Acts 27:23-37

²³You see, I work for God, and last night he sent one of his angel messengers to me. He came and stood beside me,

²⁴and he said, ‘Paul, don’t be frightened. You have to go to Rome and stand in front of the big boss called Caesar. And God will be good to all the others, too, that are with you on this ship. None of them will die.’

²⁵Listen friends, I believe that God will help us, just like that angel told me.

²⁶But the ship will crash on to an island, and we will all go ashore there.”

²⁷We were in that storm for 2 weeks. The wind was still blowing the ship across the water called the Adriatic Sea. Then, about the middle of the night, the sailors thought the ship was getting close to land.

²⁸So they got a rope with a stone on the end of it and dropped it into the water to find out how deep it was. That stone went down 37 meters into the water, so they knew the water was 37 metres deep. We went a little further and then they threw the stone out again. This time it only went down 28 metres, so they knew the water was not so deep there.

²⁹In that way they knew for sure that the ship was getting close to land. Then they got frightened. They thought the ship might smash on to some rocks, so they threw out 4 anchors on ropes from the back, to stop the ship, and they hoped for daylight to come so they could see the land.

³⁰The sailors wanted to leave the ship in the little boat, so they lied to everyone, they said, “We are going to drop some anchors from the front of the ship.” Then they started to lower the little boat into the sea.

³¹But Paul told the soldiers, and their boss, “If these sailors don’t stay on the ship, you will all drown.”

³²So the soldiers cut the ropes of the little boat and let it fall down into the water and go away.

³³Just before daylight came, Paul tried to get everyone to eat some food. He said, “For the past 14 days you were too worried, and you didn’t eat anything.

³⁴So now I’m telling you, you’ve got to eat some food, so you will get stronger and stay alive. I know that none of you will drown.”

³⁵After he said that, while everyone was looking at him, Paul picked up some bread and thanked God for it. Then he broke the bread and started to eat it.

³⁶Then the rest of us felt better, so we all ate some food.

³⁷There were 276 of us on the ship altogether.