Text copied!
CopyCompare
Plain English Version - Acts - Acts 17

Acts 17:1-21

Play LogoGoogle Play  APK Logo APK
Click on verse(s) to share them!
1Paul and Silas went through the towns called Amphipolis and Apollonia and they came to a town called Thessalonica. There was a Jewish meeting house there,
2and Paul went to that meeting house every Saturday. He used to always do that. On each of the next 3 Saturdays he talked to the people there and showed them from God’s book
3that Jesus is the one that God sent to save people. Paul told them all about Jesus and showed them everything that God got his men to write in his book. Those words said that God will send a man to save us, but that man has to die, and then come alive again. He said, “I’m telling you about Jesus. He is the one God sent to save us.”
4A lot of people there believed that message about Jesus, and they joined Paul and Silas. Some of those people were Jews, and some were not Jews but they respected God, and a lot of them were important women.
5But some Jews there were jealous of Paul, and they went to the middle of the town, to where a lot of people were hanging around, and they found some trouble makers there. They told those trouble makers that Paul and Silas were bad people, and got them to be a big noisy mob, shouting and saying bad things about Paul and Silas. Some of them went into the house that belonged to a Christian called Jason. They were looking for Paul and Silas, to drag them outside so that the mob could beat them up.
6They couldn’t find Paul and Silas in that house so they grabbed Jason, and some of the other Christians, and dragged them to the town bosses, and they shouted, “Those 2 men, Paul and Silas, they make trouble everywhere, and now they have come to our town to make trouble here too.
7All this Christian mob are against everything that our big boss in Rome tells us to do. They reckon a man called Jesus is really the biggest boss. And this man here, Jason, he is letting them stay at his house.”
8All the people and the town bosses heard that story, and they got very upset.
9The town bosses made Jason and the other Christians pay some money, and told them, “You can only get your money back if Paul and Silas don’t make any more trouble.” Then the bosses let Jason and those other Christians go.
10Then, that same night, the Thessalonica Christians sent Paul and Silas out of their town, to another town called Berea. As soon as they got to that town Paul and Silas went to the Jewish meeting house to talk to the people there.
11The Jews that lived in Berea were happy to listen to the message about Jesus and they thought about it carefully, not like the Jews in Thessalonica. The Berea people read God’s book every day to find out if Paul’s message was true.
12So a lot of those Jewish people believed in Jesus, and some of the important women and men that were not Jews believed in Jesus too.
13But the Jews in Thessalonica heard that Paul was in Berea telling people God’s message about Jesus. Then they got up and went to Berea and made trouble for Paul, and got a lot of other people to make trouble too.
14So some of the Christian men in Berea took Paul out of that town. They went down to the sea, and they all got on a ship and went to the town called Athens. But Silas and Timothy stayed in Berea.
15Then Paul said to the men that took him to Athens, “As soon as you get back to Berea tell Silas and Timothy to come to me here. Tell them to hurry and come here as soon as they can.” Then those men left Athens and went back to Berea.
16Paul was in Athens waiting for Silas and Timothy to come, and he walked around in that town. He saw a lot of statues everywhere, and he saw that people thought they were gods. They respected them and prayed to them. This upset Paul a lot.
17So every day he went to the Jewish meeting house and talked with the people there about Jesus. Some of those people were Jews, and some were Greeks that believed in God. And Paul went to the place in the middle of the town where there were a lot of people, and he talked about Jesus to the people that he met there.
18Some of that Athens mob always thought about the best way for people to live. Some of them were called Epicureans, and some were called Stoics. They talked to Paul, and he told them about Jesus. Paul said that Jesus died, and God made him alive again. Some of that mob said, “This man is just talking rubbish.” Other people said, “We think he is talking about gods from other countries.”
19So they took Paul to a meeting of the town council, and they asked him, “What are you telling everyone? Tell us what this new message is all about.
20You are saying things that shock us, and we want to understand what you mean.”
21You see, the Athens people, and the people from other places that lived there, they liked to talk about new ideas all the time, and they liked to hear anything new that other people told them.

Read Acts 17Acts 17
Compare Acts 17:1-21Acts 17:1-21