Exodus 29:7

ANOINTING

"Then shalt thou take the anointing oil, and pour it upon his head, and anoint him."

The very word "Messiah" means anointed one, and thus Aaron as Israel's High Priest would serve in some particulars as a type of Christ, despite the fact of Jesus' being a "priest forever after the order of Melchizedek," and not "after the order of Aaron." Note that this anointing followed very shortly after the baptismal ceremony, and so it was with Christ. When he came up straightway out of the water, the heavens were opened unto him, and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove descended and alighted upon him and remained upon him. Thus, the anointing was a type of the reception of the Spirit of God, an event that followed at once upon the baptism of Christ. Likewise, Christians today receive the Holy Spirit, not before they are baptized, but AFTERWARD. Furthermore, the extraordinary exception to this seen in the case of the Gentile Cornelius does no violence whatever to the general rule, for the purpose of the Spirit's falling upon Cornelius was for a drastically different reason. It was visible, serving as a command to Peter that Cornelius should be allowed baptism, and it is evident that even Cornelius received the "earnest of the Holy Spirit" after his baptism, just like all other Christians; and that reception of the Holy Spirit is invisible. As even the great Baptist scholar Beasley-Murray stated it, "The gift of the Holy Spirit without baptism must be viewed as exceptional, due to a divine intervention in a highly significant situation."[9]