Acts 21:11-12 (ESV) – [Agabus] took Paul's belt and bound his own feet and hands and said, “Thus says the Holy Spirit, ‘This is how the Jews at Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.’” When we heard this, we and the people there urged him not to go up to Jerusalem.
The Holy Spirit can give a message for one person through another. This is called prophecy. God used prophecy to convey his message to people throughout the Old and New Testaments in the Bible. He still uses it today. Although it can be faked and should always be tested (I Corinthians 14:29 and I Thessalonians 5:21), prophecy can be a way God lets us know what he specifically wants us to do. God used prophecy to direct a few of my own major decisions. Yet, does that mean prophecy is always the main way God tells us what to do?
Acts 21:8-14 has long fascinated me. Paul and his entourage had just made it back to Palestine with their relief offering from the Aegean Region Gentile Christians. They came to the leading (and still spectacular to this day) city of Caesarea and met some Christians we read about earlier in the book of Acts, Philip the Evangelist (Acts 6 & 8) and Agabus (Acts 11:28). The prophet Agabus graphically demonstrated a message from the Holy Spirit: Paul, the owner of the belt Agabus used to tie himself up, would be tied up by the Jews and handed to the Gentiles in Jerusalem.
This certainly seemed a warning for Paul to not go to Jerusalem. Note that even his close companion and Gospel scribe Luke interpreted it that way, joining in the “we” urging him not to go to Jerusalem. Luke even described the Christians in the city of Tyre they had passed through earlier “telling Paul through the Spirit to not set foot in Jerusalem.” (Acts 20:4, NAS). Yet, Paul refused to change his destination no matter how much the people begged him (Acts 20:13). What was happening? Did Paul disobey God’s prophetic direction?
Although Paul’s friends thought the prophetic message Agabus gave was directive (given to tell Paul what to do), it must have had a different purpose. Notice their final response in Verse 14: “Let the will of the Lord be done!” In other words, they must have all accepted that God wanted Paul to go to Jerusalem anyway. Earlier on the trip (Acts 20:22), Paul told the Ephesian elders he was “bound by the Spirit” (NAS) to go to Jerusalem. So, if it was God’s plan for Paul to go to Jerusalem all along, why did He send a prophecy that seemed to say the opposite?
The answer is much the same reason Jesus told His disciples at the Last Supper about the troubles that would come their way. “I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told them to you.” (John 16:4, ESV) Both Jesus’ words and Agabus’ prophecy were predictive (describing what would happen) rather than directive so that the believers would not be surprised or lose their faith when the difficulty came.
Imagine what the early Christians would have thought if they believed being a Christian meant God always provided a trouble free life but its leading spokesperson, Paul, was imprisoned and later executed. People’s faith in the Christian message would have been undermined. Yet, now, when the difficulty came, they were not surprised. They remembered God had said Paul would be bound. The prophetic message would have changed what might have robbed their faith into a confirmation of God’s truth and plan.
Let’s be open
to God’s message, first in Scripture, then through the Holy Spirit, and pray
for discernment and wisdom to know when it is time to act and when He is preparing
us for what lies ahead.
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