Acts 20:23

Acts 20:23. Save that the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me. Such warnings as these here referred to as having happened in the past, do not seem to have been unfrequent in these early days of Christianity. ‘The gift of prophecy' appears to have been no uncommon possession in the days of the apostles. Like other miraculous powers, it gradually seems to have passed away from the Church. These powers were evidently of rare occurrence during the lives of the generation which immediately succeeded the men who had looked on the face of Jesus, and after a comparatively brief interval, contemporaneous history is silent altogether on the subject the power had passed away from men. For similar instances of such warning prophetic voices at Tyre and at Cæsarea, see Acts 21:4; Acts 21:10-11.

The voice of the Holy Ghost, which apparently came to the prophets of the Church of Antioch on the occasion of the dedication of Barnabas and Saul (Acts 13:1-4), was another instance of this prophetic work on the part of the Holy Ghost. Paley (Horae Paulinae, Romans) calls attention to Romans 15:30, where the apostle beseeches the Roman Christians to strive together in their prayer for him, that he might be delivered from them who do not believe in Judæa. Such a sorrowful foreboding was probably written down in Corinth after one of those prophetic intimations here referred to: ‘The Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city. '