Acts 19:12-26

¹²If those who were sick could not come to Paul, handkerchiefs or aprons that Paul had touched would be taken and placed on the sick people { others would take and place on the sick people handkerchiefs or aprons that Paul had touched}. As a result, those sick people would become well, and evil spirits that troubled people would leave.

¹³There were also some Jews who traveled around to various places, and they commanded the evil spirits in those places to depart from people. Certain ones of those Jews once tried to command the evil spirits to come out of people by saying “I command you by the authority MTY of the Lord Jesus, the man about whom Paul preaches, to come out!”

¹⁴There were seven men who were doing that. They were sons of a man named Sceva, a Jew, who called himself a chief priest.

¹⁵But one day as they were doing that, the evil spirit refused to come out of that person. Instead, he said to them, “I know Jesus, and I know that he has authorized Paul to expel demons. ◄But no one has authorized you to do anything to me!/who authorized you to do anything to me?► RHQ”

¹⁶After saying that, suddenly the man who was controlled by the evil spirit jumped on the seven Jewish men, one after another, knocked all of them down, and beat each of them severely. He tore off their clothes and wounded them, causing them to bleed. So, greatly frightened, they all ran out of the house.

¹⁷All the people who lived in Ephesus, both Jews and non-Jews, heard what had happened. So they were afraid MTY. They honored the Lord Jesus MTY because they realized that he was very powerful.

¹⁸At that time, while other believers were listening, many believers confessed the evil things that they had been doing.

¹⁹Several of those who had previously practiced sorcery gathered up their scrolls that told how to work magic and burned them in a public place. When people added up how much those scrolls had cost, they realized that altogether the amount was fifty thousand valuable silver coins.

²⁰As a result, many more people heard MTY the message about the Lord Jesus, and the message powerfully changed their lives.

²¹After those things had happened, Paul decided that he wanted to go to Jerusalem, but he decided that first he would visit the believers in Macedonia and Achaia provinces again. Paul said, “After I have been to Jerusalem, I must also go to Rome.”

²²He sent two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, ahead to Macedonia. But Paul stayed a little longer in Ephesus city, in Asia province.

²³Soon after that, some of the people there tried to make a lot of LIT trouble for the people who believed the way God revealed for us(inc) to receive eternal life.

²⁴There was a man there whose name was Demetrius who made little images out of silver. They were models of the temple of a goddess whose name was Artemis. Demetrius and the other men who made those little images earned a lot of LIT money from selling those images.

²⁵Demetrius called a meeting of his workmen and also of others who made the little silver images. He said to them, “Men, you know that we (inc) earn a lot of money doing our kind of work.

²⁶Also, you know that this fellow Paul has persuaded many people who live in Ephesus to no longer buy the images that we make. Now even the people from many other towns in our province no longer want to buy what we make. This fellow tells people that the gods that we have made and worship are not gods and that we should not worship them.