Acts 21:7-22

⁷We left Tyre on that ship and went to a town called Ptolemais. There were Christians in that town too, so we went and said hello to them, and we stayed with them that night.

⁸The next day we left Ptolemais and sailed to the town called Caesarea. We left the ship there and went to Philip’s place, and we stayed with him. He was a man that was always telling other people the way to become followers of Jesus. (A few years before this the Christians in Jerusalem picked 7 men to take care of the Christian widows, and Philip was one of those men.

⁹He had 4 daughters that were not married. Each of them had power from the Holy Spirit to tell God’s special messages to people.)

¹⁰A few days later, a Christian called Agabus came to Caesarea from Judea country. He had power from the Holy Spirit to tell God’s special messages to people.

¹¹He came to us, and he took off Paul’s belt. Then he tied his own feet and hands with it and said, “The Holy Spirit says this, ‘See this man that owns this belt. The Jewish leaders in Jerusalem will tie him up, just like this, and they will give him as a prisoner to the people that are not Jews.’”

¹²The rest of us heard him say that, then we all talked really strongly to Paul. We said, “Please don’t go to Jerusalem.”

¹³But Paul said, “Hey, stop crying and trying to make me change my mind. Stop telling me not to go to Jerusalem. I work for our leader Jesus, so I’m happy for people to put me in prison in Jerusalem, and I’m even happy for them to kill me.”

¹⁴We tried to tell Paul not to go to Jerusalem, but he wouldn’t listen to us, so we stopped trying to tell him. We just said, “All right, we will be happy for our leader, Jesus, to do whatever he wants to do.”

¹⁵After a few days we got ready and left Caesarea, and we went to Jerusalem.

¹⁶Some of the Christians from Caesarea went with us too. They took us to stay in the house of a man called Mnason. He was from Cyprus Island. He was a Christian for a long time. He became a Christian when people were first starting to hear the message about Jesus.

¹⁷After we arrived in Jerusalem the Christians there were happy to see us and say hello to us.

¹⁸The next day Paul went to talk with a Christian leader called James, and we went with him. All of the other Christian leaders in Jerusalem were there too.

¹⁹Paul said hello to them, and then he told them about all of the things that God helped him do in the countries of the people that are not Jews.

²⁰After they heard his story, James and the other leaders said, “Thank you God. You are great.” Then they said to Paul, “Listen, Brother, there are thousands of Jewish people here that believe in Jesus, and they are very careful to do everything in the law that Moses gave us.

²¹But we have heard people say that you tell the Jewish Christians in those other countries to stop following our law. Those people reckon you tell Jewish people not to do a young man operation on their sons, and they reckon you tell Jewish people to stop doing other things from our culture. We know their story isn’t true,

²²but some of the other Jewish people here believe that story about you. They will hear that you came here, and they might be upset with you. So, you need to do something to show everyone that the story they heard about you is not true.