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The Acts of the Apostles 19

19 While Apollos was still in the city of Corinth, Paul finished visiting the churches in Phrygia and Galatia. Then he traveled through the province of Asia and came to the city of Ephesus. There he met some people who said that they were believers. 2 He asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed God’s message?” They answered, “No, we did not. We have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” 3 So Paul asked, “So when someone baptized you, what did you know?” They replied, “We believed what John the Baptizer taught.” 4 Paul said, “John’s baptism was a sign that people were giving up their evil thoughts and deeds and wanting to obey God. But John also told people that the Messiah would soon appear and that they should believe in him. He was talking about Jesus.” 5 When those men heard that, they believed in Jesus as the Messiah. Paul then baptized them because they believed. 6 After that, Paul placed his hands on their heads one by one, and each of them received the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gave them power to speak in languages that they had not learned. They also spoke messages that the Holy Spirit gave them. 7 There were about 12 men whom Paul baptized and who received the Holy Spirit.

8 For three months after that, Paul went to the Jewish meeting place in Ephesus on each Sabbath and preached there. He taught the people convincingly about how God should rule their lives. 9 But some of the Jews would not believe the message and did not want to hear it any more. In front of everyone in the synagogue, they said bad things about believing in Jesus. So Paul left them and took the believers with him to meet every day in a large room where a man whose name was Tyrannus usually taught people. 10 For two years Paul taught people there. In this way, most of the Jews and non-Jews who lived in the region of Asia heard the message about Jesus.

11 God also gave Paul the power to do great miracles. 12 If those who were sick could not come to Paul, people would take pieces of cloth that Paul had touched and place them on the sick people. When they did this, the sick people would become well and the evil spirits would leave them.

13 There were some Jews who traveled from place to place, commanding the evil spirits in those places to depart from people. Some of them tried to make evil spirits come out of people by commanding them to leave by the authority of Jesus. When those Jews were with a person who had an evil spirit, one of them would say, “I command you to come out by the authority of the man named Jesus whom Paul teaches about!” 14 Specifically, there were seven men who were doing this. They were the sons of a Jewish man named Sceva, who was a chief priest. 15 One day two of the sons of Sceva were in the house of a man who had an evil spirit. They tried to make the spirit come out. But it did not come out. Instead, the evil spirit said to them, “I know Jesus, and I know Paul, but no one has given you authority to make me leave this man!” 16 After the evil spirit said that, suddenly it made the man jump on them. He knocked down these two sons of Sceva and hurt them. He tore off their clothes and wounded them. They ran out of the house to save their lives. 17 Soon people throughout Ephesus, both Jews and non-Jews, heard what had happened. They realized that they should regard Jesus with great awe, and they spoke of him very respectfully.

18 At that time, many people in the group of believers came to their leaders. While other believers were listening, they told about the evil things that they had been doing. 19 Now many of the believers had been sorcerers. They took their scrolls that told about spells and curses and burned them in a place where everyone could see them. The believers added up how much the scrolls were worth. They were worth 50,000 silver coins.

20 In this powerful way, many people heard the message about Jesus and believed in him.

21 And after all of this happened, the Holy Spirit led Paul to decide to go to Jerusalem. Paul planned to visit the believers in the regions of Macedonia and Achaia first. He said, “After I have been to Jerusalem, I must also go to Rome.” 22 So Paul sent two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, to the province of Macedonia. But he stayed for a while in the city of Ephesus in the province of Asia.

23 But soon after that, people in Ephesus began to make a great amount of trouble because of Jesus and the teaching about him. 24 This happened because of a man in Ephesus whose name was Demetrius. He was a craftsman who worked with silver metal. He made statues of the goddess Artemis out of silver. Demetrius paid a lot of money to the workers who made these idols.

25 Demetrius called together the craftsmen and the workers who made the idols. He said to them, “You all know that we make a lot of money doing our work. 26 But you know very well that Paul has led many people in Ephesus not to buy the statues that we make. In fact, the people from many other towns in our province no longer want to buy what we make. Paul tells people that the gods that we make are not gods and that we should not worship them. 27 If people keep listening to Paul, there is a risk that we will go out of business. Even worse, people will no longer come to the temple of our great goddess Artemis. They will not believe that she is worthy to worship. They will believe that she is not a goddess at all. Yet people throughout the province of Asia and even the whole world worship her!” 28 Then all the people there became very angry at Paul when they heard what Demetrius said. They began to shout, “The goddess Artemis of the Ephesians is great!” 29 This shouting made the people in the city very confused. They ran as a crowd to the city stadium to try to find out what was happening. Gaius and Aristarchus, two men from Macedonia who traveled with Paul, were out in the city. Some people took hold of them and dragged them to the stadium. 30 Now Paul wanted to go into the stadium to talk to the people. However, the other believers would not let him go there. 31 Also, some city rulers who were friends of Paul heard what was happening. They sent someone to warn Paul not to go into the theater.

32 In the stadium, the people were very confused. Because they were confused, some were shouting one thing while others were shouting something else. But most of them did not even know why they were all in the stadium! 33 Then some of the Jews in the stadium pushed a man whose name was Alexander to the front of the crowd so that he could speak to the people. Some of the others there told him how he could do that. So Alexander put his hands up to get the crowd to stop shouting. He wanted to tell them that the Jews had not caused the trouble. 34 But many of the non-Jewish people knew that Alexander was a Jew. They knew that the Jews did not worship the goddess Artemis. So for two hours the non-Jews shouted together, “Great is the goddess Artemis of the Ephesians!”

35 Then one of the city rulers made the crowd stop shouting. He said to them, “My fellow citizens, you do not need to be concerned about the worship of Artemis. People throughout the world know that our city of Ephesus is a special place where the goddess Artemis has her temple. Indeed, the sacred image of her fell down to us from heaven! 36 These are established facts. So you should be quiet now. Do not do anything foolish. 37 You should not have brought these two men here. They work together with Paul, but they have not done anything evil. They have not gone into our temples and taken things from there, and they have not spoken evil of our goddess. 38 If Demetrius and his fellow workmen want to accuse anyone of doing anything bad, they should do it in the right way. The courts are in session. There are judges present whom the government has appointed. They can present their case before the judges in court. 39 And if you are concerned about anything else, you should ask your rulers about it when those rulers meet together. 40 You should really not have rushed here shouting, because the Roman government may accuse us of having a riot today. If the rulers ask me what you were all shouting about, I will not know how to answer them. There was no good reason for it.” 41 That is what the city ruler said to the crowd. Then he told them all to go home, and they did go to their homes.

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