Old/New Testament

19 While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul went over land and came to the city of Ephesus. There he met some disciples.

² Paul asked them, `Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?' They said, `No. We have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.'

³ Paul asked them, `How were you baptised?' They said, `We were baptised in John's way.'

⁴ Then Paul said, `John baptised people when they stopped their wrong ways. He told people that they should believe on the one who would follow him. That one is Jesus.'

⁵ When they heard this, they were baptised in the name of the Lord Jesus.

⁶ Paul put his hands on them. Then the Holy Spirit came on them and they spoke in tongues of other lang-uages and spoke words from God.

⁷ In all, there were about twelve men.

⁸ Paul went into the meeting place. For three months he talked without fear to the people there. He tried to talk so that people would obey God.

⁹ Some of them were fixed in their minds and would not believe. They said, `The Christian way is not good' They said this in front of all the people. So Paul left them and took the disciples away. He talked and answered the questions of the people every day in the school of a man named Tyrannus.

¹⁰ This went on for two years, and all the people who lived in the province of Asia, both the Jews and the Greeks, heard the Lord's word.

^11-12 od did big works through Paul. Even some pieces of cloth he had touched were carried to sick people and they were healed. Also, people who had bad spirits in them were made free.

¹³ Some Jews were there who travelled about from place to place. They had power over bad spirits like witch-doctors. They tried to make people free from bad spirits by using the name of the Lord Jesus. They said to the spirits, `I tell you, in the name of Jesus, the one Paul talks about, come out!'

¹⁴ There was a Jew named Sceva. He was a chief priest. He had seven sons who did this.

¹⁵ But the bad spirit answered, `I know Jesus and I know Paul. But who are you?'

¹⁶ And the man who had the bad spirit in him jumped on them. He beat them all because he was stronger than they were. Their bodies were bleeding and their clothes were torn. They ran out of the house.

¹⁷ When all the Jews and the Greeks at Ephesus knew about this, they all feared. And they had great respect for the name of the Lord Jesus.

¹⁸ Many of the people who believed, told God all the bad things they used to do.

¹⁹ Many had been witch-doctors. They brought their books and burned them in front of all the people. All the books together had cost about 50,000 silver coins.

²⁰ God's word spread with power. It reached more and more people.