Being Filled With the Spirit

Philip, having been filled with the Spirit through the act of the apostles laying hands on him, as Luke recorded in Acts 6, was thrust out of Jerusalem by the persecution following the death of his friend Stephen in Acts 8. Clearly, his gift was evangelism, because he led an entire city to Jesus and baptized them. Peter and John were sent by the rest of the apostles to bless the work.

None of the new, baptized believers had yet received the Holy Spirit. When John and Peter laid their hands on them, they each received the Holy Spirit. Something about seeing the whole town being filled with the Spirit caused the freshly converted Samaritan sorcerer to offer money to Peter and John to hire them to teach him how to do it.

There are many other apostles named as such in the New Testament. Strangely, of the 80 times the Greek word apostolos was used by Scripture writers, translators used apostle or apostles as the English translation 77 times. 3 times, for no apparent reason other than the fact that they didn’t think it could be true that the writer could mean apostle when he wrote the Greek word for apostle, the word apostolos was translated “messenger” or “one who is sent.”

Why should we be surprised if Jesus said, “verily, verily, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his lord, nor an apostle greater than the one who sent him;” as Young’s Literal Translation rendered it? (John 13:16, YLT). An apostle is one who is sent on a mission. Typically, in Rome’s use of the word, an apostle was sent to colonize.

Young, in fact, translated all 80 uses of the word apostolos as “apostle” or “apostles.” This includes properly quoting Paul as calling Epaphroditus an apostle in Philippians 2:25, and in 2 Corinthians 8:23, as writing that he was sending some of the apostles of other ekklesias to visit Corinth.

I am convinced that Ananias, who laid hands on Saul of Tarsus so that he could be filled with the Spirit, was an apostle. I suggest that there are still apostles throughout the body of Jesus in the earth, many of whom have been deceived out of believing that they are apostles, and that if you know someone who wants to be filled with the Spirit, you should help them find one of these apostles to make it happen.