Prophetic Counsel - Acts 27:1-12

I wonder if Paul was upset when he realized that the Agrippa and Festus would have let him free if he hadn’t appealed to Caesar. But I think that he probably already knew his fate and had accepted it before all this shock down. Plus, like we talked about yesterday, if Paul hadn’t have appealed to Caesar, we don’t know exactly what would have happened, because Festus wanted to send him back to Jerusalem to be tried, which almost certainly would have resulted in his death, so we don’t necessarily know that Paul would have been freed if he hadn’t appealed to Caesar.

Chapter 27 is very long and has a lot of details and names and events that I don’t really understand, but it starts with a decision to take many prisoners, including Paul and his entourage, which I believe includes Luke because he starts using the “we” again, to Italy. A Roman centurion named Julius is given charge of the prisoners, and when they make it  from Caesarea to Sidon, Julius treats Paul very “courteously,” and allows him to leave the ship to go visit friends that he has in the city. This is interesting, and begs the question, why?
If a prisoner had escaped under Julius’ watch, the consequences would have been brutal. In fact, we will see later just how seriously escape is taken, and we can all remember when Peter was imprisoned and there was an earthquake and the prison doors were opened, how the man in charge of the jail was going to simply kill himself before even trying to find out if any of the prisoners had actually escaped. So we can assume that only the most trusted personnel were allowed off the ship in a port, and the fact that Paul was trusted enough to take “liberty to go unto his friends to refresh himself” was a sign of great respect and trust.
Of course Paul came back and they continued sailing, I would like to get a map of the route with all the stops because there are so many, I just can’t keep track of them all. They keep sailing through many more ports, finally landing in “Myra, a city of Lycia.” There, Julius finds “a ship of Alexandria sailing into Italy; and he put us therein.” After that the sailing was tough and they “hardly passing it” came to a place “which is called The fair havens.”
They stayed at the fair havens for “much time” and when it came time to leave again, “sailing was now dangerous, because the fast was now already part.” Reading it like this makes it sound like the sea was dangerous to sail in because the fast was over, but in reality, the mention of the fast was simply to help the reader understand the time of year. The IM says, “’the fast’ probably referred to the Jewish holy day called the day of Atonement, which marked the beginning of the season during which it was generally regarded as unsafe to travel on the Mediterranean Sean because of violent storms. The day of Atonement usually took place in late September or early October.”
Even though the sailing might be dangerous, I can’t imagine that all trade and shipping stopped throughout the Roman Empire for several months out of the year because of hazardous conditions. The fact that the Alexandrian ship captain was willing to take these Romans to Italy shows that sailing was still going on at that time of the year and that those who were willing to make the trip had probably been sailing in the treacherous conditions for years.
But even with the ship captain’s experience, Paul still protested saying, “Sirs, I perceive that this voyage will be with hurt and much damage” not only to the ship but also to the passengers physically. The centurion decided to trust the ship’s captain instead of the tent-making prisoner, and they sailed away against Paul’s advice. Not only did Julius trust the captain more than Paul, but he also didn’t want to spend the winter months in fair haven and instead wanted to spending them Phenice, “which is an haven of Crete.”
The IM points out that Paul was not merely speculating on the weather when he made his suggestion, but was using the power of seership to know what was coming in the future. The IM continues pointing out that there are three reasons why people refuse to follow prophetic counsel. First is “worldly experience and training. Just as ‘the centurion believed the master and the owner of the ship’ rather than the counsel of Paul, a tentmaker, people today sometimes reject the words of seers or other Church leaders because their counsel does not coincide with the opinions of the ‘experts’ in the world.”
It’s an interesting balance because God is the universe’s greatest scientist, he didn’t create the world using magic, but instead he used science and universal principles that we don’t understand yet. Science has done so much good, and will continue to be vital to our growth as a civilization. But on the other hand, science doesn’t know everything, and when something science says flies in the face of prophetic counsel, we have to decide for ourselves which is right.
The second reason people disregard prophetic counsel is “convenience. The ship’s crew contended that they should continue their journey because ‘the haven was not commodious to winter in,’ meaning it was not a convenient location to spend the winter months. Likewise, adhering to the counsel of Church leaders is not always convenient.” I’m not going to lie, sometimes the words of the prophets kick me in the face.
Sometimes I strongly disagree with them, like with Prop 8, but it goes back to what I just said, when something that we believe goes against prophetic counsel, we must prayerfully find out for ourselves. I don’t think anyone is asked to blindly follow what goes against your beliefs, but we are asked to bring it to the Lord and find out for ourselves. I know that I’ve done this on SO many issues and it has led to many beautiful experiences for me.
The third reason Paul’s counsel was rejected was “majority mentality. ‘The more part’ of the passengers advised the centurion ‘to depart.’ For many individuals, it makes more sense to agree with the majority than to agree with a servant of God, whose words are not meant to be popular.” I think one might read into this statement that the prophets take positions simply because they are unpopular, as a sort of “test” of loyalty of their congregations, and that’s not the case at all. Sometimes prophetic counsel is incredibly popular, but many times it’s not, and it all goes back to find out for ourselves what we believe and what we will do when accepting prophetic counsel doesn’t come easy to us.