Acts 1:12-24

¹²Then Jesus’s followers left that place, the hill called Olive Trees, and they walked about a kilometre back

¹³to Jerusalem, and then they went upstairs to the room where they were living. These were the close followers that came back from Olive Trees Hill – Peter, John, James, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, James (his father was called Alphaeus), Simon (he used to be one of the mob that wanted to fight the Roman people), and Judas (his father was called James).

¹⁴All these men met every day to pray together. Some women met with them too. One of those women was Mary, the mother of Jesus. And his brothers came to pray with them too.

¹⁵After a few days these people that believed in Jesus had a meeting. There were about 120 people in that meeting. Peter stood up and talked to them.

¹⁶He said, “Listen, friends, a long time ago the Holy Spirit talked to David about Judas, the son of Iscariot. David wrote the story in God’s book, and now that story has come true. Judas used to be with us and he worked with us. He was one of us close followers of Jesus. But the Jewish leaders paid Judas to take a mob of bad men to catch Jesus.

¹⁸After that the Jewish leaders used that same money to buy some farm land. Judas fell down in that place and his belly split open, and all his guts fell out, and he died.

¹⁹Everybody that lived in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that place Akeldama in their language. That means the Farm Land of Blood.”

²⁰Peter kept on talking, he said, “God’s man called David wrote about Judas a long time ago, and it is in God’s book, in the part called Psalms. He wrote, ‘Empty out his house, God, and let nobody else live in it.’ And he also wrote, ‘Let somebody else have his job.’”

²¹And Peter said, “So now we need to pick somebody else to be one of us 12 close followers, that have that job. He will help us tell people the true story, that Jesus is alive. Yes, Jesus died, but then God made him alive again. The man we pick has to be one of the men that went around with our leader Jesus here, and he has to be one that was with us all those 3 years, from the time that John baptised Jesus, right up to the time that God took Jesus up into heaven.”

²³So they all talked together and found 2 men that did all those things. One man was Joseph Barsabbas. He also had another name, Justus. The other man was called Matthias.

²⁴Then the close followers of Jesus prayed. They said, “Judas left his job, and went his own way, and now he is dead. He went to that bad place. And God, you really know everyone, and you know the way they are thinking. Please show us the man that you want to take the place of Judas, to do his job, and to be a close follower of Jesus.”