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Question

In Acts 19 where Paul talks about John’s baptism being of repentance, it’s in the third through the seventh verse. He asked the people of Ephesus there, some disciples, it says, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit?” and they said, “No, we never even heard there was one.” And this girl I was talking with the other day at work, was telling me that she received the baptism of the Holy Spirit about 3 or 4 days after she was saved. I’ve heard a lot about that, I was taught back and forth when I first became a Christian and I’m not real sure. She showed me this section of scripture and I didn’t know how to answer her to say that it was all at one time.

Answer

This passage proves the very opposite, and I’ll show you why.

Verse one, “It came to pass, while Apollos was in Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper border came to Ephesus: and found certain disciples”. Now the word disciple, mathetes means a learner, we don’t know who they were learning from; we don’t know who they were disciples of in verse one, we just know they were learners. They were seekers of truth; they were followers of somebody. He said unto them, “'Have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed?' And they said, 'We haven’t so much as heard there is a Holy Spirit.' And he said unto them, 'Unto what then were you baptized?'" I mean, he’s shocked! He is in effect saying, "Well, whatever your baptism was it certainly wasn’t the normal baptism, it wasn’t Christ that you believed in or you would have heard and known of the Holy Spirit."

So the question is it’s a shock to him that there is somebody who says they're a disciple, and a follower, who doesn’t know that the baptism of the Spirit has come. So they said, "Unto John’s baptism," well who’s John? John the Baptist, these are Old Testament saints. See they haven’t even entered into the new covenant, so they’re not even saved yet. They are only in the sense of the Old Testament, so what does he do? Then said Paul; “John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance.”

Now, what is the baptism of repentance? John’s baptism was a preparatory baptism; in other words he was making a people ready for the Messiah. It was a ceremonial washing, it was very much the Old Testament thing where you come and you are symbolizing the cleansing of your heart, by the washing of the outer body in the baptism, so that you are demonstrating that you are ready in your heart to receive the Messiah, it was a preparatory, turning from your sin, turning away from the past and washing yourself on the inside and demonstrating on the outside. It was a preparation saying unto the people that they should believe on Him who should come after, that is Christ Jesus.

So John was getting people to repent of their sin and have their hearts cleansed by confession and repentance towards God, symbolizing their baptism to get ready for the coming of the Messiah. Well, who does he preach to them? Does he say them, "Now look let me tell you how to get the baptism of the Spirit--let me tell you how to do this?" No, he doesn’t say that; he talks to them not about the Holy Spirit, not about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, he talks to them about whom? Christ Jesus, because that’s what they have to hear. And so he tells them about Christ Jesus and when they heard this they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Now they've become new covenant believers and when Paul had laid his hands on them the Holy Spirit came to them immediately on the spot and at that point they spoke with tongues and prophesied.

So this passage does not teach what is called the Charismatic doctrine of Subsequence. Now it is unique in the sense that they received the Holy Spirit differently than we do, but there’s a reason for that. On the day of Pentecost the people received the Holy Spirit in a marvelous way the first time He came…true? I mean it had to start somewhere, right? So the Spirit comes on them subsequent obviously to their believing, because they had to wait and pray and wait you know until the Spirit came. Now when you come into chapter eight the Gospel was taken to the Samaritans, now if there was any animosity in the world it was between the Jews and the Samaritans, right? So whatever God had done when he began the church among the Jews he better repeat when he begins it among the Samaritans, or the Jews are going to think they are second class. So when they believed the apostles were also present and also the Spirit of God came and baptized them and I believe they spoke in tongues, in the languages because that’s what happened at Pentecost. It wasn’t that the languages were so necessary to that event, they were a necessary connection to that first event.

Then in chapter 10 when Peter preached to Cornelius who is not a Samaritan, you go from the pure Jew to the half-breed Samaritan to the pure Gentile. When he preached to the Gentiles and they believed the same thing happened. The apostles laid their hands on them and the Spirit came and they spoke in tongues, not that it was important then, but it was important that they have the same thing the Jews had. So that the people see the church as one, so when those initial comings of the Spirit: the Jewish, the Samaritan, and the Gentile situation, there was a reenactment of the same things, and Peter goes right back to the people in Jerusalem and he says you’re never going to believe this, the same thing happened to the Gentiles that happened to us. Do you know what that means? We got to accept them on our level.

Now you only got one loose end and this is these drifters who are Old Testament saints, disciples of John and I believe they are included in the same one body concept by repeating the very same phenomena that you can trace all the way to the book of Acts.

Question (continued)

Repeating what, repeating the tongues?

Answer (continued)

The laying of the hands of the apostles, the baptism, the tongues. Not that it was so necessary at that point, but that it reenacts that initial coming so that there’s no sense of anything but one body of those who believe. And after that point it ceases. The Samaritans were in chapter 8, the Gentiles are in chapter 10, and the Old Testament hangovers are in chapter 19.