I Told You So

I have often wondered whether it is appropriate to tell people, "I told you so." I discovered this morning -- I had not paid attention to it before -- a passage in which the apostle Paul said, "Friends, you really should have listened to me back in Crete. We could have avoided all this trouble and trial." (Acts 27:21). The biggest such event in my life was where I warned my city Church, in my 20th year of ministry there, that if they followed those who proposed to lead them, they would go into swift decline. I said it in a large meeting. Unfortunately, they did follow those who proposed to lead them (who proposed to take the Church to new heights), and they did go into swift decline. A member of staff said to me, "It went down, down, down."