Robin Hardy Online
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Following is William Ramsay's take on Acts 21:9-14:
Luke has as yet only indirectly mentioned that in every city the Spirit inspired men to prophesy what awaited Paul in Jerusalem (20:23). In Tyre the disciples "said to Paul through the Spirit that he should not set foot in Jerusalem" (21:4). This revelation was apparently couched in the form of an order prohibiting the journey. Luke gives in this a practical example of the difficulties which may occur when congregations are to a large extent guided by inspiration granted from time to time by the Spirit. Not every person who is apparently inspired is free from misleading excitement, and not every person who is, in a sense, really inspired, comprehends fully the message that has been entrusted to him to deliver. It is always necessary to examine the messages of apparent inspiration before we accept them, even while we carefully refrain from chilling the enthusiasm of others by unbelief or coldness or ridicule. This is Paul's advice in 1 Thessalonians 5:21.
Such then is the situation set before us in the congregation at Tyre. The disciples in that church, under a real inspiration as to what would happen in the circumstances about which all were anxiously thinking, forbade Paul to go to Jerusalem. Paul knew, however, that such was not the intention of the message. The Spirit was not forbidding him, but merely testing him. It was needful that he should understand well what awaited him. It was needful for the success of his work that all the churches of the Roman world should realize clearly what dangers he was facing while he followed the path of duty, hence these repeated warnings. In Tyre the warning was mistaken by the disciples for a prohibition, but Paul was not misled. For us it is important to observe how Luke's history sets before us in practical form the situations and the difficulties with which Paul deals in his letters. The Acts cannot be thoroughly understood apart from the Epistles, and should not be read without constant reference to them.
During Paul's stay in Caesarea at the house of Philip and the four prophetesses his daughters, Agabus, the same prophet who had foretold in Antioch the great famine, arrived from Jerusalem. And with the symbolic action of an old Hebrew prophet he showed how the Jews at Jerusalem would bind Paul and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles. It is noteworthy with what insistence Luke dwells on these successive warnings which Paul heard and disregarded.
A great and justly respected scholar has pointed out that the prophecy of Agabus was not fulfilled, and has made this the ground for a charge of carelessness and inaccuracy against Luke. But it was not Luke's purpose to make Agabus literally exact; his purpose was to tell what occurred as it occurred. The prophecy was in a general, though not in a literal, way fulfilled; and the incident brings out in strong relief Paul's firm resolution and his tenderness of heart. Even the weeping entreaties of his dearest friends could not break his resolve, though they might break his heart. Perhaps also Luke is here again illustrating the necessity of extreme caution in understanding the prophetic messages granted to the church. Even Agabus, whose prediction had been so important in an old crisis of the church, was in this case only disturbing the will of God and the great plan of Paul. And he was only ideally, but not literally, accurate in his prediction. Prophecies might fail, but love never fails (1 Cor. 13:10).
William M. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveler and Roman Citizen, edited by Mark Wilson (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2001), pp. 228-29. This is an excellent, excellent study of Paul by a genuine historian.
