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21
Luke, the man writing this story, went with Paul to Tyre
1 We were very sad, but we had to say goodbye to the Christian leaders of Ephesus. Then Paul and the rest of us got on the ship, and we sailed to the island called Cos. The next day, we sailed to the island called Rhodes. And then, the next day, we sailed to the town called Patara, and we stopped there. 2 That ship wasn’t going to Fonisha country, so we got off it and got on another ship. 3 We sailed on that ship until we could see the island called Cyprus, and we went past it, on its south side, and we kept sailing until we got to Syria country. Then the ship stopped at a town called Tyre, and they started to unload it there.
Christians told Paul not to go to Jerusalem, but he kept going anyway
4 While the ship was at Tyre for the workers to unload it, we got off it, and we found the Christians there, and we stayed with them for 7 days. God’s Holy Spirit told those Christians to tell Paul, “Don’t go to Jerusalem.” So they told him that, but Paul wanted to keep going to Jerusalem. 5 The ship workers finished unloading the ship, and then it was time for it to leave, so we went back to the sea shore to get on the ship. All the Christian men, and their wives and kids, they all went with us to the sea shore. We all got down on our knees there on the sand, to show respect to God, and we prayed. 6 After that, we said goodbye to those other Christians, then we got on the ship, and the others went back to their homes.
Paul left Tyre and went to Caesarea
7 We left Tyre on that ship, and we sailed to a town called Tolemayis. There were Christians in that town too, so we went and said hello to them, and we stayed with them that night. 8 The next day, we got back on the ship, and we left Tolemayis and sailed to the town called Caesarea. We left the ship there and went to Philip’s place, and we stayed with him. He was a man that was always telling other people how to become followers of Jesus. (A few years before this, the Christians in Jerusalem picked 7 men to take care of the Christian widows, and Philip was one of those men.*Acts 6:5; 8:5 9 He had 4 daughters that were not married. Each of them had power from the Holy Spirit to tell God’s special messages to people.)
The Christians couldn’t stop Paul going to Jerusalem
10 A few days later, a Christian man came there from Judea country. His name was Agabus. He had power from the Holy Spirit to tell God’s special messages to people.*Acts 11:28 11 He came to us, and he took off Paul’s belt. Then he tied his own feet and hands together with it and said, “The Holy Spirit says this, ‘See the man that owns this belt. The Jewish leaders in Jerusalem will tie him up, just like this, and they will give him as a prisoner to the people that are not Jews.’ ”
12 The rest of us heard him say that, then we all talked really strongly to Paul. We said, “Please don’t go to Jerusalem.”
13 But Paul said, “Stop crying and trying to make me change my mind. Stop telling me not to go to Jerusalem. I work for our leader Jesus, so I’m ready for people to put me in prison in Jerusalem, and I’m even ready for them to kill me.”
14 Then we knew that Paul wouldn’t listen to us, so we stopped trying to tell him not to go to Jerusalem. We just said, “All right. We want our leader, Jesus, to do whatever he wants to do.”
Paul went on to Jerusalem
15 After a few days we got ready and left Caesarea, and we went to Jerusalem. 16 Some of the Christians from Caesarea went with us too. They took us to stay in the house of Mason. He was a man from Cyprus Island. He was a Christian for a long time. He became a Christian when people were first starting to hear the message about Jesus.
17 After we arrived in Jerusalem the Christians there were happy to see us and say hello to us.
Paul agreed to do a Jewish ceremony
18 The next day, we went with Paul to talk to James, one of the Christian leaders. All of the other Christian leaders in Jerusalem were there too. 19 Paul said hello to them, and then he told them about all of the things that God helped him do in the countries of the people that are not Jews. 20 After they heard his story, James and the other leaders said to God, “Thank you God. You are great.”
Then they said to Paul, “Listen, brother, there are thousands of Jewish people here that believe in Jesus, and they are very careful to do everything in the law that Moses gave us. 21 But we have heard people say that you tell the Jewish Christians in those other countries to stop following our law. Those people reckon you tell Jewish people not to do a young man operation on their sons, and they reckon you tell Jewish people to stop doing other things from our culture. Look, we know their story isn’t true, 22 but some of the other Jewish people here believe that story about you. And those people will hear that you came here, and they might be angry with you. So you need to do something to show everyone that the story they heard about you is not true.
23 So listen. Do this to show everyone that story is not true. You see, there are 4 men among us that have promised something to God, so they have to buy things to do a ceremony to make themselves clean. 24 So you join those men, and go with them to God’s ceremony house, and do that ceremony with them, and pay for the things they buy. Then they can shave their heads. That’s our culture, to show that they have done everything they promised to do. And the people will see you do all that with those men at God’s ceremony house, and they will know that the things people told them about you are not true, and they will know that you do everything in our Jewish law and culture.*Numbers 6:13-21 25 We leaders know that the Christians that are not Jews don’t have to do everything in our Jewish law, and we wrote them a letter about it. But we told them,
– If somebody reckons that a statue is a god, and if they give food to that statue to show respect to it, don’t eat any of that food.
– And don’t eat the blood of animals.
– And if somebody holds an animal’s neck really tight to kill it, don’t eat meat from that animal.
– And don’t sleep with somebody that you are not married to, as if they are your wife or husband.
That’s what we wrote in our letter.”*Acts 15:29
26 Paul listened to everything they said, and he agreed to do that ceremony with those 4 men. The next day, he got them together, and they started to do the ceremony to make themselves clean. After that, Paul went to God’s ceremony house, and he told the leader of the Jewish ceremonies the date they will finish that ceremony and give animals to God for each of them, the way they do in Jewish culture.
Some Jews grabbed Paul
27-29 Paul and the other 4 men had to do that ceremony for 7 days to make themselves clean. Just before it finished, Paul walked along the road with a man that was not a Jew. His name was Trofimus. Some Jewish people from Asia country saw them together, and they thought that Paul took Trofimus into God’s ceremony house, and that was against their Jewish law. The next day, Paul went back to God’s ceremony house, and those Asia Jews saw him there. They called out to the other Jews there. They shouted, “You Jewish men, come and help us punish this man. This is the man that teaches people everywhere to rubbish us Jewish people, and our law, and he tells them not to respect this ceremony house. He even brought a man that is not a Jew into it, so now it is not clean any more.” Then all those Jewish people got angry with Paul, and they grabbed him.*Acts 20:4
30 A lot of people everywhere in that city heard that there was trouble in God’s ceremony house, and they ran there. They all grabbed Paul and dragged him outside. Then straight away, the guards shut the gates of God’s ceremony house.
Roman soldiers stopped the mob from killing Paul
31 That mob started hitting Paul, trying to kill him. Somebody went to the big Roman boss and said, “The people in Jerusalem are going wild.” 32 So he quickly got a big mob of soldiers, and some boss soldiers, and they all ran to the mob that was hitting Paul. The mob saw the Roman soldiers and their big boss, so they stopped hitting Paul.
The soldiers took Paul to their big house
33 Then the big boss told his soldiers to grab Paul and tie him up with 2 chains. Then he asked that mob, “Who is this man, and what did he do?”
34 Some of the people there started shouting one thing, and some of them started shouting something else, and they kept on shouting really loud. There was too much noise, and the big boss soldier couldn’t understand them. So he told the soldiers, “Take him into your big house.”
35 Then the soldiers took Paul away, and a lot of people followed them. Those people were trying to hit Paul all the time. The soldiers got to the steps of their big house, and the boss told them to carry Paul up the steps into their house. 36 The mob kept on shouting, “Kill him. Kill him.”
37 The soldiers started to take him into their house, but Paul talked to the boss in the Greek language. He said, “Can I talk to you?”
The boss said, “Can you talk Greek? 38 I reckon you are that man from Egypt country, that fights against us Romans. You got lots of other men to join you, and you took 4,000 of those men to the desert to get ready to fight us. We call you mob the Murderers, because you are always killing people. Am I right? You are that man from Egypt, right?”
39 Paul said, “I’m not that man. I am a Jew from Tarsus, and Tarsus is an important town in Cilicia country. Please, can I talk to these people?”
40 The boss said, “All right. You can talk to them.”
So Paul stood on the steps and held up his hand to get everyone to be quiet, and after they all stopped shouting, Paul talked to them in their own language, called Hebrew.

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*21:8 Acts 6:5; 8:5

*21:10 Acts 11:28

*21:24 Numbers 6:13-21

*21:25 Acts 15:29

*21:27-29 Acts 20:4

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