WWUTT 1132 Throwing Prophets Under the Agabus?

There was a prophet named Agabus who, through a revelation, told the Apostle Paul how he was going to be arrested.

Some say that Agabus got his prediction wrong. But of course he got it right. He was speaking from the

Lord when we understand the text. Many of the

Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is an online ministry dedicated to teaching the

Word of God in context, promoting sound doctrine while exposing the faulty. Here's your teacher,

Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of the Book of Acts, Chapter 21.

And picking up where we left off yesterday, I'll start out by reading verses 7 -16.

When we had finished the voyage from Tyree, we arrived at Ptolemaeus, and we greeted the brothers and stayed with them for one day.

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. He had four unmarried daughters who prophesied.

While we were staying for many days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. 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. When we heard this, we and the people there urged him not to go up to Jerusalem.

Then Paul answered, What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be imprisoned, but even to die in Jerusalem, for the name of the

Lord Jesus. And since he would not be persuaded, we ceased and said,

Let the will of the Lord be done. After these days, we got ready and went up to Jerusalem.

And some of the disciples from Caesarea went with us, bringing us to the house of Manassin of Cyprus, an early disciple with whom we should lodge.

So I mentioned yesterday that I was going to be saving this section concerning Agabus and Philip and his daughters, because we want to talk about prophecy here.

There are different ways in which this is interpreted. And I also want to discuss the difference between an apostle and a prophet.

Those are distinct offices. They're not the same. They don't serve the same purpose in the early church as we read about it in the book of Acts.

And to explain that, I'm going to turn to Joel Beakey and his book

Reformed Systematic Theology and the section that he wrote on the cessation of special revelation.

He talks about those distinctions between the office of apostle and the office of prophet as it pertained to the early church.

And I'm just going to read straight from the book on this because he's so much smarter than I am. So you'll get a professional scholarly take on this.

Let's come back to verse seven here. When we had finished the voyage from Tyree, we arrived at Ptolemaeus, which is not a very long journey.

So they're just basically skirting down that western bank of the

Mediterranean Sea, right against the Mediterranean Sea there, just to the west of Judea.

So they are greeted by the brothers and they stay with them for one day. And then they departed and went down to Caesarea, which is about an equal journey just to the south.

And we entered the house of Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven and stayed with him.

This is the same Philip who had evangelized the Ethiopian eunuch, who had evangelized at Samaria, who was one of the seven deacons that were first appointed to the church, which we read about in Acts chapter six.

And it mentions here that he has four unmarried daughters who prophesied. Now, this particular verse,

Acts 21 .9, is often used to talk about how women could be prophets. And so, therefore, a woman can be a pastor.

That's actually a huge leap. But that's how this verse gets interpreted, that it becomes a verse of authority that a woman now has permission to stand in a pulpit and teach from the word of God, which, of course,

Paul forbids, according to what is said in First Timothy chapter two, verses 11 and 12.

So how do we understand this particular office as it's mentioned? There's not just women prophets in the

New Testament. There's even women prophets in the Old Testament. But the position of prophet is not the same thing as a position of pastor, nor is it even the same thing as a position of an apostle.

Let me read to you here from Reform Systematic Theology. This is Joel Beeky starting on page 439.

Unlike apostles, prophets did not necessarily exercise ruling or teaching authority over God's people.

Amos was not a teacher or ruler, but an agricultural worker whom God called to deliver particular messages.

Of course, we read about Amos in the book of Amos. Women such as Mariam, Moses' sister,

Exodus 1520, Huldah in Second Kings 2214, and Anna in Luke 236 prophesied new messages from God without usurping the authority of male kings and priests.

Similarly, the new covenant prophets did not supplant the authority of the church's ministers and elders, but communicated new revelations that established

God's church in the progressive unveiling of his will until the church had the full revelation of the

New Testament documents. Now, I'm going to pause here for a moment to say that Joel Beeky has been arguing up to this point that the mention of apostles and prophets, like, for example, in Ephesians 411,

God gave apostles and prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers to prepare the saints for the work of ministry.

Beeky makes the argument that apostles and prophets is not a reference to apostles in the

New Testament and prophets in the Old Testament, but rather new covenant prophets. And once again, there is a distinction between who fills the role of an apostle and who is filling the role of a prophet.

So going on here, Beeky says, some also might object that all new covenant prophecy cannot be foundational, for much of it concerns matters such as direction for personal life and ministry.

However, this objection assumes that new covenant prophecy conforms to expectations in modern charismatic circles rather than the prophecies actually found in the

New Testament. What information we do have about New Testament prophetic messages fits well with the purpose for foundational revelation in Ephesians.

We see several indications of this. First, when Paul writes to the

Ephesians of the foundational ministry of apostles and prophets, he highlights

Christ as central to their revelations. The prophetic tongues of Pentecost declared

God's wonderful works, which in context, pertain to Christ's incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension.

John says that true prophecy from the Holy Spirit is marked by its declarations that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, 1

John 4, 1 through 3, which implies that prophetic ministry testified to Christ.

Second, Paul connects the foundational ministry of the apostles and prophets to the full inclusion of Gentiles in the people of God by union with Jesus Christ in his finished work, which is a mystery now revealed.

Prophetic tongues in Acts are a reversal of the Tower of Babel, signs of the inclusion of Gentiles into God's people by faith in Christ.

The revelations from the Spirit to Philip, that's in Acts 8, 29, also pertain to spreading the gospel to the

Gentiles. Agabus's prophecy of a famine, which we read about in chapter 11, verses 27 to 30, resulted in the

Gentile Christians helping their Judean brethren, a sign of their unity in Christ that became an important part of Paul's ministry.

The prophecies of Judas and Silas as messengers of the Council of Jerusalem had the same aim of Jewish -Gentile unity.

Third, the identification of believing Jews and Gentiles as the new temple is in the forefront of Paul's mind when he says that the apostles and prophets are the foundation.

We find an example of this in the hypothetical situation presented by Paul in which prophets reveal to an unbeliever visiting the church the secrets of the heart so that he worships

God. That's an argument made in 1 Corinthians 14. Someone might object that this is an example of private revelation, not foundational revelation.

However, Paul's point is that, in contrast to tongues, prophecy shows that God is really among you.

Prophecy manifested the foundational truth that the new covenant temple where God dwells is not a building in Jerusalem, but the congregation of the saints.

Fourth, Paul connects the foundational work of the apostles and prophets to his own apostolic mission to the

Gentiles. Consequently, we find that God granted to a variety of people revelations about Paul's conversion and calling, his sending out with Barnabas, his guidance in his travels, his close companion in ministry to Timothy, and his arrest in Jerusalem and subsequent afflictions, which we're reading about here in Acts chapter 21.

Therefore, a survey of new covenant prophecy shows that they conform to the pattern of what

Paul considered foundational prophecy in his epistle to the Ephesians. The observed pattern also informs us about the character of prophecies not preserved in the canon of scripture, for example,

Acts 21 .9, which we're reading here about the unmarried daughters of Philip who prophesied.

We don't know what they prophesied, but it wasn't necessary prophecy to the canon of scripture, which is why that wasn't written down for us.

Beaky goes on, we do not find the New Testament reporting or encouraging prophecy that directs the average

John or Mary for personal decisions or ministry, or that guides a church in how to order its ordinary practices.

God used prophecy to establish the church in its early new covenant administration with the freshly revealed truths of Christ's finished work, the

Gentile mission spearheaded by Paul, and the full inclusion of believing Gentiles with the

Jews as God's spiritual temple on earth. Aspects of those prophecies were directed to specific needs and occasions, but they communicated and reinforced important revelations of God's covenantal purposes in Christ, just like the

New Testament epistles, which are both occasional and doctrinal. We conclude that the

New Testament prophets shared the foundational ministry of the apostles as the bearers of new revelation from God concerning Christ and his people.

All right, so I'm reading that to you so that you hear there is a particular distinction between the assignment of an apostle and an assignment of a prophet, and that being a prophet does not mean that they carry apostolic authority, nor does it mean that they even carry pastoral authority.

Thus, muting the argument that is often made from Acts 21 .9 to say that women can preach because Philip had four daughters who prophesied.

Okay, we go on from there. That's going to conclude my reference to that book. By the way, that's Reform Systematic Theology.

You can find it on Amazon. It is by Joel Beakey and Paul Smalley. So we go on here to verse 10.

While we were staying for many days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea 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. Now, this is a prophecy that is used by charismatics and continuationists to say that sometimes the prophecies that we might reveal from the

Holy Spirit are wrong. Maybe God communicated these prophecies to us in a heavenly way, and in our humanness, we just have trouble in trying to decipher the prophecy that came to us.

So what comes out of our mouth is gobbledygook that can sometimes have errors in it.

But in order for the continuationists to make this particular argument, they have to use Agabus's prophecy because it is the only one out of all of the scriptures that could possibly be interpreted as being wrong.

Why is that? Because at least what we have in the narrative that's written to us in Acts, Paul was not bound exactly the way that Agabus says that Paul was going to be bound.

So therefore, the continuationists are saying, see, sometimes prophecies can be a little bit messed up. So it's okay when a person says, well, the

Holy Spirit has given me a vision, and then they speak that vision and that vision doesn't come to pass. Well, Agabus's didn't either, and that's in the

Bible. So therefore, it's okay if somebody says that they've got a vision from the

Holy Spirit that doesn't actually come true. Nathan Busenitz wrote a great article on this several years back.

It's about eight years ago, and it's entitled Throwing Prophecy Under the Agabus, posted at the

Cripplegate. I would encourage you to look that up and read the full article for yourself. But I'm going to read portions of it here.

He says continuationist scholars such as D .A. Carson and Wayne Grudem claim that Agabus got the details of his prophecy wrong.

Cessationists like Richard Gaffin and Thomas Edgar are not convinced. But why is this issue so important to the continuationist cessationist discussion?

Because without Agabus, continuationists do not have any examples of fallible prophecy in the

New Testament. In terms of finding biblical illustrations to support their views on prophecy, the continuationist perspective stands or falls with Agabus.

According to continuationists, the overall gist of Agabus's prophecy is accurate, but the details are wrong.

In particular, Agabus erred when he stated that the Jews would bind Paul and that the

Jews would deliver Paul into the hands of the Romans. As Wayne Grudem explains, this is, quote, a prophecy whose two elements, binding and giving over by the

Jews, are explicitly falsified by the subsequent narrative, unquote. Elsewhere, Grudem adds that for Agabus, quote, the prediction was not far off, but it had inaccuracies in detail that would have called into question the validity of any

Old Testament prophet, unquote. So how are we to think about Agabus? Busnitz goes on.

Are the details of his prophecy explicitly falsified by the biblical text? Did he err when he predicted that the

Jews would bind Paul and hand him over to the Romans? I certainly don't think so.

Rather, I believe Agabus got the details exactly right. Here are five reasons why.

Number one, nothing in the text states that Agabus got his prophecy wrong. Neither Luke nor Paul nor anyone else in Scripture criticizes the accuracy of Agabus's prediction or says that he erred.

Thus, at best, the continuationist approach to Agabus is based on an argument from silence.

Number two, Luke's description of what happened to Paul in Jerusalem implies that the

Jews did bind him in some way. Later in Acts 21, Luke explains what happened to the apostle shortly after he arrived in Jerusalem.

The Jews laid hands on Paul, seized him, dragged him out of the temple, sought to kill him, and were beating him when the

Roman soldiers finally arrived. In Acts 26, 21, Paul reiterates before Agrippa that the

Jews seized him in the temple and tried to kill him. Since Paul did not willingly go with the

Jewish mob, a point implied by the verbs like seized and dragged, they would have had to restrain him in some way as they forcibly removed him from the temple using whatever was immediately available to bind him.

Luke did not need to repeat that detail since Agabus had already told us that Paul would be bound with something like a belt.

Not only does the text not state that Agabus's prophecy was wrong, it gives us good reason to believe that his prediction that Paul would be bound by the

Jews was exactly right. Number three, Paul's later testimony confirms that the

Jews delivered him over to the Romans. Continuationists claim that Agabus also erred when he predicted that the

Jews would give Paul over to the Romans. But is such an error demanded by the text?

In Acts 21, 32, Paul is being beaten when the Roman cohort arrives. The Jews, upon seeing the soldiers, stop assaulting

Paul. The bloodied apostle is then arrested by the Romans. The implication of the text is that the

Jews backed away and willingly relinquished Paul into the hands of the Romans once the soldiers arrived.

Such accords perfectly with Agabus's prediction. Number four, Agabus is quoting the

Holy Spirit. In Acts 21, 11, Agabus begins his prophecy by stating,

Thus says the Holy Spirit. And nothing in the text indicates that he was wrong to do so.

In fact, the Holy Spirit himself inspired Luke to record Agabus's prophecy in just that way, with no qualifications or caveats.

Those who wish to accuse Agabus of error ought to be very careful since Agabus himself is quoting the

Holy Spirit. Furthermore, by claiming to speak the very words of the Holy Spirit, Agabus was aligning himself with other biblical prophets.

Perhaps you're familiar with the phrase, Thus saith the Lord. And number five, here's

Busenitz's fifth reason why Agabus got this exactly right. No one in church history accused

Agabus of errant prophecy until modern times. The church fathers don't talk about Agabus much, but when they do, they equate him in accuracy and authority with the

Old Testament prophets. There is no hint of fallible prophecy in their description of Agabus or his prediction in Acts 21, 11.

And then to provide evidence for his case, Busenitz gives five quotes, five patristic passages that mention

Agabus and don't say that he said anything to get a prophecy wrong. So this is an argument that continuationists use today in order to defend the fact that most continuationists are wrong in their prophecies.

In fact, I would say all of them are. We do not have prophecy being revealed to us today.

And Joel Beakey made that argument in his book as well. And I was reading to you from Reform Systematic Theology.

He also makes the argument that the prophetic revelation that was happening at the same time as apostolic revelation, all of that ceased together with the death of John the

Apostle ended the apostolic age. So you no longer had apostolic revelation nor prophetic revelation that was tied with the ministry of the apostles.

Does that make sense? So now, if you've been a longtime listener of the broadcast, I mean, going back to the very first episodes, you'll know that I've changed my mind on this.

When I first began, when we understand the text, I was continuationist. And I've since become a cessationist because a good brother, actually the man who helped me come up with when we understand the text, sat me down one time and showed me the error of my ways.

And I, through a careful examination of the scriptures, it took a long time. It wasn't like it happened overnight.

But I came to realize that he was right and I was wrong. And therefore, I became a cessationist. So the apostolic ministry that God was using to reveal his truth that was set forth for us in canon, and now we have fully confirmed in the scriptures, all of that apostolic revelation came to an end by the end of the first century.

So we no longer had any of these apostolic miraculous gifts that were going on, which were being used to confirm that the word that was going out was, in fact, the word of God.

It was not the word of man, but it was the word of Christ working through his apostles and prophets.

Agabus is one of those prophets. And what he spoke here was the word of the Lord. And what he said does, in fact, come true, which we'll read about when we continue this study of Acts chapter 21 tomorrow.

But let's finish up this section here. Verse 12. When we heard this, when we heard what

Agabus had prophesied about Paul being bound and turned over to the Romans, we urged

Paul not to go up to Jerusalem. But then Paul answered, what are you doing? Weeping and breaking my heart, for I am ready not only to be in prison, but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the

Lord Jesus. Now, like I said yesterday, there are some who would receive visions from the

Holy Spirit, and those visions were accurate. But the people's reaction to them was not.

So what Agabus said was true. But then as the people are trying to prevent Paul from going to Jerusalem, that's not the way that they should be responding to this.

They should be aware of this so that they know how to pray for and encourage Paul, not stop him from going.

Because as we read back in Acts chapter 19, the Holy Spirit is the one who is compelling Paul to go to Jerusalem so that he may be arrested and sent off to Rome.

He's supposed to get to Rome and be able to preach the gospel there. So Paul rebukes them for what they're doing, and they're not going to be able to stop him.

They see that. So instead, verse 14, since he would not be persuaded, we ceased.

See, they became cessationists. All right, I digress. And said, let the will of the

Lord be done. After these days, we got ready and went up to Jerusalem, and some of the disciples from Caesarea went with us.

Bringing us to the house of Manassin of Cyprus, an early disciple with whom we should lodge.

And then we're going to pick up from there tomorrow with Paul visiting James, the half -brother of Jesus, and the overseer of the church there at Jerusalem.

Let's conclude with prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the revelation that has come to us through your apostles and prophets that's been written down for us in scripture.

And I pray that we would find this as fully sufficient. We know Christ through what has been written down for us in the pages of scripture.

We have the word of God, the prophetic word, more fully confirmed, as Peter says in 2

Peter 1. And so we don't need anything else other than this. We don't need divine revelations or visions.

As Martin Luther even once said, I don't need visions or dreams or appearances of angels.

I have the word of Christ. So may we find this to be sufficient for our every need.

And we trust in what you have told us according to your word. Lead us by these things we pray.

In Jesus' name, amen. You can find a complete list of videos, books, devotionals, and other resources online at www .utt