Acts 25:13-21

¹³After a few days, the big boss of another country came to Caesarea. He was called Agrippa. His young sister, called Bernice, came with him. They came to say hello to Festus, and to say, “We are happy for you to be the new governor of this country.”

¹⁴While they were there at Caesarea, Festus told that big boss about Paul. He said, “Felix left a prisoner in jail here. He’s a different kind of man.

¹⁵You see, I went to Jerusalem and the leaders of the Jewish ceremonies, and the other Jewish leaders there, told me that this man did a lot of bad things. They asked me to say he is guilty, and to tell my soldiers to kill him.

¹⁶But I told them, ‘That’s not the way we Romans judge people. If somebody blames another person, we don’t say he is guilty until after we get him, and the people that are blaming him, all into a court room together. And we give him a chance to say why he reckons he is not guilty.’

¹⁷So those Jewish leaders came here to Caesarea with me. I didn’t waste any time. The next day I sat down in the court room, I told some soldiers to bring Paul in.

¹⁸The Jewish leaders stood up and blamed him, but they didn’t blame him for anything really bad, like I thought they would.

¹⁹They only talked about things that some Jews believe and other Jews don’t believe. They argued about a dead man called Jesus, and Paul kept saying, ‘Jesus is alive.’

²⁰I really didn’t know the right way to handle this court. I didn’t know any questions to ask Paul, so I said to him, ‘Are you happy to go to Jerusalem and let me judge you there?’

²¹But Paul said, ‘No, I’m not happy to go to Jerusalem. I want that biggest boss called Caesar, to judge me.’ So I told my soldiers to guard Paul here, until I can send him to Caesar, in Rome.”