<The following is an extended quote from Missions in Samaria by Robert H. Munson
MM-Musings 2020. https://www.amazon.com/Missions-Samaria-Robert-Munson/dp/B087CRN2TG>

According to Acts chapter 8, Saul (aka Paul) went around Jerusalem house to house seeking out Christians and dragging them off to jail. So Christians began to scatter and tell others about Christ as they scattered. Persecution is NOT always bad. God can use any circumstance.

Suffering is NOT always bad. In Acts 8:4-8, Now those who were scattered went
about preaching the word. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and
proclaimed to them the Christ. And the crowds with one accord paid attention
to what was being said by Philip, when they heard him and saw the signs that
he did. For unclean spirits, crying out with a loud voice, came out of many
who had them, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. So
there was much joy in that city.

Philip was not one of the twelve disciples. (There was a member of the Twelve who was named Philip, but this was a different one.) He was not described as an apostle, although he embraced the apostolic role of opening up new mission fields for Christ. He was actually a deacon at the church of Jerusalem. In Acts 6 there were 7 deacons assigned to help out in the church. Philip was one of them. Philip was different from the twelve disciples in that he was a Hellenized Jew. That is, he was Jewish by blood but Greek in many aspects of culture. It is interesting that many of the great missionaries and evangelists of the early church were people who were comfortable living in two different cultures. Philip had roots in Jewish culture and in Greek culture and appeared to be comfortable in sharing with people of other cultures. Barnabas was a Jew raised in Cyprus. Paul was a Jew raised in Tarsus, a Greek city known as a center of Greek philosophy.

So Philip leaves Jerusalem because of the persecution and goes to Samaria, and he begins sharing God’s love with the people of Samaria. And they responded. Continuing with verses 14-17,

Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the
word of God, they sent to them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for he had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been
baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands on them and
they received the Holy Spirit.

Here we get to a confusing spot in the Bible. The Samaritans received the Holy Spirit and did so linked to a miraculous sign, in this case speaking in tongues (miraculously speaking foreign languages). Now this is not the only time where the receiving of the Holy Spirit was linked to a miraculous sign. In fact, four times in Acts, the receiving of the Holy Spirit was tied to a miraculous sign. As a sign, it was meant to point to a great truth.

In this occasion, there is a time difference between belief in Christ and the receiving of the Holy Spirit, as evidenced by a delay in this sign. This is the only case that we know of after Pentecost where this has happened. In fact, when we go to the Pauline Epistles, such as Ephesians and I Corinthians, Paul makes it very clear that all Christians have the Holy Spirit, even though not all Christians have miraculous gifts.

Different groups today choose different directions to deal with the contradiction. Some focus on the events of Acts as normative over the statements in the Epistles. Some focus the statements in the Epistles and view the unique events in Acts as non-normative. This is not that kind of book— a book to deal with such an issue. However, I would suggest a missiological solution to the time lag issue in Acts 8.

Perhaps, God was still trying to teach His disciples (and us) something very important. Consider the four miraculous signs of the Spirit in Acts:

• The first miraculous arrival of the Holy Spirit was to the Jews… the 120 in upper room on the day of Pentecost… in Acts chapter 2. It involved the visible sign of flames and the auditory sign of foreign tongues. None of the other three events includes flames as far as we know. Perhaps they needed the flames to unambiguously link it to the Spirit of God.
• The second miraculous arrival of the Holy Spirit was to the Samaritans, here in Acts As noted earlier, there is a delay in the miraculous sign.
• The third miraculous arrival of the Holy Spirit was to the Roman Cornelius, and other Gentiles, in Acts 10. The sign was immediate.
• The final miraculous arrival of the Holy Spirit recorded was to followers of John the Baptist who followed Christ in Acts 19. (The followers of John the Baptist could easily have been thought of by the early Christians as the one group that might “inclusively” be redeemed by Christ without truly following Christ). Upon following Christ as Savior, the sign was manifested.

The receipt of the Holy Spirit is available to all people who place their faith in Christ… to Jews, to Samaritans, to Gentiles. But why would the Holy Spirit delay in coming to the Samaritans when, as far as we know, He never delayed elsewhere after Pentecost? The Apostles were present at Pentecost. Peter was present in the house of Cornelius when Gentiles came to Christ. Paul was present when the followers of John the Baptist accepted Christ.

But the apostles were not there when the Samaritans accepted Christ– only Philip the Evangelist… a deacon of the church of Jerusalem. God needed the apostles to see something not just hear about it. We are the same way sometimes. It is not good enough to hear about something amazing, or read about something amazing. Like Thomas, sometimes we need to see to truly believe.

The question is, did it work? Did the apostles learn something that changed their attitude and actions. The answer is without a doubt, Yes. Continuing with verse 25 of Acts 8,

Now when they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they
returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel to many villages of the
Samaritans.

Peter and John stayed in Jerusalem for years, apparently, without sharing the Gospel with Samaritans. When Peter and John went up to Samaria to see what Philip was doing, it appears that they went directly there without sharing the Gospel with any on the way. But once they saw that Samaritans were accepted by God in the same manner as Jews, the text states that they stopped in many Samaritan villages along the way back to Jerusalem preaching the Good News.

Some years later, Peter spoke at the Jerusalem Council and summed things up. In Acts 15:6-11, the question was whether a non-Jew had to become a Jew… or at least act like a Jew to become a Christian. A good question. But Peter learned something from this event and the event with the Gentile Cornelius and his family.

The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this
matter. And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to
them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among
you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and
believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them
the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and
them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. Now, therefore, why are you
putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither
our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be
saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”

The Apostles learned their lesson, and through them the Gospel of Christ has gone from Jerusalem, to Judea and Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth.