Agabus

AGABUS, a Prophet, and as the Greeks say, one of the seventy Disciples of our Saviour, foretold that there would be a great famine over all the Earth; and St. Act. xi. 28. In the year of J. C. 43.Luke, in the Acts, informs us that it accordingly fell out, under the Emperor Claudius, in the fourth Year of his Reign, and in the forty fourth Year of Jesus Christ. Profane Historians take notice of this famine; and Suetonius¹ observes, that the Emperor himself was insulted upon this occasion, attacked by the People in the middle of the Market-place, and obliged to retire to his Palace. As this famine afflicted principally Judæa, the Christians of Antioch, upon information of the great Want which their Brethren were reduced to at Jerusalem, resolved to send assistance to relieve them. St. Paul and St. Barnabas were entrusted with their Charity, Acts xi. 29, 30. In the year of J. C. 44.and conveyed it to Jerusalem.

Ten years after, that is to say, in the year of J.C. 58. as St. Paul was going to Jerusalem, and had already landed at Acts xxi. 10.Cæsarea in Palestine, the same Prophet Agabus arrived there, and coming to visit St. Paul and his company, he took this Apostle’s girdle, and binding himself hand and foot, he said, Thus saith the Holy Ghost, so shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the Man that owneth this Girdle, and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles. And when they heard these things, all they who were present besought St. Paul to go no farther. But he answered, That he was ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem, for the name of the Lord Jesus. We know no other particulars of the life of Agabus. The Greeks say he suffered Martyrdom at Antioch; and they observe his Festival on the eighth of March. The Latins, ever since the ninth Age, have kept it on the ninth of February.

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