father, the most wonderful thing is to run up and grab His hands and say, "Abba Father!" Yes, yes. But when you don't know Him as your Father, it's a fearful thing. He said, "Knowing the terror of God we persuade men." Amen. We don't soft soap it and whitewash it. There are some people you have to deal with them sternly that they will not be lost.

He said rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith. He said that there are some that have been taken captive by Satan at his will. Amen. We've got to know how to reach out to them. In some cases we save them with fear, but in other cases He said that the servant of the Lord must not strive. In other words, don't argue and debate. That's not going to get them saved. All that's going to do is give you a bad attitude that you've got to pray and get over. He said, "But the servant of the Lord must be meek, in meekness, in humility, instructing those who oppose themselves." They're not opposing you. They're not opposing me. They're not even opposing God in so much that they're opposing themselves because they've been taken captive by Satan at his will. And they're the ones, they're opposing their own victory and their own deliverance. And we have to be led by the Holy Spirit to know how to instruct them that we may deliver them out of the snare of Satan. Amen. That's in 2 Timothy, the second chapter towards the end of that chapter.

Sharon Hardy Knotts: Amen. I hope you're being spiritually informed by this revelatory message, "Predestination vs. Fatalism." Perhaps you've noticed that a favorite buzzword in Christian teaching and preaching today is "destiny." While this term is not actually in the Bible, the closest word to it is "predestinate," which means to determine, decree, or ordain beforehand. But the emphasis is not on who, but what. Not whom God has predetermined to be saved, but what are they predestined to? What is their destination? Once they choose to follow Christ, where will the road lead them?

The scripture says that known unto God are all His works from the beginning. And Paul said in Romans 8:29 that God foreknew who would answer the call to receive His Son and who would not. And God will never violate man's free will, and He does not arbitrarily choose or refuse anyone. He did not force Adam and Eve not to eat of the forbidden tree. It was their choice, but once they made that choice, they had to deal with the consequences.

We also get to choose whom we will serve, but we don't get to choose the consequences. Those whom God foreknew would choose Jesus, He predestinates our destination. Once we choose Christ, God chooses us and puts us on the path to our final destination, which is to be glorified with Christ in His eternal kingdom. God is no respecter of persons, and He is not willing that any should perish. So even knowing that many will not choose Christ, He invites all to receive Him so that on judgment day they are without excuse.

The false claim that everyone's destiny is predetermined by God and nothing you can do will change it even if you fail is fatalism. And it is motivated by a desire to eliminate any negative feelings over mistakes, as though they are also meant to be a part of one's preset destiny. They quote King Solomon, who said, "There are many devices in a man's heart; nevertheless the counsel of the Lord shall stand." I will show you why this very verse disproves predestination and Solomon's life is Exhibit A.

Don't miss this landmark teaching. Order your copy today on CD, "Predestination vs. Fatalism," for a love gift of $10 for the radio ministry. Request offer SK157. That's SK157. Mail to RG Hardy Ministries, PO Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203. Or you may order online at rghardy.org. Again, send the minimum love gift of $10 to the radio ministry, mail to PO Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203. Until next time, this is Sharon Knotts saying, maranatha.