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Originally posted by David:
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I know there are gifts of healing, but I was wanting to know about if the laying on of hands is necessary.

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LET US LEAVE THE ELEMENTARY DOCTRINES OF CHRIST
LAYING ON OF HANDS (#266)

By Sam Soleyn

At the end of what is known as the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus had this to say in Matthew 7, beginning at verse 24. (Matthew 7:24-27) "Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. (Note, then, the emphasis of foundations. It continues.) But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. (The emphasis of putting them into practice means that these are not merely words, but they have become a way of life.) The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."


Now what exactly are these foundations that Jesus insists should be put into practice in our lives as believers? We know that the rains will come. They will come to the man whose house is built on the rock, and they will come to the man whose house is built on the sand. The winds will blow, and the floods will rise. We know that. Jesus said, "Once more I will shake not only the heavens but also the earth so that everything that can be shaken will be shaken. But you have received a kingdom that cannot be shaken." (Inserted - see Hebrews 12:26-29) The only thing that cannot be shaken is the kingdom. Your life in the kingdom is built on the rock, and everyone else's life is built on the sand.

Jesus was prophesying in Matthew 24 about the end of the age, and He said some astonishing, dramatic things. He said because lawlessness will abound, the love of most will become cold. Brother will turn against brother, and a man's enemies will be those of his own household. When Paul speaks about the events of the end of the age, he has no better picture to present. He says, (II Timothy 3:1-5) "But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God-- having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them."

Upon a people in this condition, the Day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night. Men will be deceived into thinking that there is peace and safety in the eve of sudden destruction. One of the reasons that we should have known that Jesus was not going to come back at the first of this year was because of all the excitement over Y2K people were somewhat expecting to see, perhaps, Jesus returning with the clouds of heaven. But He said His coming will be quite different than that. The whole world was expecting something pretty dramatic, but Jesus said that as it was in the days of Noah so shall it also be when He comes again. (Inserted - see Matthew 24:36-39) He said there will be eating, and drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage.

A man asked me recently, "Do you think that the stock market will collapse?" I said, "I don't think so. I don't think so." I used to think that it would because as global government comes about there will be a one-world government. I used to think that in order for America to be part of the one-world government that there would have to be a collapse of the American economy, making America vulnerable to a global economy. That's not necessary. We now do not possess the certainty of our own economy. We have a global economy presently. It's just based in America.

What will come about is not the loss of the American economy. What will come about is the loss of American sovereignty. When it does, the global economy will produce what is already being called the greatest and longest period of economic expansion in modern times. Some are even considering it the greatest and longest running expansion of the economy ever in the history of this nation. So it will be good times when Jesus comes. Because of that, I don't believe you will see a collapse of the American stock market, reducing the American economy to rubble. I believe that in this nation particularly there will be eating, and drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage.

That's exactly the foundation that has seduced the church and produced great weakness throughout the structure of the church culture. It is my view that everything that can be shaken will be shaken. The only thing that cannot be shaken is the kingdom of God. Now the kingdom has foundations. The kingdom is foundationed in particular things. If you don't have these foundations in your life, then the kingdom has not been established in you. In the days prophesied by Jesus, Paul, and everyone else in the Scriptures who write about the time of the Lord, when great shaking comes to the earth, whoever does not have these foundations is a foolish man whose house is built on the sand. That house will collapse, and the loss will be total.

So you say, "Well, what are these foundations?" I have been teaching now for about four-- this is the fourth in a series of six-- on the indispensable foundations in the life of the believer. Let's go now to Hebrews, chapter 6, where the writer tells us about these elementary doctrines. Elementary does not mean that they are unimportant. It just means that they are basic. It is stuff you should have learned in grade school. You should have learned how to read and write so that now you could read a whole novel and write anything that you want to. You don't remember learning your abc's. You don't remember learning to associate letters to create words and sentences. Now you just do it. You don't remember learning your numbers. Now you just utilize the skill and the ability.

So there should be a time when these foundations are so much a part of what you know to be true that they are indistinguishable as identifiable things. They are just normal for you as a believer. Needless to say, if you have never had these things, then you have never gone even to grade school. The way you will see the things of God will actually be with the immaturity of infancy.

What are some of these foundations? For those of you who have been following this series, you already know. Here they are in Hebrews 6. (Hebrews 6:1-2) "Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ (These are the elementary teachings about Christ.) and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, (When I talked about that, I said that was the teaching on deliverance) and of faith in God (That's the teaching on how you live in the context of being a believer), instruction about baptisms . . . " When we talked about that, we talked about how the baptism of the Holy Spirit results in power, and the baptism by the Holy Spirit results in your being cleaned up, retrieved from Adam, and put in your proper place in the body of Christ as that part of the body that you are. The baptism of fire was one of suffering by which the soul was always meant to be saved, and the baptism in water was an indication of your death, commemorated and celebrated in the ceremony of baptism, which in itself is the ceremony of burial because you died to the old Adam, died to the old nature, you now can be buried with Christ. Baptism is that indication of death by which you are buried.

So when the enemy comes along and he says, "You remember when you used to do thus and so", yes, you may have the memory of it, but that person died. When a man is dead, you can't kill him anymore. When a person is dead, there is nothing you can charge him with that will stick. I used the example of when Lee Harvey Oswald murdered John Kennedy. On his way to his arraignment for the trial of century, Jack Ruby came up and shot him. End of trial. The defense-- corpus delecti-- there is nobody there to prosecute.

That's why Scripture says in Romans 8:1, "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. . ." Period. There is no condemnation. You cannot be condemned. Even if you did commit the act, you cannot be condemned because that person who committed the act when he came to Christ was put to death. All the doctrines of baptism, whether it is the baptism of the Holy Spirit, baptism by the Holy Spirit, baptism in fire, baptism in water, they are all about death and dying. They are all about the hope of being resurrected from the dead.

You need these foundations in your life. If you don't have them, you really don't know where you stand, and you can be tossed back and forth as a man who has built his house on the sand. Anyone who builds his Christian life on the unique doctrines of any particular church is someone who has built his life on sand. No church membership will matter in the day of your trial. When someone walks into a church building with a gun, the fact that you are a member of that church means nothing. If that's all you are, if that's all you have, you will run like a scared rabbit. But if you are foundationed in Christ, it doesn't matter whether you are in a church building, you are in an airplane, you are around the corner, you are up the street, you are in a distant city-- your foundation is in Christ and it will hold. I'm trying to show you that the foundations are more and have nothing to do with being church members. It is who you are as a person in Christ.

Let's continue on, then, in a further discussion today of the laying on of hands. I have called this particular message, "To Be Commissioned And Sent" or "To Be Released And Sent". It is amazing how the laying on of hands is a critical doctrine. The astonishing thing is you probably have almost never heard the doctrine of laying on of hands. Somebody went to an elder in a well-known church group and said to him, "I'm going out on a missionary effort, and I need for you to lay hands on me and send me out." Of course, they had never practiced the doctrine of laying on of hands, even though it is said to be elementary, foundational, normal for the believer.

By the way, when he says, "Let's leave the elementary doctrines", he is not saying, "Let's forget about them." He's saying, "Let's not continue to just go around, and around, and around on those things." But once you go on, it is what you practice normally. You don't have to keep learning your abc's again, and again, and again. Once you have learned them, you routinely practice your abc's. Every time you pick up the newspaper, every time you read a book, every time you write a letter, you practice your abc's. But you've gone on from just your abc's to the use of them.

So he's not saying that there is a time when you should not have the laying on of hands. He's saying simply that there is a time when the doctrine of the laying on of hands should be well-known, you practice it when it is necessary, but you go on from teaching about it again and again. There are some churches that every Sunday, every time you show up, you can be sure that every session is ended with an altar call and an invitation to baptism. If everybody has been baptized, they will still do that. In some churches, everybody is saved in that meeting, and they will still give an invitation to salvation. That's mindless. And their excuse? "Well, just in case." That's foolishness.

What is the Spirit of God saying in that particular meeting? That's what you should concern yourself about. If not, this is just church doctrine. They are constantly circling the elementary things of their doctrines, not necessarily the elements of the faith, and they can't go on beyond that. Because if they ever did, they would not know who they are. You always have to give people an altar call because if you are a Baptist that's what you always have to do. That's what it means to be Baptist. You always have to give an invitation to baptism if you are Church of Christ because that's what it means to be Church of Christ. You can't ever get away from it because that's what is unique to that group. And so on and so on.

You see? He's saying, "Let people know that these things are true. The mature people always know what's true. So you don't hover over the elementary doctrines, but you practice them as a way of life. But there's more to your way of life than these elementary doctrines." Just like there is more to life than going to grade school.

Now what about the doctrine of the laying on of hands? I was talking about how this one elder responded when this man asked to have hands laid on him to be sent out. He said, "Well, you know, that's not a big deal. Some people make it a big deal. It's kind of like when you pat somebody on the back and you say, 'Atta, boy'." That was his notion of the laying on of hands. "Atta, boy" or "Way to go, guy."

This is elementary. What does it mean to lay hands on people? Do you realize that most churches think that if you lay hands on people you are engaging in high church activity, esoteric stuff? This is elementary. Do you know why it's elementary and why the doctrine of laying on of hands is elementary? It's because we are in a kingdom that has all authority in heaven and on earth. Jesus established His kingdom based on that authority. That means Jesus alone has all authority in heaven and on earth.

All of the rest of us are His delegates. We are delegated to do His will and His purpose. Some of what He has delegated for us to do is heal the sick. The healing of the sick is one of those things that requires the laying on of hands. It's not the only thing; it's one of those things. So if somebody is sick, they should send for the elders of the church. The elders should anoint them with oil. Oil signifies the place and the presence of the Holy Spirit. So the point of anointing with oil is to remind the people that the Holy Spirit brings the power of God into this dynamic so that they can expect God to act. Then, they ought to pronounce over the person the forgiveness of sins.

Why should they tell the people that their sins are forgiven? Because often, sickness is related to sin or curses. Generational sins, generational curses, or even the person's own sins will often open the door to a spirit of sickness. So what you do is you declare the forgiveness of sins so that if their sickness is a result of sins the authority of that spirit to oppress them has been removed and it has to go. Healing will typically result at that point. So you lay hands on them, you declare the forgiveness of sins, you have anointed them with oil, and God will heal them.

Other things that require the laying on of hands have even more to do with the concept of being the delegates of Christ to carry out His interest and His purpose in the earth. The Scripture said that Paul and Barnabas went back through the towns and villages where they had preached, confirming the saints with the laying on of hands and teaching them how that by many trials you should enter the kingdom of God.

When I read the doctrine of the confirming of the saints by the laying on of hands, it reminded me of my early upbringing as an Anglican. There, in order to become an Anglican, you had to learn your catechism and then go through a ceremony of confirmation. Well, the ceremony of confirmation confirmed me as a member of the Anglican Church. I believe there is a similar ceremony of confirmation that confirms you as a member of the Roman Catholic Church.

The basic view is there is no need for you to accept Christ as an independent, known act in your life. They simply say you are born into a Christian family because the family is a member of the church, so there comes a time when you need to become confirmed. At about the age of twelve or thirteen, in that range, you need to be confirmed and given holy communion so that everyone can know that you are now officially a member of the church.

Well, that's clearly not what the Bible teaches about the doctrine of confirmation. Clearly not. That's unbiblical. But the word, "confirmation", is in the Bible. It's in Acts 15. How are the saints to be confirmed? They are to be confirmed by the laying on of hands. This is what you do when you confirm someone in the Lord. You confirm that you see Christ in them and that establishes them as a believer. So you lay your hands on them and you say, "In the name and by the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, I bear witness that the Spirit of God is in you." This is the kind of thing that the Bible had in mind when it was said that if two agree, as touching anything, it shall be so. It's not this bogus use of it that is common, which is to say, "Let's both of us agree for a million dollars, then we will compel God to do it." No. What he was saying was, "Let us have the independent confirmation-- emphasis on independent-- of at least two and then the thing will be established."

You take someone who is really battling with problems of sin-- when the enemy accuses them in that context, this is what he says to them, "Yeah, you say you're a believer. You say you believe in Jesus, but look at this sin in your life." What does the person begin to think at that point? He or she begins to think, "You know, I'm not even sure that I'm a believer."

How do you remedy that? At some point in the life of every believer, that believer should have been confirmed by one or possibly two others, particularly the leaders. What they should have done is they should have laid hands on them at some point and said to them, "We confirm that you are a believer because we, who are able to discern the Spirit of God in people, discern the Spirit of God in you. We confirm you in the Lord." So when the enemy comes along and says, "You're doing all these things. Are you sure that you're a believer?" what can they say? They can say, "Absolutely. I am in sin, but I can tell you this for sure: I am a believer."

Finally, the laying on of hands is to send people out, commission them, and release them. Most people today who have a ministry and a calling, end up doing it without anybody ever having approved of them and sent them. They spend most of their time defending the right to do the thing that God has called them to do. What you should do whenever anybody is sent out is the leaders should lay hands on them as they did in Acts 13 confirming the call of God on their lives, blessing them, and sending them out by the laying on of hands. That is from Acts 13. Occasionally, those who have the power and the authority should go visit them and establish them in the Lord. This is the doctrine of the laying on of hands, and you need it.

This is Sam Soleyn. God bless you and goodbye.

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Originally posted by Aaron:
Never worry; never fear; Endoxos is here! (with his Bible)


And this:

1 Corinthians 12:8-9 "..for to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit..."

Aaron

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I know there are gifts of healing, but I was wanting to know about if the laying on of hands is necessary. And so far it don't look like it. I would think anoniting with oil would be use instead.


James 5:14 (KJV)
Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:

Posts: 3276 | From: Charlestown, IN | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Bat Elohim:
LOL!!! it is kinda hard to know gender on a message board!

Endoxos, what does "My signature is apisdn umop."
mean??

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"upside down"

apparently it's sdrawkcab, too.

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Originally posted by Endoxos:
Her. I'm a her. ^_^

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Oops.

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Originally posted by Aaron:


This question seems so simple (and from the #1 member no less) I'm wondering if it's a set-up.

The answer is "yes".

Aaron

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Posts: 3276 | From: Charlestown, IN | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Aaron:
I'm wondering if it's a set-up

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