Acts 12:1-20

¹At that time the big boss, called Herod, told his soldiers to grab some of the Christians.

²One of them was James. He, and his young brother called John, were both close followers of Jesus. Herod told his soldiers to kill James with a big knife.

³The Jewish leaders told Herod that they were happy for him to kill James, so Herod told his soldiers to grab Peter too. They grabbed him at the time for the Jewish people to have their ceremony where they ate flat damper.

⁴Herod thought, “I will wait until the end of that ceremony, then I will judge Peter and kill him.” So they put Peter in jail, and Herod told 16 soldiers to guard him there. Those soldiers were in 4 little mobs, with 4 soldiers in each little mob.

⁵Peter stayed there in jail, and the other Christians prayed for him a lot.

⁶That Jewish ceremony was almost finished, and Herod was going to judge Peter the next day, but that night he was still in jail there. There was one soldier on each side of Peter, and they tied each of his hands with chains to those soldiers. Peter was asleep in between them. Other soldiers stood at the gate of the jail.

⁷Suddenly, there was a bright light in that jail cell, and one of God’s angel messengers came and stood in front of Peter. That angel hit him on the side to wake him up, and said, “Quick. Get up.” And the chains fell off Peter’s hands.

⁸Then the angel told him, “Get dressed and put on your shoes.” So Peter did that, then the angel said, “Now put on your coat and follow me.”

⁹So Peter followed the angel, and they just walked out of that jail cell. Peter was not sure that all these things were true. He thought, “Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe this is not really happening to me.”

¹⁰Peter and the angel walked past the 1st mob of soldiers in that jail, then they walked past the 2nd mob of soldiers. After that they came to the big iron gate in the outside wall of the jail. That gate just opened by itself in front of them, and they walked out of the jail into the city street. They walked together along that street, and then suddenly the angel left Peter and went away.

¹¹Then Peter woke up properly. He said to himself, “Now I know that this is true. I’m not dreaming. God did send one of his angels to save me. That big boss Herod and the Jewish leaders wanted to hurt me, but God saved me from them.”

¹²Peter thought about this, then he went to Mary’s house. She was the mother of a man called John Mark. A lot of Christians were praying for Peter there in her house.

¹³Peter knocked on the door of that house. A working girl called Rhoda came to the door,

¹⁴but she didn’t open it. She heard his voice and knew it was Peter, and she was so happy she just ran back into the house and told all the people, “Peter is here, standing outside the door.”

¹⁵Those people said, “You are mad.” But she kept telling them that Peter really was there. Then they said, “It can’t be him. It has to be the angel that looks after him.”

¹⁶But Peter kept on knocking on that door. After a little while they stopped arguing and opened the door and saw him, and they were really surprised.

¹⁷Peter held up his hand to get them to be quiet, then he told them the story, about the way God got him out of that jail. Then he said, “Tell this story to the other Christians, and make sure you tell it to that other man called James too.” Then he left them and went to another place.

¹⁸After the sun came up the soldiers were really upset and worried. They were all saying things like, “Hey, what happened to Peter? Who let him get away?”

¹⁹Then Herod told them all to look everywhere to find him. But they didn’t find him. So Herod judged those 16 soldiers. He asked them some questions, then he told the other soldiers to kill them. After that Herod left Judea country and went to stay for a while in the town called Caesarea.

²⁰At that time Herod was very angry with the people that lived in the towns called Tyre and Sidon. This made a problem for those people. You see, Herod was the boss of Galilee country and those people got all their food from Galilee, and they didn’t want Herod to stop them from getting that food. So some of them went to Herod’s house to talk to him about this problem. At Herod’s house a man called Blastus was one of his important workers, so those men talked to Blastus and said, “Please help us get a chance to talk with Herod. We want to stop all this trouble.” So Blastus got Herod to agree to talk to those people, and Herod told them the day for that talk. On that day Herod put on his special clothes, and he sat in his special seat, to show everyone that he is the big boss of that country. And then he talked to all the people.