ray brown the laying on of hands

Annotation

This book was initially birthed out of my personal Bible study as I contemplated the infilling and the baptism of the Holy Ghost. God's established preference or propensity, if you will, to employ the phenomenon of the laying on of hands for healing and for the impartation of the gift of the Holy Ghost has always intrigued me. Specifically, God's use of his chosen disciple from Damascus named Ananias to lay hands upon Saul of Tarsus so that he might receive his sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost has fascinated me since I was a young boy in Sunday school. The entire Road to Damascus narrative and the LORD Jesus Christ's singular (even dreadful) awe-inspiring appearance to the mean-spirited Pharisee Saul engaged and captivated me. This book addresses religious bigotry and the innate inescapable pride and prejudice and perceived spiritual superiority of sectarian indoctrination. Although I originally set out to study the dynamic wonder of God choosing to employ men to minister unto other men and his utilizing the laying on of hands to impart the infilling of the Holy Ghost, the emphasis of my study quickly and seamlessly transitioned from the importance of men to focus on the gift of God""the gift of God of himself, the gift of the Holy Ghost. God gives himself away in and by the comprehensive Christ""both the Father and the Son by the Holy Ghost. It is my desire to magnify the LORD Jesus Christ by focusing upon the purposeful evangelical outreach of God's love that the Father might be glorified in the Son. It concerns and distresses me that as a nation we have waned in our desire for more of God. Broadly, we have settled for gimmicks and questionable entertainment and have silently colluded with one another in spiritual compromise so that we can have more of what the world has. We have settled for shiny things and an unsustainable and unrealistic social acceptance rather than seeking God. (Broadly) we no longer wait upon God, or tarry for the gift of the Holy Ghost, or for the refreshing which would reignite us as viable, zealous, and then incendiary witnesses of the saving power of the LORD Jesus Christ to a lost and desperate, disillusioned world. Someone has to address our complacency and compromise without apology, and this book does just that. The inimitable marvel of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and incomparable personal encounter with the power of God can transform our entire life and character and attitude, resuscitate and rekindle our contemporary worldly conciliatory Christianity, and then progressively and resolutely develop us into the ardent disciples of Jesus Christ we were intended to be. This work endeavors to accurately and appropriately return the emphasis of the baptism of the Holy Ghost to God's evangelical perspective: "and ye shall be witnesses unto me" (Acts 1:8).