Acts 814. Now when the Apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God,

they sent to them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit.

For it had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

Then, they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.

This text raises the question now as to whether or not the Pentecostal understanding of the baptism of the Holy Spirit has a good basis here.

Let me explain what I mean by the Pentecostal understanding of the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

For the last hundred years or so, the mainline

Pentecostal teaching has been that

after the initial work of the Holy Spirit by which we are grafted into the body of Christ

through faith, there is a later experience, a crisis experience,

perhaps, by which we, by faith, receive the Holy Spirit in new fullness and power characterized by speaking in tongues.

There are a lot of non-Pentecostals who would agree that the baptism with the Holy Spirit is a second decisive receiving of the power of the Holy Spirit after conversion, but don't necessarily equate it with speaking in tongues.

For example, A.J. Gordon, founder of Gordon Seminary, Ruben Tori, Dwight L. Moody, Charles Finney,

and many others who taught that the baptism of the

Holy Spirit was in fact a second event by which we consciously received the blessings of the

Holy Spirit not yet appropriated in conversion and yet not aligned

with speaking in tongues.

Now this passage here in acts 8 gives apparent support to a two-stage kind of reception of the

Holy Spirit and is appealed to as a kind of classic text for Pentecostal teaching of various kinds.

Let me try to show why that is and then assess it a little bit with you.

The Samaritans in this text had already been converted, so it is said. And that's the first experience. Before the Apostles come down and lay hands on them that they might receive the Holy Spirit.

And then the Apostles come, and they receive the Spirit,

...