Acts 19:6

‘And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke with tongues, and prophesied.'

But the Holy Spirit did not come on them until Paul laid his hands on them and identified them with the Christian church. It was necessary that this be so, so that it would be crystal clear that initially the disciples of John had only ‘received the Spirit' on becoming united with the Christian church through the laying on of hands of an Apostle.

The laying on of hands is always a mark of identification. Where it takes place under the strict direction of God the result will always be that the Holy Spirit comes on the one who has hands laid on him if he has not previously known the Spirit. It can also result in a special enduement with the Spirit on one chosen by God. But it is not the laying on of hands that ensures either. It is the fact that God has made His will known, and His people then identify those whom God has chosen. Once God has made His will known the identification by holy men of that one will ensure the coming of the enduement of power. But where the will of God is lacking, any laying on of hands will be an empty ceremony.

This incident is similar to that with the Samaritans Acts 8:16, and in contrast with that of Cornelius Acts 11:44, in that the coming of the Holy Spirit is delayed until the recipients have been directly identified with an Apostle by the laying on of hands. This would seem to be because both were examples of distinct bodies who already saw themselves as worshipping the God of Israel and who were both therefore in danger of being satisfied with what they were and thus not uniting with the whole church of God. Thus in both cases it had to be made clear that their reception of the Spirit came though the one true church of Jesus Christ founded by the Apostles. For Cornelius and his group the word which gave life came directly through an Apostle and there was therefore no danger of schism.

We also learn that when the Holy Spirit came on these men they ‘spoke with tongues and prophesied'. This would identify them with Pentecost, and with Cornelius and his men, for the same thing happened in both cases. They too were being received by God on the same basis as both Jew and Gentile, through the reception of the Spirit. It was sealing the fact that the disciples of John were now being united in the body of Christ, and that without that union what they had experienced was only partial and insufficient.

We have no reason for assuming that such an experience of the coming of the Holy Spirit on men as witnessed by tongues and prophecy was commonplace for Paul. It is the first time in Acts that he is associated with such an experience. Seeing the effect of the Holy Spirit coming on the men accompanied by tongues and prophecy would be seen by him as a fulfilment of Pentecost before his eyes, a reminder that what Pentecost had brought for men was still as real there in Ephesus as it was previously. We note that while all spoke in praise of God, only some spoke in tongues. But the tongues were necessary so that they might all recognise that they were entering into the same experience as the infant church had at Jerusalem. They too were being ‘baptised into the body of Christ' (1 Corinthians 12:13). The remainder praised and glorified God in their own language. In this case we are not told whether the tongues were identifiable to anyone, but the group, even though small, may well have been multi-racial. It may even be that the prophesying was in Greek or Aramaic while the tongues were their own native tongues, and that the fact of their spontaneous praise in this way was really the important sign (both tongues and prophesying are mentioned together).