Acts 1:1-8

¹Dear Theophilus I wrote to you before about all the things Jesus did and the things he taught to people.

²He kept doing these things until God took him up to heaven. But before God took Jesus up to heaven the Holy Spirit helped Jesus tell his close followers the things they had to do.

³It is like this, Jesus died, and then he came alive again, and his followers saw him a lot of times in the next 40 days. Jesus showed them that he really was alive, so they are really sure that this is true. He talked to them too, and told them a lot of things about God’s family.

⁴At one time Jesus was eating some food with his followers and he said to them, “Don’t leave this city called Jerusalem yet. I already told you that my Father promised to give you the Holy Spirit. Well, wait here until God does that.

⁵Do you remember John the Baptiser? He baptised people with water, but God will baptise you with the Holy Spirit very soon.”

⁶After that some of the close followers of Jesus met together with him. (At that time the Roman government people were the bosses over the Israel people.) The followers asked Jesus, “Sir, are you going to fight the Romans at this time and beat them, and give us back our own country, Israel, with our own boss?”

⁷Jesus said to them, “My Father controls all these things. He knows the time that all these things will happen. You don’t need to know that time.

⁸But the Holy Spirit will come to you and he will give you power, and then you will tell people about me in Jerusalem, and all over Judea country and Samaria country, and you will go to people everywhere in the world and tell them about me.”