2 July Acts 21:7-15

2 July. Paul visits Philip in Caesarea

"The next day we left Ptolemais and went to the city of Caesarea. There we went into the home of Philip the preacher, one of the seven helpers, and stayed with him. He had four [young] unmarried daughters who had the gift of prophesying."

"After we had been there for some time, a prophet named Agabus arrived from Judea. He came to us and borrowed Paul's belt and used it to tie his own hands and feet. He said, 'The Holy Spirit says, "This is how the Jews in Jerusalem will tie up the man who wears this belt. Then they will give him to those who are not Jews."'"

"When we all heard this, we and the people there begged Paul not to go to Jerusalem. But he said, 'Why are you crying and making me so sad? I am not only ready to be tied up in Jerusalem, I am ready to die for the Lord Jesus!'"

"We could not persuade him to stay away from Jerusalem. So we stopped begging him and said, 'We pray that what the Lord wants will be done'. After this, we got ready and started on our way to Jerusalem."

          (Acts 21:7-15)

 

 

After a day in Ptolemais (Akko or Acre) , Paul left for Caesarea – where he stayed for several days with Philip the evangelist (one of the seven Greek-speaking ‘deacons’ chosen by the church in Jerusalem twenty years earlier) (see Acts 6:5).

As a more radical Greek-speaking Jewish Christian, Philip had settled in this Roman 'gentile' city with his wife and four young daughters after his encounter with the Ethiopian on the road to Gaza to escape persecution by more traditional Hebrew-speaking Jews in Jerusalem.

During his stay in Caesarea, Agabus (a prophet who had previously predicted the famine during the reign of Claudius – see Acts 11:28) arrived from Jerusalem and warned Paul that the Jews there were intent on arresting him and handing him over to the Romans to be executed.

Paul refused to be deterred. He no doubt saw his visit to Jerusalem – to deliver the gifts from the thriving Gentile churches that he had nourished over the years – as a fulfilment of the Old Testament prophesies that the Gentiles would one day worship there (see Isaiah 2:2, 49:6, 60:1-3, Luke 2:25-32 & Psalm 72:10-11).

So Paul set off overland for Jerusalem, accompanied by Luke, his Gentile companions (see Acts 20:4) and some of the believers from Caesarea (Acts 21:16). They stayed en route at the home of Mnason, a believer from Cyprus, before arriving in Jerusalem in the late summer or early autumn of 57AD.

The photo shows the Roman aqueduct on the beach at Caesarea.

You can read more about Caesarea @ https://www.thebiblejourney.org/…/12-paul…/paul-in-caesarea/

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