Paul’s Plan to Spring that Gentile Trap
7 When we had finished the voyage from Tyre, we arrived at Ptolemais, and we greeted the brothers and stayed with them for one day. 8 On the next day we departed and came to Caesarea, and we entered the house of Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven, and stayed with him. 9 He had four unmarried daughters, who prophesied.
10 While we were staying for many days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. 11 And coming to us, he 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.’ ”
12 When we heard this, we and the people there urged him not to go up to Jerusalem.
This is one of the most amazing meetings in the New Testament.
Philip was the guy that went along the road early on and talked to the Ethiopian Eunuch about Jesus. (You can read all about that back here or in this post from 2016!)
Luke is doing the big-time flashback montage as Paul heads to Jerusalem to die. Mentioning that Philip is one of the seven should also take you back to who The Seven were. One of them was Stephen, who was the first person to be killed because they were following Jesus.
The first mention of Paul in the Bible is that he held everyone’s coats while they stoned Stephen. He may have been part of the same synagogue that Paul was a part of. Philip was probably part of that same synagogue too. There is some likelihood that Philip and Paul knew each other before Jesus and this was the first time they had seen each other face to face since Stephen’s death.
So yeah, there is a lot of unmentioned drama going on here.
It’s also kind of cool that after disappearing from the Ethiopian, Philip went and settled down and had four daughters. They each prophesied. This is another subtle statement, because how did Luke know they prophesied if they weren’t allowed to speak in the assembly? They must have been allowed to prophesy somewhere.
But it’s Agabus with the really wild prophesy. He acts like one of the Old Testament prophets and even acts out his message to Paul.
Now even Luke (as part of the “we”) is urging Paul not to continue to Jerusalem. Every message from the Holy Spirit is that Paul will be delivered into the hands of the Gentiles, but only Paul seems to show that he knows that is part of the plan.
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