Acts Chapter 8, verse 9-25
Verse 9: But there was a certain man, called Simon, which beforetime in the same city used
Sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one:
10 To whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God.
11 And to him they had regard, because that of long time he had bewitched them with sorceries.
12 But when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God,
and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.
13 Then Simon himself believed also: And when he was baptized, he continued with Philip, and wondered, beholding the miracles and signs, which were done.
14 ¶ Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John:
15 Who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the
Holy Ghost:
16 (For as yet he was fallen upon none of them: Only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.)
17 Then laid they [their] hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost.
18 And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was
given, he offered them money,
19 Saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the
Holy Ghost.
20 But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.
21 Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: For thy heart is not right in the sight of
God.
22 Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine
heart may be forgiven thee.
23 For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and [in] the bond of iniquity.
24 Then answered Simon, and said, Pray ye to the Lord for me, that none of these things
which ye have spoken come upon me.
25 And they, when they had testified and preached the word of the Lord, returned to Jerusalem, and preached the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans.
What happened in these sixteen verses? Was this just a one-time event that took place or something that Luke decided to document? The confrontation that took place here, in Jerusalem, not long after the death and resurrection of Jesus, can be easily overlooked as just one of those things that may have been relevant to the time. But what really happens here? The incident that took place between Simon Magus and the apostles sets the stage of many of the epistles of the New Testament and the early entrance of apostasy into the early church. The person that is mentioned and that we need to concentrate on is Simon Magus and how he transformed himself into the first leader of the false world wide religious system, the Catholic Church.
The reason Luke recorded this encounter with Simon has far-reaching effects. As Hasting's explains, the important reason was that "Luke's well-known plan of describing THE FIRST MEETING between Christianity and rival systems" (Hasting's Bible Dictionary., p. 498). Luke gives in detail the principal character who established the so-called Christian counterpart of the Truth in the Apostles' days. This is the reason the Apostles in their Church letters many times mention the false system as ALREADY IN EXISTENCE, but fail to describe its origin. They didn't have to. That was already done RIGHT AT THE FIRST by Luke!
The Book of Acts, however, performs its purpose in exposing who started the whole apostasy. God leaves it to the epistles. Revelations and the Gospel of John describe the heresy and even the Old Testament prophesied of the church falling away from the truth. We are certainly NOT left in doubt concerning its abominable teachings. There is hardly an epistle that does not mention the religions teaching of Simon Magus. Even the scholars who have studied Church History have seen that almost ALL of the references in the New Testament expose the errors in the first age of the Church and are directed exclusively to Simon Magus, or his immediate followers. A few of these examples will be given later and will show that already the existence of a shadow church that was gaining strength and disrupting the true teachings of Christ.