The Spiritual Condition of America, Politics, Culture, and Current Events Analyzed Through the Lens of Scripture. Welcome to the Alex McFarland Show. One of the subjects that a lot of Christians don't know too much about, although they should, is the subject of the Holy Spirit. Hi, Alex McFarland here. I'm so honored that you're listening.
We have got a great show today for a number of reasons. One, there's a brand new book out by O.S. Hawkins, The Spirit Code: 40 Truths About the Holy Spirit that every Believer Should Know. And it's a devotional book. And if you've listened to our program much, you know that my wife and I love devotional books, and I love to recommend good devotionals.
And this is one, and you'll learn about the Holy Spirit. But the author is someone that I'm so honored to talk with today, and so honored that you're hearing as well, O.S. Hawkins.
So, almost my entire Christian life, I've known about O.S. Hawkins.
He has served the Lord in so many ways. Ways and just been one of the great leaders of our lifetime in the Southern Baptist Convention. And he at one time was pastor of the historic First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas. And our very dear friend Robert Jeffers is there now. And he is president emeritus of the Guidestone Financial Resources Ministry, which is part of the Southern Baptist Convention.
He's written more than 50 books. And so, not only as a pastor, but as a scholar and author, he's touched millions of lives, my own included. He is with us now. And Dr. Hawkins, let me say thank you for being with us today, but even more importantly, thank you for all that you are doing for the Great Commission worldwide.
Welcome, sir.
Well, thank you so much, and it's a joy to be with you, Alex. And a lot of us look upon you as being out there at the point of the spear and earnestly contending for this faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.
So, thank you for all you do in the world of apologetics and all the way, all you do, and lifting up the Lord Jesus.
So, it's a joy to be with you today and to be a part of your listening audience.
Well, thank you, Dr. Hawkins.
And I want to get to your new book, The Devotional on the Holy Spirit. But I want to hear about your journey because you have, you know, I got saved through a little Baptist church, a Southern Baptist church in rural North Carolina. God called me to preach, got ordained, and my wife and I have been married now 36 years. And we've been married 36 years, and 35 and a half of those years, we've been in full-time ministry. And as long as I've been in ministry, I've known of you and your work.
And I want to hear about. about how God raised up O. S. Hawkins.
Would you tell us that story? Thanks. To be very brief, I came to know Christ when I was 17. I'd never heard a prayer in my home. I'd never seen the Bible open in my home.
I didn't know Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were books of the Bible when I first heard the gospel. And not what ought to be today, but never been the same since that moment. You know, brother, Alex, it was probably three or four months after that when I ever heard the word repentance. But I know I repented that day because instantaneously and immediately, I started loving what I used to hate and hating what I used to love. Places I used to think I loved to go, and I had no more desire to go anymore.
And things I never thought I'd want to do, hanging around a bunch of Christians and reading the Bible, I found my greatest joy in doing. And so my life was totally transformed when I was 17. Three years later, I was on a mission trip down in Mexico when God was already stirring my heart when I felt his call to pray. Preach. I mean, a lot of people talk about their being called to ministry today, but you know, I know I was called to preach.
And a part of the ministry I trust every pastor will. Continue to do is to call out the call. And one of the things that I see that's void in so much of the pulpit ministry today is this influence and continuance of trying to let people know that God has a plan and a purpose for their life and a special calling on their lives. And He still calls particular people to particular places for particular purposes.
So I was called to preach then. I was at TCU as a pre-law student summer before my senior year. About that same time, I met my wife Susie.
Next week, we'd been married 55 years and so did a Master of Divinity and a PhD at Southwestern Seminary. Our first pastorate was in Hobart, Oklahoma. First Baptist Church, Hobart. Then we went to First Baptist Church, Ada, Oklahoma. This was in the 70s.
And then in 1978, God called us to First Baptist Fort Lauderdale. And we were there 15 years, saw what, honestly, we got to see what few local churches have. Ever gotten to see? We saw a church grow from 500 in attendance to 10,000 and built that beautiful worship center in downtown Fort Lauderdale. I still go down every two or three months and preach there.
The church is having a resurrection, it's alive and well. And then in 1993, we were called to be the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas. And Dr. Chriswell, who had been the pastor there for 50 years, was my biggest asset, greatest supporter. He adopted me back in the 80s, sort of.
And my wife and I vacationed with him. I've just written his definitive biography, actually. It came out this last year, Criswell, His Life and Times, and a lot of never-before stories told about him in there. He was the greatest man I've ever known. Christian.
You know, I'm glad we're talking about him, Dr. Hawkins, because people need to know who Wally Amos Criswell was, W.A. Criswell. And, you know, let me share this. When I first got saved, I was 21 years old, and I had not been a believer long at all.
Didn't know much about the Bible, but I was reading the Bible.
Well, one day I was helping a man clean out a warehouse, and he gave me a box of books. And there was a book in there on the scarlet thread of redemption. It was by W.A. Criswell when he had famously preached. I think it was like on a New Year's Eve.
It was New Year's Eve, preached through the night. About that. On the blood. No, I was not there. That was actually about the time I was being called to preach over in Fort Worth.
I think it was in the late 60s. I tell the whole story in the biography. He started preaching on New Year's Eve in Genesis 1-1, and he just traced the blood of Christ all through the Bible, called it the scarlet thread. Through the Bible. That message people can still go and hear on wacriswell.com.
There are 4,000 of his sermons, all free, out there on wachristwell.com. But he, Alex, he had no peer in his day. I mean, he just had no peer. He was brilliant. He read Greek and Hebrew like it was the newspaper, like the funny papers.
He was brilliant. He could talk on any subject. If he had gone into law, he'd have been a Supreme Court justice. If he'd gone into politics, he would have surely been a senator, probably a president. But all he ever wanted to do was pastor a local New Testament church.
And for 50 years, he pastored First Baptist Dallas and built it into that time the largest church in the world. And he too left 50 books out there for other people, a college that bears his name, and so many other things that marked his greatness. And to get to know him and love him as I did was a special, special joy. I preached hundreds of sermons in the same place. Pulpit in which he preached thousands.
And he was loved by his people. How is First Baptist doing? I know they had a very tragic fire some months ago, didn't they? We're about to mark the first anniversary of that. And yeah, the old aldatorium was built in 1890, burned to the ground.
Dr. Jeffries and I stood there that night and watched it. And it was quite something to see. They're rebuilding it like it was. But now they also have a whole new other facilities downtown.
They've got the most beautiful 3,500-seat auditorium. It's the greatest communication building I've ever seen, plus all other new facilities. Robert Jeffers is, you know, used to talk about Truitt and Criswell, who both pastored there for almost 50 years each.
Now, when you talk about First Baptist Dallas, you've got to add the name Jeffers to it and Criswell because what Robert has done there in the last 15 or 20 years is nothing short of an absolute miracle. And nobody had a successor as a pastor better than I've had in Robert. I still preach there four, five, six times a year and love those people. Wonderful.
Well, folks, that's Dr. O.S. Hawkins.
He's our very special guest today. Stay tuned. We've got a brief break, and we'll be right back with more. Don't go away. Fox News and CNN call Alex McFarland, a religion and culture expert.
Stay tuned for more of his teaching and commentary after this. Charlie Kirk is coming to the Grand Strand August 21. He's one of the world's most influential social media voices and one of the people most responsible for the resurgence of young people standing up for America, getting registered to vote, and learning about our Constitution. Hi, Alex McFarland here. You are invited to part three in our speaker series, Conversations That Matter, with Charlie Kirk, Thursday night, August 21, 7 p.m.
at the Alabama Theater on Highway 17 in North Myrtle Beach. For tickets, visit the Alabama Theater website at alabama-theater.com. Hear Charlie Kirk, August 21, and there will be open mic question and answer. For complete information on the speaker series, go to alexmacfarlane.com slash conversations. He's been called trusted, truthful, and timely.
Welcome back to the Alex McFarlane Show. Welcome back to the program. What an honor to fellowship over the airwaves with Dr. O.S. Hawkins, a prolific author, pastor, educator, great man of God.
And I want to get to your book, but I'm thoroughly enjoying Dr. Hawkins going over a little history with you. And I want to ask this: you've seen the American church in a number of its seasons. What's your assessment today? What encourages you?
What are you excited about? What are you concerned about? Will you give us a little doctor's update on the state of the church in the USA at this moment, if you would?
Well, as Charles Dickens once said, it it's the Best of times and the worst of times in many ways.
So the church is just going through a real transition. Smaller churches in the countryside. You know, I pestered in the Hobart. Oklahoma, back in those days that church ran four or five hundred and Bible study every morning, every Sunday morning, town of 5,000 people. But they've gone through 40 years now where those kids that went off to college didn't come back to those small towns.
And a lot of churches in smaller towns are growing up. But at the same time, God is doing an amazing work in so many, many places. I see it everywhere I go. I preach in a different church almost every Sunday all over the country. I see so many good things going.
And as chancellor of Southwestern Seminary, I'm close to those young preachers there. We have almost 4,000 students in our master's and doctoral programs here at Southwestern. I had lunch with one of them yesterday, and I see a great, great, dynamic, young group of people that are ready to really go out and change the world in our seminaries and these young pastors there. But it's a different world for sure today, that's for sure. But I see some really good things happening.
Do you see things that make you believe America might have a Another great, great revival, a great awakening. Do you have any hope that we might have a great awakening? I've always had hope of that, and like many people always pray for that. And see it, you know, every once in a while we start seeing some mercy drops fall, like we've seen recently on some college campuses, and as you know, at Asbury again and other places. Recently, I was a part of the big Asbury revival in the early 1970s.
I was an M Div student at Southwestern, and some of the Ashbury students that were in that mighty revival came to Southwestern and it set Southwestern on fire in those days.
So, yeah, I'm always about the business of praying, Lord, do it again. And so, I know we've never had a culture that's more desperately in need of it, that's for sure. Yeah, exactly. I want to talk about your book on the Holy Spirit.
Now, you've written a series of books about. Codes. The newest one is, as you mentioned, the Spirit codes of forty truths about the Holy Spirit. It all began a few years ago. I think we've got fifteen in the series now.
They're made to be devotionals. And Alex, they're not designed to get uh People into the word of God. They're designed to get the word of God into the people. And when we get that word in our heart, it changes.
So we began with the Joshua Code. I never really intended it to be a series, but the Joshua code came from Joshua 1:8. This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night. It dawned on me that people weren't memorizing scripture like they used to, especially adults. And so I wrote the Joshua Code in the subtitle, 52 Scripture Verses Every Believer Should Know.
I believe there are 52 verses in the Bible. If you learn them and memorize one a week for 52 weeks and you learn those verses, and I give you Bible study material, helps about each one of them in that devotional book. But if you'll learn those 52 verses, memorize them, you'll basically know the theme of the Word of God that's there. A lot of people want to get into the Word of God and they start in Genesis. If they make it to Leviticus, they get bogged down.
If they start in the New Testament in Matthew 1, they're introduced to dozens of names they can't pronounce. But the Joshua Code is 52 scripture verses every believer should know. And so it took off, Alex. I didn't intend to. It sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
So I was reading devotionally and I came across, I was astounded how many times Jesus asked questions in the Bible. He was always asking questions.
So I wrote the second one called the Jesus Code. 52 scripture questions every believer should answer. I believe there are 52 questions that are asked in the Bible. That every believer ought to answer before they get to heaven. And so that was that devotional Jesus code.
It's been followed by the promise code, 40 Bible promises every believer should claim. The prayer code, 40 Bible prayers, every believer should pray. The Bible code, finding Jesus in every book of the Bible. There's the Nehemiah Code, the Daniel Code on the culture.
So there are 15 of them. And the latest one I wrote is the Holy Spirit, who's, I'm convinced, has become the forgotten person of the Godhead in many, many places. Yes. You know, I'm glad you said person, because I think some believers, it's not rejection necessarily, but it's just that they've not really been taught. Maybe they think the Holy Spirit is an it or a force.
But no, the Holy Spirit is the third person. Of the Trinity. Right. The reason I wrote this book, Alex, is because there are a lot of people today and a lot of churches that are just like those that Paul encountered in Acts 19 at Ephesus when he began to instruct them about it. And they said, Whoa, wait, Acts 19:2.
He said, We've not even so much as heard there is a Holy Spirit. And so that's the reason I wrote the book. You know, one of the saddest verses in the Bible is in Mark 14, verse 50, the night of the crucifixion, the Bible says, All the disciples forsook him and fled. Think about that. After all they'd seen and all they had heard, in cowardice, they fled in the darkness.
But a few, fast forward a few days later, in Acts chapter 4, verse 20, Peter stoned in prison, beaten, told never to speak the name of Jesus again. He said, Listen, I can't help but speak the things we've seen and heard. What happened? What turned their cowardice into such incredible courage? Pentecost.
The Holy Spirit had come. And Acts took and filled the believer to indwell. The believer, to fill him, to never leave, with the promise that he would never leave us. And the Bible says in Romans 8:11. Alex, as you well know, that the same Spirit That raised Christ from the dead dwells in me.
Amen. And so, what I wrote this book about is to get the believers to awaken to the fact that the same spirit, that dynamic of the power of the person of the Holy Spirit, the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead, dwells in us. And, you know, I think if Paul were preaching today in a lot of pulpits, he'd stand up and say the same thing he said to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians. He'd say, what? What?
Don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who dwells in you? You're not your own. You've been bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God. I wrote this book to awaken people to the dynamic power of the Holy Spirit who gifts us.
Every believer has a spiritual gift. Nobody has all of them, but every believer has.
Some have the gift of mercy, the gift of help.
So many of these spiritual gifts, the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, and peace, the filling of the Holy Spirit. There's so much of the dynamic life of the Christian wrapped up in the person of the Holy Spirit that that's the code we're unlocking in the Spirit code. The voice you're hearing is Dr. O.S. Hawkins, our very special guest, author of the brand new book on the Holy Spirit, and we'll continue after this brief break.
Fox News and CNN call Alex McFarland, a religion and culture expert. Stay tuned for more of his teaching and commentary after this. Christian author and speaker Alex McFarland is an advocate for Christian apologetics. Teaching in more than 2,200 churches around the world, schools, and college campuses, Alex is driven by a desire to help people grow in relationship with God. He arms his audiences with the tools they need to defend their faith, while also empowering the unchurched to find out the truth for themselves.
In the midst of a culture obsessed with relativism, Alex is a sound voice who speaks timeless truths of Christianity in a timely way. With 18 published books to his name, it's no surprise that CNN, Fox, The Wall Street Journal, and other media outlets have described Alex as a religion and culture expert. To learn more about Alex and to book him as a speaker at your next event, Visit alexmacfarlane.com. Or you can contact us directly by emailing. Booking at alexmacfarland.com.
He's been called Trusted, Truthful, and Timely. Welcome back to the Alex McFarlane Show. Welcome back to the program. We'll resume our conversation with O.S. Hawkins here in a moment, but I want to continue to ask for everybody to pray.
As you're hearing this broadcast, we are in the middle of our seven summer youth camps, more than a thousand teenagers hearing the gospel, biblical worldview. We're in places like New Jersey, Montana, and Iowa, and Georgia, and South Carolina.
So please keep us in prayer. And I want to thank everyone who's given money that we can scholarship in seven states, nearly 1,200 teenagers every summer. We have hundreds of kids that give their life to Christ and are born again. Many of them grow.
Some hear the call to ministry. And we're teaching not only how to be saved, but what we call biblical worldview to look at all of their life. Through the lens of scripture.
So please keep this in prayer. And then also for the grown-ups, we have our Biblical Worldview Conference series. We had Dr. Gary Chapman just a few weeks ago. August 21, Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk and I will be in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Wonderful theater there. And this series is called Conversations That Matter.
So please, if you would go to alexmacfarland.com, check out the Conversations That Matter speaker series. We've also got our prayer initiative. We're challenging folks like you to pray every day for a month and make intercession just part of your Christian walk to pray for lost souls, pray for our nation. It's all at our website, alexmcfarlane.com. And we refer you to it.
And we're talking with Dr. Os Hawkins and so many things that I want to ask and hear his insights on. But Dr. Hawkins, your own website. I'm sure you've got a website.
What is the URL? Yeah, it's oshawkins dot com. There are Hundreds of free ministry helps on there. There are staff meetings for pastors and small churches that I do a staff meeting with. There are 26 of them.
They go through a whole quarter with it. There are videos there. There are sermon outlines there. There are sermons there. There are all kinds of ministry resources on it.
And then also information about a lot of free book downloads of the earlier books. And there's also information there on all the code books and how you can get them at oshawkins.com.
Well, and before we resume our conversation about the Spirit Code, I know you wrote the Nehemiah Code and the Passion and Daniel.
Something very, very significant. And folks, listen to this. The royalties from these books. Tell us what is done with those monies, the royalties. Yeah.
Well, thank you, Alex. You know, when I wrote the first one, the Joshua Code, I told the Lord, you know, Lord, if you'd bless this and get it in the hands of the people that need to get into the Word of God, all the royalties from this book I'll give to Mission Dignity. We have a ministry called Mission Dignity. We're on a mission, Alex, to bring dignity to some forgotten folks, and that's retired pastors and their widows. Most of them pastored out in the highways and hedges and crossroads and never had their name in the paper, never preached on any big platform, just so faithful out there being God's servant in God's place, never had enough money to live on, much less to retire on.
Most of them lived in a church owned home, had to get out of it. And we find them in their declining years at the poverty level or lower. And the average age in our program, there are thousands of pastors and their widows in our program, average age 85. We used to give them $50 a month. It helped them.
Now the neediest get about $800 a month, plus expense grants if they need something that goes wrong. One little pastor's widow 87 years ago wrote me recently and said, I get to eat at night now and it's not just a piece of toast.
So it's a blessing to, you know, Jesus said that was pure and undefiled religion to take care of widows.
So we do that, and all the royalties from the code books go there. When I wrote the first one, I promised the Lord we'd give them all of that. They're published by Harper Collins and Thomas Nelson. They're beautiful gift edition leather book, devotional books. They're just beautifully bound.
And so. God has blessed them. We've sold three over three million copies in the last few years, and every dime of every proceed or royalty that comes from them goes to support these precious old soldiers of the cross and their widows. Amen. You know, I think that is wonderful.
I got to tell you, I love the church, you know, and I was such an introvert. I never knew God would call me to preach. I got like I said, I got saved when I was 21, and God really changed my heart. And I was very shy, very much an introvert. My wife says, you know, I didn't talk at all.
Now I don't shut up. But here's my point. In traveling around to preach in over 2,000 American churches, I've met so many great saints of God in their elderly years. And you're right. Very often they need help financially.
They've given their lives to the great commission. And in their 80s and 90s, very often are just indigent.
So I applaud what you're doing, and I'm very glad to know about that. If people wanted to give to mission dignity, how could they do that? Thank you, Alex. If they'll go to oshawkins.com, there's a link there to Mission Dignity. It'll tell you all about it.
It's got video testimonies of some of these precious people and ways you can give. We have a lot of folks that give regularly, monthly, and then some give one-time gifts. And it's what helps sustain it. We have to raise $10 or $15 million every year to sustain this ministry. And so far, God is helping and bringing new donors all the time.
Thank you for asking. And they can find that at oshawkins.com. That is a very, very worthy work, and I applaud you doing that.
Well, in the several moments we have left, I've got a question for you about the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 4:30 says, Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, who seals us to the day of redemption. What does it mean for a believer to be sealed by the Holy Spirit, Dr. Hawkins?
Well, that's all, you know, it's actually also mentioned in the first chapter of Ephesians. When we come to know Jesus Christ as a personal Savior. He seals us. You remember the old good housekeeping seal of approval? Yeah.
But it's not just that. He seals us. And you know, the best way I know how to describe it is when I was growing up as a boy here in Texas, my uncle owned a ranch down north of Uvalde. Kempwood, Texas. And some of my fondest memories, I spent every summer on that ranch and during the fall and holidays.
But what I loved about was when it came time to brand those new calves. And we would take those brands. I'd watch those cow pokes, and I helped them when I was a kid and loved doing it. And that brand would be red hot. And in that hindquarter, we'd brand HC, Howard Counts.
That was his brand in that hindquarter. And so that was a seal of ownership. And if one of those cows later got off on somebody else's pasture or somebody, people knew where they were from, they came there. And that's what God does with us when he seals us with the Holy Spirit. He puts his brand on us, and we're known by him.
And that's why it's so important to live godly lives. Amen. To be an honor and a testimony to him. And, you know, I'm glad to hear you elaborate on this. It's interesting in our summer youth camps.
Seems like different years, different questions get asked. And lately, I've had a lot of young people asking about assurance of their salvation. And can they lose their salvation?
Now, I believe in what's called eternal security. I believe if you're saved, you're saved. And I don't think a true born-again believer can. Quote, lose their salvation. But I know a lot of people struggle with this.
So, if you would, for anyone listening that maybe is concerned that they have sinned and they're no longer saved, talk about the security of the believer, if you would. Yeah, I'll do that. And a part of it's in being sealed with the Holy Spirit. Another part where he talks about that that the Holy Spirit is our deposit of our coming redemption. Yeah, that earnest money is down.
But here's the thing, Alex. I agree with you 1,000%. And we Baptists are often accused of preaching once saved, always saved. But it's not once saved, always saved, as much as it is always saved, if ever once, really saved. Amen.
And if we've really. Truly come to put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ. He said, No one can pluck us out of his hands. He said, My sheep are my voice, and I know them, and I give to them eternal life, and no one can pluck them. Out of my hands.
We're eternally secure in Jesus Christ. And, you know, the Holy Spirit, we're talking about the Holy Spirit. You know, some people think that Jesus just showed up at Bethlehem, but He's in the beginning. He said, In the beginning was the Word, Word was with God, the Word was. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that wasn't made.
And some people think the Holy Spirit just showed up at Pentecost. But He was on the first. First page of the Bible. In the second verse of Genesis 1, the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. He appears on the first page and on the last page.
And as somebody that has a heart for lost souls, you'll know this. But in the last chapter of the Bible, in Revelation, Verse 17, it says, And the bride will come. And let him who's thirsty come.
So the bride is the church of Christ. We say, come. You're having these camps. You're saying, come to Jesus, come to Jesus. That's the bride, the church of Jesus Christ.
But the spirit says, come. There's the outward call, there's the inward call. Lydia at the riverside at Philippi, whose heart the Lord opened. Attended to those things.
So the Spirit gives that inward call to our hearts, knocking on our heart's door, pulling at our heart strings, saying, Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom. Amen. Amen. Folks, the voice you're hearing is that of Dr. O.S.
Hawkins.
He is the author of the brand new book, The Spirit Code, 40-day devotional, truths about the Holy Spirit that every believer should know. And so I highly recommend this book. And again, those royalties go to support great men and women of God through mission dignity. Google that and consider supporting that worthy ministry. But as he was talking about being born again and saved and sealed, if you're listening to this program and you're not sure that you know Jesus Christ personally or you've never been saved, then today call out to Jesus.
We often say this. It's absolutely true. Jesus is as close by as a prayer. And on my website, alexmacfarland.com, there's a tab, My Relationship with God. And we've got a book we give out, and we've given away a quarter million copies of this.
This little book, What Does God Say About My Relationship with Him? But the entire text of it is on the website. And today, you can know Jesus Christ personally, or maybe you have drifted away and you need to come back to Christ today. You need to grow in the Lord. I want to encourage you to go to my website, alexmacfarland.com, read that, and make sure that you have Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior.
It's the greatest decision you'll ever make. Your eternity, quite literally, hangs on whether or not you know Jesus. Thank you, Dr. Hawkins, for being with us. Thank you, folks, for listening.
And remember, Jesus is as close by as a prayer. See? Alex McFarlane ministries are made possible through the prayers and financial support of partners like you. For over 20 years, this ministry has been bringing individuals into a personal relationship with Christ and has been equipping people to stand strong for truth. Learn more and donate securely online at alexmacfarlane.com.
You may also reach us by calling 1-877-YESGOD and the number one. That's 1-877-Y-E-S-G-O-D-1. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you again on the next edition of the Alex McFarlane Show.
