After the stoning of Stephen, terrible persecution rose against the followers of Christ so that the church was scattered throughout the nearby regions. To the elites, like Saul, who were pushing the persecution, it may have seemed that they were winning a battle against a strange new religious cult that was vying against them for influence over the people they believed belonged to them. Instead, God was using their scattering of his new church to capture the hearts of untold multitudes of people who had been deceived for lifetimes by the lies of a self-serving religious elite. As the church fled Jerusalem, they took their newly found faith with them. For instance, Phillip went down to Samaria, and the power of God went with him. He preached Christ and performed miracles, signs, wonders and healings. The people in that area listened to his preaching and were won over for the Kingdom of God. And it was here that God used an opportunity to warn them about another kind of deception.
A magician by the name of Simon had been doing magic in that area for a long time. He was so good at what he did that the people called him by the title, “the power of God,” and everyone respected him because of his abilities and listened to him closely. But when those same people saw the gospel work of Phillip, many became identified with Christ and his church. Even Simon the magician believed and became baptized. But Simon’s motives were not entirely pure. When he noticed that people received the Holy Spirit after the apostles laid hands on them, he offered them money so that he could do the same thing. He was immediately and harshly rebuked by Peter, who saw that he was jealous for the power flowing through them and that he was in the grip of sin (Acts 8:14-24)
The sin that Simon was gripped by was probably the love of money. If Simon could buy the ability to lay hands on people so that they received the Holy Spirit, then he could also sell that ability to them. Simon’s faith was likely adulterated by a desire for power, influence, and money. It clearly was not oriented toward God. In other words, Simon did not entirely believe that what he was witnessing was truly spiritual, but instead saw it as something for which the apostles had manipulative control. Peter was having none of that and said “may your silver perish with you,” then pleaded with him to repent from his evil thoughts. Simon appears to have paid heed to Peter’s plea when he asked the apostles to pray for him (Acts 8:22-24), but we don’t know that for sure, since the bible doesn’t mention him again. Perhaps he became an ordinary follower, never practicing magic again, and melting into the rest of the honest believers.
At any rate, Simon is a prototype of a character that the New Testament writers continually warn us about in future passages and letters. They call those characters “false teachers.” Many of those false teachers are just in "the ministry" for fame and money (2 Peter 2:1-3). They are charlatans. If TV had existed in the first century, Simon might have been a wily televangelist seeking donations for his mansion and a new jet. Be careful that you are neither a Simon, nor that you are deceived by one.
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