Acts 28:3-23

³Paul walked around and picked up some sticks and put them on the fire. But a cheeky snake jumped out from those sticks to get away from the fire, and it bit Paul’s hand and just hung on there.

⁴The people saw it hanging from Paul’s hand, and they knew that it was a cheeky one, so they said to each other, “I reckon that prisoner murdered somebody. He has was lucky in the sea and didn’t drown, but the god that punishes people will not let him live. The snake will kill him.”

⁵But Paul just shook the snake until it fell off into the fire, and nothing happened to him.

⁶The people watched Paul. They thought, “His body will swell up, or he will fall down dead.” But after they waited a long time they saw that he was still all right. Nothing bad happened to him. So then they changed their minds and said, “This man is a god.”

⁷The Roman boss of that island was called Publius. He owned some gardens near that beach. He asked us to come and stay at his place, and he took care of us for 3 days.

⁸At that time father of Publius was very sick. He was just lying in his bed all the time. He was hot with fever, and he had diarrhoea. So Paul went to see him. Then he put his hands on him, and prayed for him, and made him better.

⁹After Paul did that, all the other sick people on the island came to him, and he made them better too.

¹⁰Then the people there did a lot of things to show they thought we were great. And when the time came for us to get ready to sail away on another ship, those people gave us food and other things that we needed.

¹¹There was another ship there that had statues of the twin gods called Castor and Pollux on the front of it. That ship came from the town called Alexandria before the bad weather started and it stayed at Malta until the bad weather was finished. We stayed at Malta in that bad weather time too, for about 3 months. Then that other ship got ready to go on to Italy country, so we all got on that ship to go to Rome, in Italy country.

¹²We sailed away from Malta and we came to an island called Sicily, and we stopped at a town called Syracuse. We stayed there for 3 days.

¹³Then we kept going and we came to a town called Rhegium, in Italy country. The next day the wind was blowing from behind us and pushing us fast, and the day after that we came to the town called Puteoli. Then we got off there and left that ship.

¹⁴We met some Christians in Puteoli, and they asked us to stay with them, so we stayed there for a week. Then we left Puteoli and started to go along the road to Rome.

¹⁵Some Christians that lived in Rome heard that we were coming, so they came out from Rome to meet us half way. Some of them met us at the place called Appius, and others met us at the place called the 3 Pubs. Paul saw them and he felt really good and happy, and he thanked God for them.

¹⁶Then we all came to Rome. The Roman boss that was in charge of the prisoners there let Paul live in a house by himself, but he always had a soldier there to guard him.

¹⁷After Paul was in Rome for 3 days, he sent a message to the Jewish leaders to come and talk with him. So they came, and Paul said to them, “My brothers, I didn’t do anything bad to our people, and I didn’t say anything bad about our Jewish culture. But our leaders in Jerusalem grabbed me, and they started to kill me. Then the boss of the Roman soldiers came and got me, and made me his prisoner.

¹⁸The Roman bosses asked me questions in their court, and they listened to what I said to answer them, and they reckoned that I didn’t do anything bad. So they wanted to let me go.

¹⁹But the Jewish leaders didn’t agree, so I had to ask those bosses to send me to Rome, for the big boss called Caesar to judge me. But I don’t want to make any trouble for my own Jewish people, about anything.

²⁰So I asked you to come here now. I want to meet you and tell you my story. You see, I believe in the man that we are all waiting for. He is the one that God promised to send to us Israel people. But our leaders of Israel didn’t agree with me, and that is why I’m a prisoner now, tied up with this chain.”

²¹Then the Jewish leaders said, “We didn’t get any letters about you from our Jewish friends in Judea country. And some people came here from Judea, but none of them said anything bad about you.

²²But we know that people in a lot of places don’t agree with the Christians, so we want to hear what you have to say.”

²³Then they talked together and agreed to come back on another day to hear Paul. When that day came a lot of Jews came to Paul’s house. He started talking with them in the morning, and he kept going until the sun went down. He told them about the way God wants to bring people into his family, and he showed them that God’s book says that Jesus is the man that God sent to save people. He talked to them about the words in God’s book that Moses wrote, and the words that God’s other men wrote. He showed them that they all told that message about Jesus.