AGABUS

(Agʹa·bus).

A Christian prophet who, together with other prophets, came down from Jerusalem to Antioch of Syria during the year of Paul’s stay there.

Agabus foretold through the spirit “that a great famine was about to come upon the entire inhabited earth.” (Ac 11:27, 28) As the account states, the prophecy was fulfilled during the reign of Emperor Claudius (41-54 C.E.). The Jewish historian Josephus refers to this “great famine.”​—Jewish Antiquities, XX, 51 (ii, 5); XX, 101 (v, 2).

Toward the close of Paul’s last missionary tour (about 56 C.E.), he was met in Caesarea by Agabus, who illustrated a prophecy of Paul’s future arrest in Jerusalem by binding his own hands and feet with Paul’s girdle.​—Ac 21:8-11.