New Testament in a Year

19 While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul traveled through Turkey and arrived in Ephesus, where he found several disciples. ² “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” he asked them.

“No,” they replied, “we don’t know what you mean. What is the Holy Spirit?”

³ “Then what beliefs did you acknowledge at your baptism?” he asked.

And they replied, “What John the Baptist taught.”

⁴ Then Paul pointed out to them that John’s baptism was to demonstrate a desire to turn from sin to God and that those receiving his baptism must then go on to believe in Jesus, the one John said would come later.

⁵ As soon as they heard this, they were baptized in^[a] the name of the Lord Jesus. ⁶ Then, when Paul laid his hands upon their heads, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in other languages and prophesied. ⁷ The men involved were about twelve in number.

⁸ Then Paul went to the synagogue and preached boldly each Sabbath day^[b] for three months, telling what he believed and why, and persuading many to believe in Jesus. ⁹ But some rejected his message and publicly spoke against Christ, so he left, refusing to preach to them again. Pulling out the believers, he began a separate meeting at the lecture hall of Tyrannus and preached there daily. ¹⁰ This went on for the next two years, so that everyone in the Turkish province of Asia Minor—both Jews and Greeks—heard the Lord’s message.

¹¹ And God gave Paul the power to do unusual miracles, ¹² so that even when his handkerchiefs or parts of his clothing were placed upon sick people, they were healed, and any demons within them came out.

¹³ A team of itinerant Jews who were traveling from town to town casting out demons planned to experiment by using the name of the Lord Jesus. The incantation they decided on was this: “I adjure you by Jesus, whom Paul preaches, to come out!” ¹⁴ Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish priest, were doing this. ¹⁵ But when they tried it on a man possessed by a demon, the demon replied, “I know Jesus and I know Paul, but who are you?” ¹⁶ And he leaped on two of them and beat them up, so that they fled out of his house naked and badly injured.

¹⁷ The story of what happened spread quickly all through Ephesus, to Jews and Greeks alike; and a solemn fear descended on the city, and the name of the Lord Jesus was greatly honored. ^18-19 Many of the believers who had been practicing black magic confessed their deeds and brought their incantation books and charms and burned them at a public bonfire. (Someone estimated the value of the books at $10,000.$10,000, approximately £3,500.) ²⁰ This indicates how deeply the whole area was stirred by God’s message.