And as we tarried there many days, there came down from Judæa a certain prophet, named Agabus.
Paul and his companions were tarrying many days at Caesarea, staying at Philip's house, when Agabus, a prophet, came down from Judea to them soon after Paul arrived. His coming was many years into the Christian age, well after Pentecost, and his presence there alongside Philip's four prophesying daughters shows that the gift of prophecy was present in the early church and continued in the apostolic age beyond Pentecost. Warned by the Holy Spirit of the fate awaiting Paul, Agabus acted in the symbolic manner of the ancient prophets, loosening Paul's girdle and binding his own hands and feet with it to declare that the Holy Spirit said the Jews at Jerusalem would so bind the man who owned the girdle and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.
The warning turned the companions' awareness that the visit to Jerusalem would bring great peril into certainty, adding the horrors of Roman imprisonment to the dangers from the Jews. When those with Paul and the believers of that place at Caesarea heard this, they earnestly entreated him with prayers and tears not to go up to Jerusalem but to stay where he was. They proposed to carry the contributions from the Gentile churches to Jerusalem themselves, raising whether for Paul to go on after definite warning from the Spirit of God would be presumptuous and expose his precious life to the malice of the Jews.
Paul would not swerve from the path of duty but would follow Christ to prison and to death, being ready not to be bound only but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. Their weeping broke his heart and caused him pain without changing his purpose, until the brethren ceased pleading and yielded to the will of the Lord being done. The revelation that he must go to Jerusalem to be bound and suffer for Christ's name served to advance Christ's work, for as he was taken from city to city for trial his testimony about Jesus and his conversion reached kings and governors, spreading the knowledge of Christ and glorifying God.
Paul and his companions were tarrying many days at Caesarea, staying at Philip's house, when Agabus, a prophet, came down from Judea to them soon after Paul arrived. His coming was many years into the Christian age, well after Pentecost, and his presence there alongside Philip's four prophesying daughters shows that the gift of prophecy was present in the early church and continued in the apostolic age beyond Pentecost. Warned by the Holy Spirit of the fate awaiting Paul, Agabus acted in the symbolic manner of the ancient prophets, loosening Paul's girdle and binding his own hands and feet with it to declare that the Holy Spirit said the Jews at Jerusalem would so bind the man who owned the girdle and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.
The warning turned the companions' awareness that the visit to Jerusalem would bring great peril into certainty, adding the horrors of Roman imprisonment to the dangers from the Jews. When those with Paul and the believers of that place at Caesarea heard this, they earnestly entreated him with prayers and tears not to go up to Jerusalem but to stay where he was. They proposed to carry the contributions from the Gentile churches to Jerusalem themselves, raising whether for Paul to go on after definite warning from the Spirit of God would be presumptuous and expose his precious life to the malice of the Jews.
Paul would not swerve from the path of duty but would follow Christ to prison and to death, being ready not to be bound only but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. Their weeping broke his heart and caused him pain without changing his purpose, until the brethren ceased pleading and yielded to the will of the Lord being done. The revelation that he must go to Jerusalem to be bound and suffer for Christ's name served to advance Christ's work, for as he was taken from city to city for trial his testimony about Jesus and his conversion reached kings and governors, spreading the knowledge of Christ and glorifying God.