Peter told Simon his heart was not right with God. Peter replied to him, “May your money be destroyed with you for thinking God’s gift can be bought!” Simon saw the Spirit being given when the disciples laid their hands on people and offered them money to buy the power to be able to do same. Simon The Sorcerer Offers Money For Power Peter and John laid their hands on the believers and they received the Holy Spirit. They had been baptized but had not received the Holy Spirit yet. Peter and John arrived in Samaria and prayed for the new believers to receive the Holy Spirit. Simon began following Philip around wherever he went, being amazed by the signs and miracles Philip performed. Many people, including Simon the Sorcerer, believed Philip’s message and were baptized. Evil spirits were being cast out of people and others were being healed. The disciple Philip came preaching the Gospel to the city of Samaria, along with miraculous signs.
Because of his magic, the people often referred to him as, “the Great One – the Power of God.” Philip, the Gospel, and Miracles Also known as Simon Magus or Simon the magician, he is described as a sorcerer who had been in the city of Samaria for many years. Every effort to put the fire out, even the attempt to co-opt it through money and power, only fed the flames.Simon the Sorcerer appears in only one chapter of the New Testament (Acts 8:9-24). The upshot is that the gospel spread like wildfire. Simon felt so helpless in their denunciation that he asked the apostles to pray on his behalf, which they undoubtedly did. But they also invited Simon to pray in repentance. The very idea that God's gift can be bought was abhorrent to them. Shocked, the apostles cursed Simon and his money. Used to the close association of spiritual power and money in his own sorcery, Simon offered to pay the apostles handsomely if they would teach him their secrets. It seemed like pure spiritual power, and Simon wanted it too. What really impressed him was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit when Peter and John laid hands on the believers. But he was also deeply attracted to the signs and miracles Philip performed, which were vastly superior to his petty acts of sorcery. Simon became a believer and was baptized (a tribute to the power of Philip's preaching). He was good at what he did, and was called "Great Power of God." Undoubtedly, Simon made a good living at what he did. A sorcerer is a person who makes use of various occult practices (spells and fortune-telling and perhaps astrology). Simon is a Sorcerer-the Latin word is magus, the same word used for those magi who travelled from the east to see the infant Lord. Peter and John were deeply impressed with what the Holy Spirit was doing among the Samaritans they laid hands on them, and there was a "Samaritan Pentecost." The whole thing was so successful that when the apostles back in Jerusalem heard about it, they sent a delegation to make sure everything was all right.
As often happens in Acts, the proclamation of the gospel brings with it what Jesus "began to do and to teach" (1:1), especially an assault on the kingdom of demons and healing of the sick. Philip, another one of the deacons from chapter 6, along with Stephen, began to preach in a Samaritan town. They had cobbled together a brand of Judaism which was abhorrent to the leaders in Jerusalem, and thus were a despised people.
Its population was partially made up of people who had been transported to that location by the Assyrians centuries before. Samaria, while not many miles away from Jerusalem, was religiously distinct. Far from destroying the church, Saul's deadly persecution fuels its growth by spreading it out, first in Samaria: "Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went" (8:4). In this case, it's the persecution that breaks out after Stephen's death under the leadership of the church's archenemy, Saul of Tarsus. Luke clearly ties the growth of the church to persecution. This church includes believers of every time, place, race, and language" (QA 37). The Spirit is slowly teaching the early Christians a very important truth-that he "builds one church, united in one Lord, one faith, one baptism. In this chapter we see the first big expansion beyond Jerusalem into Samaria. Remember Jesus' words to the disciples at the beginning of Acts, just before his ascension: "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (1:8).
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