[The following are two chapters from my new book in progress]

42

 The Common Concept of the Laying on of Hands

 “In Christianity, the laying on of hands (Greek: cheirotonia – χειροτονία, literally, “laying-on of hands”) is both a symbolic and formal method of invoking the Holy Spirit primarily during baptisms and confirmations, healing services, blessings, and ordination of priests, ministers, elders, deacons, and other church officers, along with a variety of other church sacraments and holy ceremonies.

In the New Testament the laying on of hands was associated with Christ healing the sick (Luke 4:40) and after his ascension, the receiving of the Holy Spirit (See Acts 8:14–19). Initially the Apostles laid hands on new believers as well as believers. (See Acts 6:5–6). In  the early church, the practice continued and is  still used  in  a wide variety of church ceremo nies, such as during confirmation” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_laying_on_of_hands).

This is a typical encyclopedia rendering of this doctrine. They all say about the same thing. But, really, is that all there is? Surely not. It has always been my experience that whatever churchianity teaches on a biblical subject, the whole truth is not in it. They clothed their half-truths in sheep’s clothing, warm, white and self-assured. But inwardly, those half-truths lead His people astray. This is not to say that all of the clergy nor all of the laity are guilty of this. For many are very sincere and are searching for the truth.

Nevertheless, now that man’s understanding of this topic has been broached, let us see where the Spirit of Truth wants to take us concerning the laying on of hands. Do we really think that the early apostles went for all of the formalized mumbo-jumbo of Pharisaical Judaism? And since there is nothing new under the sun, and since Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, should we His followers today acquiesce to what mainstream churchianity says about the laying on of hands? Do we honestly believe that the Holy Spirit can be conjured up at will by our words and our hands—hands, defiled by formalized religious practices (Isa. 1: 11-18). The sin-soiled hands of the clergy are laid upon the heads of the little lambs. May God lift us up to see this teaching as He sees it, according to His word.

43

 Isaiah’s Prescient Preface to the Doctrine of Laying on of Hands

Before we can get to the deeper levels of understanding concerning the “laying on of hands,” we must examine why man’s attempt to employ this teaching falls woefully short. We look to Isaiah 1 for answers. It goes to the root of the problem.

First, as with all of the prophets, it is the Spirit of our Savior who speaks through Isaiah. Understanding this is paramount to receiving more revelatory truth. “For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (II Pet. 1: 21; I Pet. 1: 11). And because it is the Spirit of Christ ministering through the words that the prophet Isaiah penned down, we His body  can receive understanding from Christ Himself.

Isaiah 1 is a vision in which Yahweh laments for His people who had rebelled against Him. He says that even dumb animals know who feeds them and where to go to get that feed. “But Israel does not know, My people do not consider (1: 1-3).

Isaiah 1 is a cautionary tale that glimpses into the heart of a people and presciently instructs you and me to not do what they did. It speaks down through the centuries to us “upon whom the ends of the world are come.”

The Sickness

The Spirit likens their rebellion to a physical sickness. The whole nation is sick because “they have forsaken Yahweh.” And the Spirit describes this sickness: “The whole head is sick.” The mind of the leaders and the people is eaten up with corrupt thoughts. “The whole heart is faint.” The very core and center of the people is weakened and puny because of self-centeredness. “The sole of the foot even to the head, there is not soundness in it; but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores…” And they have not been given medical aid to bind up those wounds (vs. 4-6). This extended metaphor tells us that the sickness of His people is complete. The whole nation has contracted this illness. What illness could infect the entire nation?

He reveals the grave spiritual sickness in one statement: “Ah sinful nation” (v. 4). The sin nature was contracted at birth. It is the root and core of why His people have rebelled against Him. The Spirit is saying, “Because of your sin, ‘your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence’ [sound familiar?] (v. 7). And if it were not for ‘a very small remnant, we should have been Sodom…’ (v. 9).

Lifeless Religious Liturgies

The whole nation is sick in sin. And then in the very next breath, the Spirit of Christ lays it out there, exposing the phony, lifeless, futile religious liturgies that both the clergy and laity participated in under the old testament law: animal sacrifice, the vain oblations, the incense, the burnt offerings, the Sabbaths, and the solemn assemblies. He calls all of these actions of 760 B.C. temple worship “iniquity.” It troubles Him. He hates all of this (vs. 11-14).

And echoing down through the centuries, His Spirit still calls the religious liturgies practiced today “iniquity.” That would include the laying on of hands as seen in the encyclopedia article above.

Why does He call it iniquity? Because the priests and people are still sinning. The pastors tell the flock of churchgoers that they cannot live without sinning. Therefore, their worship is soiled and tainted and unacceptable because their hearts are soiled with sin. “Ah sinful nation” still applies. Only the remnant in Isaiah’s day had changed their ways and repented and walked in the faith, believing that His Spirit can and does live in them. In Isaiah’s day, the names and exploits of the remnant were immortalized in the pages of the Bible. Today His remnant will fulfill and dramatize those illustrious pages of scripture.

Christ Gets Angry

And so it is today. The Spirit of Christ that spoke through Isaiah continues to speak to us because our nation has provoked Him to anger (v. 4). Christ gets angry? Yes. Just think: money changers at the temple, tables turned over, sharp rebukes flying through the air. I can see Him rebuking today’s televangelists, who preach the prosperity doctrine. Send us your money, they say, and God will multiply more money coming back to you. Sow the seed of faith by giving us your money and you will harvest 100 fold. What a lie! What an abomination! They are nothing more than modern day money changers. Where is the outcry from the pulpits? Why do the sheep get sheared so blatantly without even a word of protest?

So, yes, I believe that Christ would be rebuking the religious leaders of today the way He rebuked the Pharisees and Sadducees 2,000 years ago. He said to them, “You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do.” Remember that these are the most powerful religious leaders of that time and place. They were the chief priests and rabbis with the power of life and death over the laity. And Christ said that they are the sons of the devil. The devil “was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it” (John 8: 44). Wow. You talking about fearless.

And so, the Spirit still is speaking: The prosperity doctrine is a false doctrine from the devil. It cheapens the beauty of God’s grace in giving us the true law of harvest—but they pervert it, saying that you can receive financial blessings by “sowing” seed money into their ministry. That is a lie from the father of all lies! And it is a horrible deception that has gone out all over the world. And these false teachers will turn right around and lay their hands on the lambs of God and pronounce great things for them as they become “partners” in the deception. Can we now see how the devil perverts things like the laying on of hands? No wonder God is angry. There is no justice in the land while deceit and lies run rampant.

It Is Always about the Sin

It is sin that we are talking about. Christ always brought up sin in the conversation. And He would today, just like He did in Isaiah’s day. He changes not. He would ask our sinful nation today, Why are you still in sin? Why are you still sinning? I am manifested to take away your sins, and in Me there is no sin (I John 3: 5). ]

Because Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, He would say to the sinful nation today: “You say that you are washed in My blood. And yet you still break My Ten Commandments. You say that you are following Me, and yet you hide secret desires that will destroy you. You say you are born again, and have been baptized, and have joined a church, but you are still struggling with sins that yield guilty thoughts and a troubled conscience.

“Something is wrong in your thinking. For you say that the Bible is the word of God and that you believe every word of it, and yet you do the opposite of what my word says to do. And you say, Well, my pastor says that no one can keep the law. Nobody’s perfect; everyone sins.

“But you do err, for you neither know the scriptures nor the power of God. Either My blood is powerful enough to cleanse you from all sins along with your sin nature, or it is not. And you have forgotten that with man it is impossible, but with God all things are possible. All things.

“So bring no more of those solemn ceremonies and ecstatic praises and rituals and traditions and baptisms and laying on of hands, for sin still stains the hearts of both the pastors and their flocks. ‘When you spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you…when you make many prayers, I will not hear…’ But My hand is still stretched out. ‘Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow…” (1: 16-18).

“If you repent, you may join My remnant, My elect, My chosen. They will walk in the light of Love. I am the Seed and they are the harvest. They will restore all things and help usher in the kingdom of God. And they will rule and reign with Me. They repented of their sins and walked in faith, and as the body of Christ, they became the hands of God—hands destined to be laid upon a sick and dying earth.

[These are the opening chapters of the “Laying on of Hands” doctrine. It is not what we have been lead to believe it is. It is far more elevated, created in the heart of God for astounding results. These chapters are excerpts from my new book coming out, hopefully this fall. We wait on the Spirit, for without Him I cannot write this. It is called The Apostles’ Doctrine. Its contents illuminate our path to nothing less than perfection, which is spiritual maturity. Like the other books that I have written for the elect, this book is seminal for the harvest of His manifested sons and daughters. I highly recommend that you first read The Royal Destiny of God’s Elect, available to you free with free shipping. All I need is your mailing address sent to my email… wayneman5@hotmail.com  I will advise as to when The Apostles’ Doctrine is finished and published. It is free with free shipping, as well.    Kenneth Wayne Hancock ]

The first principles of Christ’s teachings is the milk of the word of God. But that does not mean that its precepts are not ground-breaking and earth shattering. And heart-rending, too.

These Foundational Principles of His Teachings Are Powerful

“For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit…and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb. 4: 12 NKJV). Christ’s doctrine about repentance will cut us to our very spiritual core, exposing what we are really thinking about God and what our intentions are on the stage of life.

Just because these first principles are the milk and not the meat of the word and are to become our very foundation upon which to build the temple of God, we should not take them lightly. For “repentance from sin” will shake us to our core. It will break our hearts, minds, and our wills. It will evoke a complete upheaval of the human heart.

It will provoke us to question whether we really can follow the Lamb wherever He goes. Christ admonishes us to “count the cost” of discipleship. And He asks us this question, “Are you able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” (Matt. 20: 22). This was not the water baptism of John but rather the baptism into His death that Paul speaks of in Romans 6: 3-6. And, yes, Christ answers His own questions to us with a resounding prophecy: “You shall drink indeed of my cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with” (v. 23).

For repentance from sin is a complete reversal of the old  life’s ways and means. Instead of depending on our own wits and talents to gain advantage in the game of this earthly existence, we now depend on the Creator’s sustenance from the new Spirit He has ignited in us.

Of course, our new life in Him is really His creation. He restores us day by day back into His heart. We are His clay as He exhales the fire of His lungs into our breathing moments, thus transforming us into a new creation, created in true righteousness and holiness.

And God does have greatness in store for us His children–things so grand and glorious that, like the apostle Paul said, “it is unlawful for a man to utter” (II Cor. 12: 2-4). These are heavenly things that the human eye has not seen, “nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for them that love Him” (I Cor. 2: 9). These things will be the meat, the spiritual food that He will feed us when we get the first principles fully operating in our lives. This is one of the major problems in Christianity today. New followers want to jump into the book of Revelation or visions or prophecy or the heavenlies while they are still struggling with repentance from dead works in their lives.

First, we must get strong enough in our walk and get mature enough in order to be able to glimpse those rare, glorious, spiritual things that He has prepared for us. Prepared for whom? “For them that love Him.”

So How Do We Love Him?

Let’s get it from our Savior’s own lips. “If you love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14: 15, 23). And one of His commands to us is “Repent of sin.” We show our love for Him by obeying Him. We must hear His sayings and do them. Really do them. And the first thing is to repent from sin, the breaking of the 10 Commandments.

Someone will say, Well, no one can do that. True, because that’s the way God designed it. No human in their earthly strength can keep the law successfully. He made it this way in hope that we would turn to the Savior and seek forgiveness. For left to our own devices, eventually man surely will see the futility of his selfish ways and seek to find a place of repentance, won’t he?

Repentance will be realized when brokenhearted man believes the word concerning God’s sacrifice for sin–His Son. Not just believe that Jesus of Nazareth died for mankind’s sins some 2,000 years ago, but believe that we must be immersed spiritually into Christ’s death and by faith in His resurrection, we now walk in a “newness of life.” This is done by faith, believing that He now lives in our hearts. We rise with Christ by faith (the second principle of Christ’s doctrine). Christ’s Spirit now is living within.

Many of you have experienced this wonderful spiritual reality. Praise God for you. Yet some may wonder, Why all the details about repentance? Why is it necessary to study all this out?

The answer is this. If we love Christ, we will obey His command: “Feed my lambs…Feed My sheep…Feed My sheep (John 21: 15-17). We  need to be rooted and grounded in these teachings in order to be able to teach them to others coming into the church, the body of Christ. That’s it, pure and simple. Can we explain it and teach this miracle of transformation in our lives to others? When we can, then He will feed us with a banquet fit for kings and queens. HalleluYah!       Kenneth Wayne Hancock

[This is part of Chapter 10 of my new book The Apostles’ Doctrine due to be published later this fall. I will announce on this blog its arrival and how you can receive your free copy (with free shipping). It is seminal and proper spiritual food for the lambs and sheep of His pasture. Be sure to subscribe and may our Father bless all of you.]

Most Christians will agree that the blood of Christ does have a certain degree of power in it. But how does that power manifest itself? What does it do? How does it work? How does the shedding of His blood “cleanse us from all sin”?

For sin to die out and cease to plague us spiritually, we must submit to the cross and die with Christ. He “was made to be sin” (II Cor. 5: 21). At the moment of His death, sin died. “The life is in the blood.” The life of sin is in the blood. And the ancient law now tolls for all sinners: “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin. With the shedding of the blood of the sin offering Christ, sin died that day at the cross. We must submit to this truth. As we believe that sin in our hearts died with Christ, we too can be raised up with Him, a sinless creature, a new creature.

The first overcoming, which leads to all of the overcomings, or victories in Christ, is the victory over sin in our lives.  It is a direct victory of the power of the devil in our lives, for “he that commits sin is of the devil.”

But to get rid of sin in our lives was the “purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil” (I John 3: 8). How is this done?  “They overcame him (Satan) by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony” (Rev. 12: 11).  Our victory over the evil comes through these two things.

Many talk a good Christian ballgame, but few deliver through the lives that they lead.  Many claim to follow Christ, yet they still do secret sins, which emanate from the dark recesses of an un-regenerated heart–a heart that is old and carnal–a heart that has not climbed Calvary’s hill to submit to the death of the cross along with Christ.

By the Blood of Christ the Sacrificial Lamb

He is the sin sacrifice–the “Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.”  He takes away the sin of the world. When He gets through, we don’t have it anymore.  But we must identify our old sinful heart with Him that day of the Lamb’s death some 2,000 years ago.  This is how the Lamb’s blood cleanses us.  When it drained out of Him, the life and energy and power of sin died out.  When His blood was all spilled out, then the life force of sin in us drained out as well. This is how we overcame the devil.  It is from this cleansing of sin through the death of our old nature, of our old spirit, of our old heart.

Yet, sadly, chances are very slim that you will hear this in today’s church houses and Sunday schools.  It is “too strong, too harsh.”  It is not politically correct and is a sure fire way for the hired preacher to lose his pastorship.  But the old preachers of past centuries taught these very things I have shared here.  John Wesley taught it, yet you won’t hear this in a modern Methodist church.  Martin Luther taught it, but today’s Lutherans won’t hear it in church.  Spurgeon taught it, but most Baptists won’t hear this stark message in their churches.

But this is how we repent from sin.  The very first apostles’ doctrine was “repentance from dead works.”  Sin, the breaking of the 10 Commandments, is a “dead work,” for it leads to death.  And getting rid of sin in our lives is the very cornerstone in the sure foundation Christ talked about.  Without this start in Christ, the foundation is shaky, and the house will fall when the devil winds blow.

Indeed, it is a major undertaking to get the sin question straight; it can be a real upheaval in a person’s life. But the bottom line is this: God has provided a way to get rid of sin and sinning in our lives. Our old selfish sinful nature dies when we reckon it dead with Christ. When He died on the cross, our old sinful nature died there with Him. When we spiritually make His soul the sacrifice for our sin, then we die with Him. And we are then buried with Him. And then through belief in God’s power that raised Him from the dead, we also are raised up with a new nature and a new spirit from our heavenly Father. Baptism in water symbolizes this act of faith, being “baptized into His death” (Romans 6; 3).

We have to reckon our old selves dead with Christ. It is this spiritual death that frees us from that bondage to keep breaking the 10 command-ments. We are freed from the slavery to sin. But it takes faith to believe it. I am not imagining this teaching. I have lived it. It is in the Holy Bible, although it is seldom, if ever, taught. Just read Romans 6: 1-13 and Colossians 2: 11-12, 20 for starters. It is there.

And this is just the beginning of the “milk of the word.” Just the first two principles—repentance from sin and faith toward God. We have got to get this into our hearts. Be shocked. Be astonished. Study it out thoroughly. Be fed the milk that you may grow up into Christ. That’s in there, too. Later the “meat of the word” will help us grow into full spiritual maturity to become just like Christ. There—I said it.                                            Kenneth Wayne Hancock

[This is Chapter 18 of my new book The Apostles’ Doctrine coming out later this fall.]

 Our spiritual walk as Christians is about finding our way back home. We began our journey in the Mind of God eons ago. We proceeded forth from a thought in His Mind in the beginning. For the Word-made-flesh told us, “For you have been with Me from the beginning.”

We were then deposited onto this terrestrial plain with no initial recollection of our spiritual origins–for a purpose–His purpose.

Our immersion into sin early on in our earthly life sent us on a quest for peace with our Maker. We needed to be free from the guilt and sor-row that our first life provided. That was God’s purpose in allowing us to wallow in sin for a season–to send us on our search for His redemption. We would not have ever sought His solace without the misery and de-basement that sin brought to us.

So we broke down and got real and humbled ourselves to our Maker, and He answered us in giving us a new life in the form of a new seed beginning that when watered, will grow into the same thing we had with Him before the foundations of the world (John 15: 26-27; Isa. 40: 21). And with this new life, we grew to not only appreciate God and His mercy in delivering us from degradation, but also to just plain loving Him.

It is this love that God, who is Love, is after–for us. His desire is to reproduce His nature of love in human beings, which are the only beings capable of reproducing His spirit of unselfish love. We are, after all, created in His image; we are a vessel to contain and to pour out God onto a thirsty land.

And the seed of this love for God grows from that appreciation we exhibit when we acknowledge God’s love to us. His love toward us is all in the plan to use His Son as the sacrificial Lamb that “takes away the sins of the world.” God’s self-sacrifice at the cross showed us the greatest love. There no greater love than that.

When we believe the testimony of the Seed/Son, we receive a new life in a seed, energized by the Spirit, which erases all our past sins along with the guilt. We are made free, and as the ex-slaves of sin, we exalt our new Master who has delivered us from death. We love Him and appreciate Him. His life now through the resurrection affords us that same life inside us. And His Seed of Love is growing and growing, both in our own hearts and in the hearts of our brothers and sisters—by faith.

Christ is the Seed of a new beginning for us. When we believe (have faith in) His testimony, we receive the seed of faith into our hearts. There is no spiritual growth without the true seed being received into the ground of a fertile heart, a heart that’s honest and receptive and in need.

It is this internalization into our hearts of His resurrection power that generates within us the new life. This comes in our belief that He rose from the dead. Since He rose from the dead, we do now believe that we, too, are “raised to walk in a newness of life.” Our past sins are purged, and we now live by His faith and the presence of His Spirit in our hearts—new hearts.

The Father/Creator/Spirit/Love/Light has poured His complete plan, purpose, essence and life into His Son. Consequently, we cannot thrive in our brief moments here on earth if we do not believe God’s testimony of His Son.

When someone rejects the Son, they reject the Truth of the ages, and in so doing, they lose their own souls. If the doubters do not surrender to God’s plan as seen in His Son’s life, then their brief moment of self-aggrandizement will molder in a forgotten shallow grave. But if we walk in the Light, we shall overcome all things and bask in the glory we had with him in the beginning (Heb. 2: 10; 1 Pet. 1: 7; Rom. 8: 18).

Christ taught His disciples these precepts in seven major teachings. His apostles believed them and wrote about them. They are called the apostles’ doctrine. Faith is the key that unlocks them all. It is His faith, His belief in His own plan that is the key.    Kenneth Wayne Hancock

[An excerpt from my new book, The Apostles’ Doctrine, coming out soon]