![]() The issue is what the Word of God professes to be true. The issue is not what the person himself professes. When inspired Scripture says that someone believed in Jesus, we are not at liberty to say that the person in question was a false professor. We should remember the broken heart more than the misguided gesture. In Simon, we have a man who was one day hailed as the incarnate God but the next repented at the words of a couple of fishermen. Because of his on-the-spot repentance, not to mention the fact that he’d probably only been a believer for at most a couple of weeks, it seems unreasonable to vilify Simon. Nevertheless, Simon’s name lives on in infamy. Peter rebuked him harshly, and Simon repented immediately (Acts 8:20–24). But where he went wrong was trying to pay for it (Acts 8:18–19). When Simon saw that the Samaritans upon whom Peter and John laid their hands had received the Holy Spirit (no doubt evidenced in some tangible, powerful way), he wanted to experience that power himself. Unfortunately, Simon had a lot to learn about the real Great Power. Nothing Jesus had promised was to be withheld from them. ![]() Two Jewish men who had grown up with their own prejudices about the Samaritans didn’t doubt that the grace of God included people they had scorned. Luke tells us that when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that the gospel had reached the Samaritans-a people hated by “pure” Jews for centuries (John 4:9)-they sent Peter and John not to investigate whether it was true, but to pray for the Samaritan believers that they might receive the same Holy Spirit (Acts 8:14–17) that had abided with them since the explosion of the gospel at Pentecost (Acts 2). Luke is careful to note, though, that Simon saw the powerful deeds of Philip only after he believed, when he began accompanying Philip in the city (Acts 8:13). So much for all that Hogwarts tuition!įrom Luke’s account, Simon must have realized very quickly that his own repertoire of tricks, however stunning they were to the masses, fell far short of what he had seen from Philip. And when he saw the signs and miracles Philip performed, “Great Power” was drained. Philip had taken the message that God had become man in Jesus Christ to Samaria, where they already had their own incarnate deity, Simon the Magician, “God’s Great Power.” Incredibly, Luke records that the power of the gospel broke through to Simon, moving him to embrace the message of Philip. It’s easy to see how Luke, writing in full knowledge of the incarnation of God in Christ, would have sought to use this encounter. Since this angel was viewed as a physical manifestation of the true God-the “Great Power”-Simon’s acts of magical power had convinced many Samaritans that he, too, was a fleshly manifestation of God. We aren’t told if what he was doing was something he picked up learning magical trickery or enablement from a demonic power, but the effect was the same…Like many Jews and Christians, Samaritans considered one particular angel-the one in whom Yahweh’s name dwelled (Exod 23:20–23)-as the embodied Yahweh. Don’t look away now or you’ll miss what’s behind the magic…īut how could the Samaritans speak of Simon as though he were God? Well, Simon was able to do amazing things. But is that all there is to the story? Hardly. ![]() His name consequently has not been remembered for any great deeds, but for the payment of money for church office (“simony”). Simon heard the gospel preached by Philip and believed, but later, after Peter’s arrival, he tried to purchase the power of the Holy Spirit from Peter. Luke tells us that Simon had practiced his magic in a city in Samaria where he had been hailed as “God’s Great Power”. The book of Acts is a favorite of preachers, so you are likely familiar with the showdown in Acts 8:9–24 between Peter and Simon the Magician. 156-60), I was pleased to see that Heiser stuck with what Luke says about Simon and concluded that he was a believer who sinned and then repented. While most commentators and most scholars say that Simon Magus probably was an unbeliever (see, for example, Stanley Toussaint, s.v. Michael Heiser, a Logos Bible Software scholar. See this article by Jody Dillow, this 1867 article by James Inglis, and this article by Zane Hodges, for more details. We have run articles before in which we showed that Simon the Magician, aka Simon Magus, was a believer who sinned, not an unbeliever who sinned.
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