The laying on of hands (Part 2)

Editorial Comment: Campbell McAlpine was a good Bible teacher from solid Brethren stock. He wrote the little booklet First Principles, which we are serialising today, back in the 1960s. At that time of its publication by PWM Ministries (1992), none of the charismatic phenomena that we saw later in the 1990s had yet been experienced. Today we have a very different view on the laying on of hands. We have therefore carefully revised Campbell’s teaching in line with current biblical scholarship, so that the teaching given below represents that of Prophecy Today UK and Issachar Ministries.

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We have already seen that the laying on of hands is a practice with significance running right through the whole of Scripture. It was not only used to set people apart for certain ministries, but often as human authority was given to them to fulfil their calling or role within an institution. In this second study, we turn to how the laying on of hands can be important (or misused) in blessing, healing, and receiving the Holy Spirit.

Laying on Hands to Bless

It is important to understand that the act of laying on hands is not a magical formula or ritual to obtain automatic blessing – indeed, it can have rather undesirable results, as we will see. It is, however, a public statement: an act of faith to which God responds when done in line with his word. It is God alone who can bless, heal and fill with the Holy Spirit – and yet, in his grace and mercy, he chooses to allow us, his children, to take part in the process of blessing others with our personal faith.

In the Old Testament we read of fathers laying hands on their sons and blessing them. In ancient times, the practice of fathers blessing sons was part of the procedure through which inheritance was formally transferred. This does not mean that they imparted God’s blessing to them – no-one can give God’s blessing to someone! It is only God who can give his blessing.

Isaac blessed his son Jacob, and he was blessed, but this was Isaac’s own personal blessing upon his son, which God then honoured. Jacob in turn blessed each of his sons, and they were blessed, but again, it was not God’s blessing: it was the personal-yet-prophetic blessing of a father to his sons, which the Lord accepted.

What we learn from these examples is that laying on hands to bless is a practice that must be done with God-given authority and in line with God’s will – but that any resultant blessing comes from God. In the same way, the Apostle Paul talks about spiritual gifts and ministries in his letters but makes it clear that it is God who gives these, not people (see Eph 4:11; 1 Cor 12:28).

Laying on hands to bless is a practice that must be done with God-given authority and in line with God’s will - and any resultant blessing comes from God.

A Word of Caution

But passing on evil spirits is another matter. Although we cannot pass on pure things like the Holy Spirit to others by laying on hands, we can pass on evil spirits. The Prophet Haggai spoke to the Temple priests about passing on things from one body to another by touch. He stated emphatically that we cannot pass on holiness to someone else but we can certainly infect them with defilement (Hag 2:10-14).

This is why we should always be careful about who we allow to lay their hands on us – and this is the sad story of the charismatic movement of the 1990s, which was marked by all sorts of spirits being passed on from one to another, with people barking, laughing uncontrollably and falling around like drunkards. This was wrongly attributed to the Holy Spirit.

Jesus’ Ministry of Blessing

When we read in Matthew 19 of Jesus taking little children and laying his hands on them and blessing them, we are dealing with a different dimension. One thing is sure, these children would have been truly blessed – not least because of Jesus’ direct relationship with the Father.

Jesus said “anyone who has seen me has seen the Father”, but he also acknowledged that he could do nothing on his own initiative: he could only do what he saw the Father doing and what he heard from the Father (John 5:19, 8:28) and he always obeyed the Father’s commands (John 15:10). So a blessing from Jesus was a direct blessing from God the Father.

There is also the wonderful story in Revelation 1 where John, on the island of Patmos, had a sight of the glorified Lord Jesus. So overwhelming was that sight, that he “fell at His feet, as though dead.” Then Jesus laid his right hand on him and said, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades” (Rev 1:17-18). Immediately John was strengthened and enabled to be Jesus’ messenger to the churches in Asia.

A blessing from Jesus was a direct blessing from God the Father.

Healing and the Laying on of Hands

The scriptures give several accounts of people being healed when hands were laid on them. This was evidenced in the ministry of Jesus:

• In Nazareth: “He laid His hands on a few sick people, and healed them” (Mark 6:5).
  
• A blind man: “Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored and he saw everything clearly” (Mark 8:25).
  
• A disabled woman: “When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, ‘Woman, you are set free from your infirmity’. Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God” (Luke 13:12-13).
  
• A paralytic man: Jesus said “Friend, your sins are forgiven”. In dealing with this man’s sins before his healing, Jesus demonstrated that he was not just a faith healer. His mission set him apart from the rest of humanity. He was “the word made flesh…who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
  
• After his resurrection, Jesus appeared to the 11 disciples and commissioned them to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature”, giving them this promise, “These signs will accompany those who believe. In my name they will drive out demons, they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well” (Mark 16:17-18).
  
• When the Apostle Paul was shipwrecked on the island of Malta, he laid hands on the father of the chief citizen of the island who was ill with a fever, and he was healed (Acts 28:8).

The question we have to ask is whether ordinary human beings were given the power to heal by laying on their hands. There is no evidence of this in the New Testament. There are instances of the apostles laying hands upon the sick and praying for them and they were healed. But there is no evidence of healing being transmitted from the well person to the sick person through the laying on of hands. The healing was received in answer to prayer.

So again, we have the laying on of hands being an act of faith, done by those with God-given authority and in line with his word; an act to which God responds with power.

The scriptures give several accounts of people being healed when hands were laid on them.

The Holy Spirit and the Laying on of Hands

When Peter and John went down to Samaria, after hearing of the many who were being saved through the ministry of Philip, they ministered to the new converts and, “they placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit” (Acts 8:17). When Paul was in Ephesus, it is recorded that after baptising some believers, he “placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied” (Acts 19:6).

These verses are often misunderstood as meaning that the Holy Spirit was somehow imparted or transferred to the believers through the laying on of hands. But the Greek does not say that. It simply records that ‘this happened, then that happened’ – without any causative interpretation.

In the teaching of Jesus, the Holy Spirit is the gift of the Father. Jesus said “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counsellor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth” (John 14:15). It is essential to understand that we cannot impart or pass on the Holy Spirit to anyone. He is entirely in God’s hands to give or to withhold as he chooses. In the Old Testament, Elisha had to learn this. He asked the dying Elijah for a double portion of his spirit - but Elijah made it clear that it was not his to give (2 Kings 2).

A particular passage that needs careful interpretation is Paul’s advice to Timothy: “Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through a prophetic message when the body of elders laid their hands on you” (1 Tim 4:14). It is evident that one day while Timothy and the elders were waiting on the Lord, someone prophesied indicating the ministry the Lord desired Timothy to have. In response to this, the elders laid hands on him.

We can be certain that the elders prayed for him; but what is even more significant in the context of Paul’s words was that the elders recognised the ministry Timothy was to exercise in the ‘ekklesia’ – the scattered congregations around the Empire that made up the Church at that time. The laying on of hands was a sign of this recognition. It was not giving the Holy Spirit or any ministry gifts – Timothy had already received these. The laying on of hands was a sign of their blessing - giving Timothy the authority to go and exercise his ministry gifts amongst the various congregations.

This is what happens today in a service of ordination: the elders (or bishops) of the church lay hands on the ordinands and pray for them. Through this act they are not imparting any spiritual blessing upon him or her, but from their position of authority, they recognise the ministry to which the ordinand has been called by God. This recognition gives authority to the ordinand to exercise ministry within the organisation of the church in accordance with its rules. It does not confer blessing or spiritual gifts – it confers institutional authority.

The laying on of hands is an act of faith, to which God responds with power.

Impartation

The whole subject of ‘impartation’ has caused much division and confusion in churches in recent history. In the 1990s there were men who went around laying hands on people and causing them to behave strangely. One man even called himself a ‘Holy Spirit Bartender’ because when he touched people they behaved like drunkards. Clearly, the spirit he was passing on to others was not the Holy Spirit!

We believe that a true interpretation of biblical teaching on this subject is that we human beings can pass on evil spirits, but we cannot pass on the Holy Spirit or any of the spiritual gifts of God by laying hands on people. These gifts are entirely God’s to give.

This does not mean, however, that we shouldn’t lay on hands! It is undoubtedly a practice that God has ordained and to which he responds, when done in accordance with his word and will. As we have seen, laying on hands is an outward act of faith which can be used in certain circumstances to give a personal blessing, or as part of praying for healing or petitioning the Lord to pour out his Holy Spirit.

It is a lack of sound biblical teaching and interpretation of Scripture that has caused so much confusion about this issue in recent years. Further teaching can be found in the book ‘Blessing the Church?’ which we serialised on Prophecy Today earlier this year. The book, written in 1995, is currently out of print but may be digitalised by Issachar Ministries in the near future.

The laying on of hands (Part 1).

David Noakes’s own visit to Toronto in 1994.

David Noakes continues his personal account of witnessing the Toronto ‘experience’.

This week’s re-printed excerpt includes a NEW additional note from the author on the practice of laying on hands.

My Toronto Experience

The phenomenon of Kansas City did recede, although it left behind a lot of confusion and unresolved issues, and I thought little about the beach picture (outlined last week) again for some years.

Then, in the early months of 1994, we began to hear of the amazing things which were being reported from Toronto. As the reports continued to flow in, I was being urged by many people to visit and experience what was happening there. Having no great desire to go and with a busy schedule, I resisted the idea for several months, but finally I was convinced that the Lord was requiring me to make the trip and I went to Toronto for a week's visit.

I arrived in Toronto on Friday 14 October, 1994 and attended meetings in the concluding days of the large 'Catch the Fire' conference which had been taking place during that week. These meetings took place in a large auditorium of a local hotel, which was capable of containing, I would guess, some two to three thousand people.

During the times of worship, I felt as if I were in a rock concert. The level of noise was deafening to the point of being physically painful and oppressive, and brought an increasing sense of unreality. This, together with the insistent rhythmic beat of the drums and of the bass guitar tends to induce a state bordering on hypnosis in susceptible people and creates a spiritual atmosphere in which I would say without hesitation that the demonic can thrive.

During these times of worship, many people began to exhibit jerking bodily movements which were unnatural. Some of these people appeared to be in a state of trance. From a number of years' experience of deliverance ministry, I would identify a good deal of what I saw as proceeding from demonic spirits associated with occult practices, particularly voodoo.

I was urged by many people to visit Toronto and resisted the idea for several months, but finally I was convinced that the Lord was requiring me to make the trip.

There were some women near to where I was standing whose bodily movements were unmistakably those of increasing sexual excitement, reaching a point at which they fell to the floor. All of this was perhaps hardly surprising in an atmosphere which was really not unlike that of a pop concert in which the fans get worked up to an increasing height of frenzy. What disturbed me most was not that satan was active - of course he always is - but the failure of leadership to distinguish between the spirits which were operating.

Particular Line of Teaching

The teaching which I encountered in Toronto was to the effect that because God is doing a work amongst his people, therefore everything which takes place is by definition an activity of the Holy Spirit and it is assumed that satan is inactive.

I have never encountered any form of teaching which is more dangerous or which could open the door so widely to deception and the undetected activity of a demonic spirit. To make such an assumption was a total abdication of one of the principal responsibilities of Christian leadership. The warnings in Scripture about deception were being completely ignored and such teaching flies in the face of scriptural commands that when any form of spiritual activity is seen to be taking place, it is to be weighed and tested and an assessment is to be made as to whether its origin is truly from God.

The teaching from Toronto, however, set aside the spiritual gift of distinguishing between spirits (1 Cor 12:10) and ignored the clear teaching of other scriptures. In 1 Corinthians 14:29 we are told that where prophecy is being spoken in the assembly of the church, we are to “weigh carefully what is said”. The words underlined are a translation of a Greek word which comes from exactly the same root as the word used in 1 Corinthians 12:10 for the discerning of, or distinguishing between, spirits.

The instruction of 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22, again in the context of spiritual manifestations, is that we should “test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil”. Here the Greek word translated 'test' has the meaning of examining a thing, putting it to the test to determine whether or not it is genuine; and the identical word is found in 1 John 4:1: “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (emphasis mine).

The word of God warns us consistently never to accept spiritual manifestations as being from the Holy Spirit unless their source has been put to the test by the body of believers and discerned to be genuine.

The word of God warns us consistently never to accept spiritual manifestations as being from the Holy Spirit unless their source has been put to the test by the body of believers and discerned to be genuine.

It is the height of folly and irresponsibility to ignore such scriptures in days when not only the activity of God but also the activity of satan is becoming greater and more widespread. If we are to accept that in some particular situation such as this, it is in order for discernment to be discarded, where will such a teaching end? How are we to know where, if at all, we should draw the line?

The warnings of Scripture in, for example, 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10 and Revelation 13:13-14, are now coming all too close for comfort, and a Church which had not learned to distinguish between good and evil (Heb 5:14) will be a target for any kind of deception which begins to take place. I am concerned about the demonic activity which I saw taking place in some people in Toronto, but I am far more alarmed at the potential results of this particular line of teaching.

Laying On of Hands (see also NEW Author’s Note, base of article)

On a number of occasions since my visit to Toronto, believers have requested prayer at the conclusion of a meeting at which I have spoken. They have done so because they had previously submitted to laying on of hands in order to receive the 'Toronto Blessing', and had since felt unaccountably troubled in spirit in a way which had previously been foreign to them.

Every such person to whom I have ministered has shown evidence of being under demonic oppression and has received specific deliverance in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is not of course to suggest that all those who have had contact with the Toronto Blessing have come into spiritual bondage; to jump to such a conclusion would be entirely unwarranted. What has seemed to me to be of considerable significance, however, is the repeated combination of two factors.

In every one of these cases, the person for whom I have been asked to pray had first received a spiritual impartation by means of the laying on of hands by another person who had themselves already received it; and secondly, had subsequently become disturbed in spirit in a way which they had not experienced before.

I believe these facts should draw our attention to an issue which is of greater importance than perhaps we have previously realised. A few days before I went to Toronto, I was waiting upon the Lord and was given a short word of encouragement and instruction. I wrote it down, and now quote a passage whose relevance has become increasingly apparent:

Do not accept the laying on of hands from anyone except those whom you know from experience to be trustworthy and to have my Spirit within them. To submit voluntarily to the laying on of hands is to submit to the spiritual power that is within a man. When this power is that of the Holy Spirit, then you will receive blessing through that which is good; but where it is not, evil can be transferred.

More recently my attention has been drawn to the lesson contained in Haggai 2:10-14. In it, two questions are posed. The first is whether if consecrated meat comes in contact with other food, the consecration is thereby transferred to the un-consecrated food; and the answer is that it is not. The second question is whether if a person who is ceremonially defiled through contact with a dead body touches food, that defilement is transferred to the food so that it also becomes defiled; the answer this time is affirmative.

It is the height of folly and irresponsibility to ignore such scriptures in days when not only the activity of God but also the activity of satan is becoming greater and more widespread.

The message is plain: spiritual consecration cannot be transferred by physical contact, as in the laying on of hands. If a man has received spiritual blessing, he cannot pass it on to another in this way (if he is spiritually undefiled and lays hands on another, the Holy Spirit may move directly upon that other person but where that is the case, there is no spiritual transference taking place between the persons themselves).

Spiritual defilement however, can be transferred from one to another through physical contact. It is well established, for example, that such a transference of spirits can take place through illicit sexual activity. If one man has come under the influence of an evil spirit, the influence can be transferred to another who submits voluntarily to the laying on of his hands.

We need to beware of careless practices and to exercise godly vigilance and caution. Paul warns: “Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, and do not share in the sins of others. Keep yourself pure” (1 Tim 5:22). It is imperative for our safety that we take heed to the instructions of Scripture; they are given for the protection and wellbeing of the whole Body.

Misuse of the Word of God

While I was at Toronto, and even more in the months which followed, I had an increasing concern - to the point of considerable alarm - at the ways in which the word of God was now being mishandled by many leaders in the charismatic churches.

The misuse and distortion of Scripture in order to try to justify bizarre spiritual manifestations with some sort of theological explanation has been appalling; it has been as if attempts were being made to underpin a collapsing building with any piece of rubble which comes to hand.

The difficulty has been that the 'building' in question does not have any foundation in Scripture, however desperate the attempts to find one. At the Airport Vineyard Fellowship in Toronto, I heard the Pastor give a message in which he declared that Isaiah 25:6 was a description of what God was currently doing - God was in 'feasting mode'. Yet that Scripture had no possible relevance to any present situation; it is lifted straight out of the context of an apocalyptic passage relating to the events of the Day of the Lord and what will happen at the Second Coming of Christ.

Again, in the course of the same message, he made reference to the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-32, and declared that it teaches that God loves any opportunity to hold a party. Yet its emphasis is nothing of the sort, but rather the greatness of God's fatherly forgiveness and restoration of a repentant sinner.

The misuse and distortion of Scripture in order to try to justify bizarre spiritual manifestations with some sort of theological explanation has been appalling.

A further example of such extraordinary misuse of Scripture came when a prominent Anglican leader visited a church where I have a friend in leadership. His message consisted of encouragement to welcome unusual spiritual manifestations, including the making of animal noises, and it was based on one sentence taken out of Isaiah 28:21: “to do his work, his strange work”. These few words, again lifted out of context, were declared to justify the idea that the bizarre activities were a 'strange work' which God is doing in these days, and that they should therefore be accepted without further question.

But in the context, what is actually being described is a work of judgment and destruction by God against his own covenant people of Israel, and it is to him a 'strange work' and an 'alien task', because it is foreign and abhorrent to God's normal desire to bless his people and to act in mercy rather than in judgment. Theologically, therefore, the previous sort of teaching has no validity.

Drunk in the Spirit

The strange and un-coordinated behaviour of many who have been touched by the Toronto experience has frequently been described as being due to people being 'drunk in the Spirit'. I have myself for many years been familiar with the phenomenon of people who are receiving ministry from the Holy Spirit experiencing loss of bodily strength so as to be temporarily too weak to rise from their chair or from the floor; indeed, I also have had the same experience. Never before, however, have I seen the spectacle of people staggering about, slurring their speech and showing other characteristic signs normally associated with alcoholic intoxication.

The concept that a person can be 'drunk in the Spirit' is one of which Scripture knows nothing. Two passages have been used frequently to try to justify the idea, but they entirely fail to do so when subjected to proper interpretation.

In Acts 2:1-13, what is being described is the phenomenon, historically unprecedented and utterly amazing, of about 120 people suddenly beginning to declare the wonders of God in a host of different foreign languages. It was only those who mocked what was happening who suggested drunkenness as the cause, but the majority of the onlookers were simply described, understandably enough, as “amazed and perplexed”. There is no suggestion whatever of any behaviour which justified the description of physical drunkenness, and to try to read it into the text is to abuse the word of God. Is Peter's sermon that of a drunken man?

The second Scripture used in this context is Ephesians 5:18, but it says nothing whatever about being drunk in the Spirit. Indeed, coming at the end of a lengthy passage urging the believer to avoid ungodly behaviour, it would be astonishing if it did! The verse forbids being drunk (literally 'soaked') with wine, the evidence of which is debauched (literally 'unsaved') behaviour (v18). Instead, believers are to be filled with the Spirit.

Everywhere in Scripture, drunkenness is condemned as ungodly. How can we therefore accept that the Spirit of God would deliberately bring about in a believer the evidence of drunken behaviour?

The Greek verb used is pleroo, which had nothing to do with drunkenness, and the evidence of being in that condition is that they will produce psalms, hymns and spiritual songs (v19), thanksgiving to God (v20) and submission to one another out of reverence for Christ (v21), not slurred speech and drunken behaviour!

Everywhere in Scripture, drunkenness is condemned as ungodly. How can we therefore accept that the Spirit of God would deliberately bring about in a believer the evidence of drunken behaviour as if he were intoxicated with alcohol? The thing is utterly unthinkable, unless one discards the consistent teaching of the Word of God as irrelevant. Sadly, and most frightening of all, this is what some charismatic leaders are now beginning to do.

Extra-Biblical Experience

Animal noises, convulsions, bodily jerkings, loss of speech control and the like, are being described as 'extra-biblical' phenomena - which they certainly are. This feature of the activities should, however, put an immediate question mark over their authenticity; normally, unbiblical experience is found to emanate, not from the Holy Spirit, but from the realm of the demonic.

But among many leaders, no such questioning has taken place; but rather the reverse. It has even been suggested that the spiritual experiences and the manifestations of the Holy Spirit recorded in the pages of the New Testament were the experience of the Church in its infancy in those early days; but that now in our day the Church is being brought into maturity and we must therefore expect experiences from God which were unknown to the early Church and therefore not to be found in the Bible. We are consequently in uncharted waters, being led solely by the Spirit. This opens the Church to precisely the danger which Paul defines in Ephesians 4:14.

This sort of teaching, if pursued to its logical conclusion, is the height of dangerous folly. It is like saying that our maps are no longer of use to us because we have gone beyond their boundaries. We can no longer check our course, but must trust that any wind which happens to blow will take us in the right direction. We have discarded, however, all means of knowing either where the wind is coming from or the direction in which we are heading. In fact, we are drifting helplessly at the mercy of any force which may influence us.

A teaching which discards the Bible as the final authority for the validity of Christian experience is a teaching which emanates straight from the master of deception himself. It tears down the boundary walls which God has erected for the safety of his people, and it opens the door wide for the charismatic Church to join in an unwitting embrace with the New Age movement and all its occult activities.

A teaching which discards the Bible as the final authority for the validity of Christian experience is a teaching which emanates straight from the master of deception himself.

In the mid-90s, I even had reported to me instances of levitation occurring at Toronto-type meetings at a church in the north of England. Where will the line be drawn? On the basis of this sort of thinking and teaching, why should not telepathy or astral travel or any other occult practices be embraced under the deception that they are God's latest blessings to his maturing Church?

Unless there is repentance and a return to an acknowledgment of the supreme and ultimate authority of the word of God, the Church is being led into a place of great spiritual peril.

Next week: David concludes his chapter, looking at the need for repentance and discernment.

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[Editor: Following some feedback that Blessing the Church? seems to advocate against the practice of laying on hands, we felt clarification was necessary and approached David for further comment. His response is below.]

Author’s Note

The issue which I was seeking to tackle [in Blessing the Church?] was the very important one of transference of spirits from one human being to another. 20 years ago this was a subject which hardly ever received any attention by bible teachers; but to those of us who had been brought into experience of deliverance ministry, it was realised to be an important factor in some cases where folk were being demonically troubled. Our brothers Edmund Heddle and John Fieldsend in particular highlighted its importance to me.

This significant issue was underlined in my own experience following my visit to Toronto in 1994; following that visit, I found myself being asked to pray after almost every meeting for believers who had sought to receive the ‘Toronto Blessing’ - and had subsequently found themselves in unexpected spiritual difficulties. In each such case, when I ministered to such people, they received specific deliverance from certain powerful demonic spirits which had not been troubling them previously.

It was a matter of some perplexity for a time, however, that I was also being told by some who had been to similar ‘Toronto’-type meetings that they had received a genuine fresh experience of the Holy Spirit. This perplexity was finally resolved when I began to find that those people had been seeking the Lord for himself - and in his faithfulness, he had met with them by the Holy Spirit.

Those who were troubled, however, had attended with a different motive - not to seek the Lord for who he is, but wanting to receive the ‘Toronto Blessing’ because it was new, exciting and carried with it spectacular manifestations. The former group had met with the Lord, with good results; while the latter had received what they had gone for, which was actually demonic and brought harm to their spiritual lives, and also to many churches.

What I also found was that without exception, in my experience, those who had been affected by ungodly spirits had received an impartation of the ‘Blessing’ through the laying on of hands by another person who had already received it.

This drew my attention to the vital matter of what can occur through the laying on of hands - impartation of spirits from one to another. The Holy Spirit is not imparted from one human being to another, but is given to individuals by the sovereign act of God (e.g. Num 11:17, 25). In John 19:22, Jesus breathed on the disciples and said "Receive Holy Spirit". In Acts 8:17 and 19:6, we are told of the apostles laying hands on new believers, and the Holy Spirit came upon them - but there is no suggestion that the Holy Spirit was transferred from them to the believers; He came upon them in response to the action of the apostles, which is very different, being a sovereign work of God.

These verses attest to the transfer of the Holy Spirit to a person in response to a believer's obedience in laying on of hands. However, experience in ministry has shown over and over again that other spirits can transfer through physical contact to a person who is open to receive them. Illicit sexual intercourse is one outstanding example; but voluntary submitting to the laying on of hands is another easy means of physical transference of demonic spirits (it is important to emphasise that the person has to be willing and receptive. It cannot just happen simply by being in the company of someone who is demonised; we must be willing to receive from them).

When we allow a person to lay hands on us, we open ourselves to receive from them. There is danger in this if we don’t know the person. They may be harbouring one or more unclean spirits, and when we allow them to lay hands on us, these can and often do transfer to us if we are open and unguarded. For this reason, we should certainly not allow unknown people to minister directly to us. Scripture urges us to "guard our hearts with all diligence" (Prov 4:23).

I do hope this brief attempt to explain will prove to be of some help.

David Noakes, 12 April 2018

Series Information

This article is part of a series, re-publishing the 1995 book ‘Blessing the Church?’, an analysis of the ‘Toronto Blessing’ and a wider critique of the charismatic movement in the late 20^th Century. Click here for previous instalments and to read the editorial background to the series.