Simon, I cannot pronounce him. Isaacson. Isaacson, sorry. How does David view the laying on of hands for the Holy Spirit and the Ante-Nicene writings? They seem to have believed that in baptism, sins are forgiven and the Spirit received by laying on of hands. Yeah, you ask what my view is. Yeah, my view is the early Christian view, and you've just stated it accurately, that they understood that our sins are forgiven in baptism, and we receive the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands.
And the reason they believe that is they just took the Scriptures very literally. So, as far as forgiveness of sins and baptism, there's a number of Scriptures, but Acts 2:38, the first Christian baptism.
It says," Then Peter said to them,' Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, or forgiveness of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." So, that's why they believed in baptism for the remission or forgiveness of sins, is because of what is said there and a number of places in Scriptures. I have a message on the historic faith on what the early Christians believed on baptism.
It's also on the YouTube channel, I believe, the Scroll Publishing YouTube channel. So yeah, I would encourage you to listen to that and you'll see all the scriptures and the quotations from them. And the same with laying on of hands from Acts 14. It says," Now when the apostles who were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the Word of God, they sent Peter and John to them, who, when they had come down, prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. For as yet he had fallen upon none of them.
They only had been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. And when Simon saw that through the laying on of the apostles' hands, the Holy Spirit was given, he offered them money to be able to get that power. So again, in the New Testament, the laying on of hands is when a person would receive the Holy Spirit in the normal course of action. And that's the big if or the big asterisk at the end in the normal course of things.
So Cornelius and the ones with him, they received the Holy Spirit before they were baptized, and no one laid hands on them. I don't know if hands were laid on the Ethiopian eunuch. We assume he received the Holy Spirit. So God is not in a box. He never boxes himself in. So normally we receive forgiveness at the time in the waters of baptism, but God isn't bound to that. He can forgive sins anytime that he wants to. The thief on the cross had his sins forgiven. He never had an opportunity to be baptized.
Likewise, people can receive the Holy Spirit without the laying on of hands, but the early Christians did things the way it set out in the Book of Acts as the normal course of things without putting God in a box. And I think that's a good practice for us to follow. So our church, we would baptize with the thought of forgiveness of sins, which of course is through the grace of God. The water doesn't do it. It's just the ceremony or the sacrament as some of the early Christians would have called it.
The provision God made, okay, this is where I do it. This is what I ask you to do. This is where you receive the forgiveness of sins, and laying on of hands to receive the Holy Spirit. But God can act independently of us. And just because a human lays hands on you doesn't guarantee you're going to receive the Holy Spirit either. So we both have the scriptural example, and we should always remember God is, we can't put him in a box.
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