Impartation

Did you know there is a Alpha course? Have you heard of Alpha? It's a good course, isn't it?

Did you know the writer of Hebrews had an Alpha course too? Did you know there is one place in the Bible that tells us what the Alpha course was? It's found in Hebrews 6:1-2. Now I want to read to you the six foundational teachings about the Apostolic Christianity and then I want to declare to you that having gone through four years of college, taking major and minors in religion, and then a Master of Divinity group at Southern Baptist Seminary, I never had one teaching on what I am teaching now. It is one of the major six things. Secondly, I never had any teaching about the third one in the Bible list either, but we will talk about it a bit later.

Here are the six Alpha basics, from Hebrews 6:1-2: "Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, 2of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment."

Those are the sixth teachings. The main thing I want to talk about is one of those six, the laying on of hands or (more precisely) impartation though the laying on of hands.

Paul had said, "Let's leave the elementary teachings about Christ." In other words, those six things are the elementary teachings, they are the ABC's or the Alpha course. And Paul says, "Let's leave them and go on to maturity." He also says, "Not laying again," which means that we are not going to backtrack to look again at these elementary teachings. But we are not ready to go on with Paul just yet. Instead, we are going to look at some of this basic and elementary stuff.

What are these 6 ABCs? The first is the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death. Number 2 is faith that leads to God. Number 3 is the instructions about baptisms. (Notice it doesn't say baptism in the singular, it says baptisms in the plural.) Number 4 is the laying on of hands. Number 5 is the resurrection of the dead. And number 6 is eternal judgment.

I want to pick up number 4, the laying on of hands. But before I can talk about that, I have to lay some foundation and talk about the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Please hear me, I do not want to be misunderstood. The reason why the Latter Rain movement was rejected by the larger portion of the Church was because it had an over-emphasis on tarrying. Tarrying was waiting in prayer for God to come and baptize you in the Spirit. That was the model because that was the way God had done it in Azusa Street and some other places, and there are other things that I do not want to go into right now.

Now in the latter rain movement in 1947 in Shan Orphanage they had come down to the northwest and they had seen William Branham and they had read Franklin Halls book on fasting. And they had been fasting, a long fast, a forty day fast. And in 1945, doing a forty day fast was a emphasis of this renewal.

[Most all leaders that I have seen have gone on long fasts in seeking God. Not just all the leaders, but also most of my interns. I never told them that they have to do this. In fact, I don't even mention it to them. But I discover they have done it. They heard Branham and they fast. And all of a sudden God would come and they would start prophesying and they had gifts and they had heard that the five-fold ministry of the Holy Spirit would be restored and all of a sudden it was restored.]

But the church at large rejected the Latter Rain thinking of tarrying. And now there is a movement that teaches that impartation comes through prophesy and the laying on of hands. And there is a tendency that the last movement always wants to persecute the next movement.

What I am trying to say is that there are two ways in the Bible that people are baptized in the Holy Spirit. Some are baptized by tarrying before the Lord and waiting on God. Others are baptized through the laying on of hands. There is not just one right way to get this ... there are two. And we need to remember that God did it both ways in the Bible and not discount one in favor of the other.

I put a strong value on the Word because I was raised Baptist. There needs to be some sort of tracks in the Bible for the spirit to ride on in order for me to receive it readily. There needs to be a foundation or a principle in the Bible that I can apply my experience to, or I am leery of that experience. But I am not so hung up on hermeneutics that I reject everything that is not explicitly spelled out in the Bible either. Someone hung up on hermeneutics feels that if you can't find it in the New Testament then it can't be used. And then since there is no instruments in the New Testament then we cant have the instruments in our church. If you can't find it in the Bible it's not permissible because we only do what we can find in the Bible.

That "literal" philosophy is inferior because there are principles there that may not be specific to a given situation, but the principles are still there for you to understand and apply. Also, you should understand of that the Bible that Paul used was the Old Testament. The New Testament was still in the process of being written and complied, so it was not available to the first generation of believers. Therefore, when Paul said in 2 Timothy 3:16 that all Scripture was God-breathed, he was talking about the Old Testament -- because that part of the New Testament hadn't even been written. Therefore, we ought to use the whole of Scripture.

This is a bit of a sidetrack, but I feel that I need to mention it. Right after I got tested as a Baptist, I was offered an extremely large Assemblies of God Church. But I was not able to take that position because I had to sign the line that says I believe that the only valid initial evidence of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit is that you have to speak in tongues. Also, they wanted me to sign a doctrinal statement that says that I believe the baptism in the Holy Spirit is subsequent to conversion. Well, I couldn't do that. Why? Because I don't think the Bible teaches that. I think they have to twist scripture to get to that position.

However, the last time I talked to John Wimber there was a new book that came out by two of the major leaders of Vineyard, called Empowered Evangelicals. The book said that we believe you receive the consummate experience of the Holy Spirit at the moment of conversion. I said John, you don't believe that. I've heard you talk. You believe it can be at conversion, but it is most often after conversion. The narrator saying that. Now if that is the new position of the Vineyard, I got to leave the Vineyard, because I can't sign that. On one hard, we have Pentecostals trying to fit all the Bible into their experiential grid and on the other hand, we have Evangelicals fit it into the bottle. And if it doesn't fit then we twist it to make it fit.

Here's my position: the God that didn't make two thumb prints the same is the God that doesn't make two snow flakes the same. He is not a God that wants everybody's experience to be the same, He is not a God that wants to be a "cookie cutter" God. He likes to diversity and there is lots of diversity in the Bible. As humans, we have a tendency to want to make things systematized. It's our Greek way of approaching things.

But the Bible gives us more than one way to be Baptized in the Holy Spirit. In John 20:22 Jesus breathed on them after He was resurrected and told them to receive the Holy Spirit. Then in Acts 2 and Acts 4, they tarried before the Lord and breathed on them again (the mighty rushing wind). So then they received the Holy Spirit again and they were born again in John 20 as according to the new covenant era. And then Acts 2 is when the Holy Spirit came in the day of Pentecost. Acts 4, some of the ones who had been baptized in the Spirit in Acts 2 got baptized in the Spirit again in Acts 4, but this time there were no tongues. Instead, they spoke the Word of God boldly, as the Spirit enabled them. First time there were tongues, the second time there were just boldness in preaching.

In Acts 10 people have not even been praying, while in the first two times they were praying. In Acts 10 Peter was preaching to them about Jesus. I believe these people were not saved yet because in Acts 11 the angel told Cornelius to send for Simon down in Joppa "and he will give you a message by which you" (future tense) "will be saved." So as Peter was giving him the message by which they will be saved, then all of a sudden the Holy Spirit fell upon them and they began to speak in tongues at the moment of conversion.

Now I could join the Assemblies of God on the subsequent issue if they let me say that you can be baptized in the Holy Spirit 1/10th of a second after you were saved and that counts as subsequence. If they would let me get that close then I can say it is all subsequent. But apart from that they received the Holy Spirit in Baptism at the time of their conversion. So there are two ways that you can receive the Holy Spirit.