Acts 5:15-25

¹⁵A lot of people saw the close followers of Jesus do powerful things, so they brought sick people and put them on beds and mats on the roads. They thought, “Even if Peter doesn’t touch them maybe his shadow will touch them as he walks past them, and that will make them better.”

¹⁶Big mobs of people that lived in small towns near Jerusalem brought their sick people into the city, and they brought people that had bad spirits in them too. And the close followers of Jesus made all of them better.

¹⁷There were some Jewish people called Sadducees. The big boss of the Jewish ceremonies was a Sadducee. He and all the other Sadducees were really jealous of the close followers of Jesus.

¹⁸So those Sadducees sent some soldiers to grab the close followers of Jesus and lock them up in the jail.

¹⁹But that night God sent an angel messenger to them, and he opened the jail doors and took the close followers of Jesus out.

²⁰That angel said to them, “Go and stand in God’s ceremony house and tell all the people there everything about this new life that Jesus gives.”

²¹So those men listened to that angel and they went to God’s ceremony house very early in the morning, and they started teaching the people there. At the same time the big boss of the Jewish ceremonies and his friends called all the Jewish council men together for a meeting. (They had these meetings to work out if something was right or wrong.) Then they sent the soldiers to the jail to get the close followers of Jesus.

²²But those soldiers got there and they couldn’t find those men in the jail. So they went back to the meeting and they said,

²³“We got to the jail, and the guards were standing there near the locked doors. We opened the doors and went inside but we couldn’t find anyone there.”

²⁴The boss of the soldiers that guarded God’s ceremony house heard the soldiers say that, and so did the bosses of the Jewish ceremonies, and they didn’t understand. They thought, “How did they get out? What will happen next?”

²⁵Then somebody came and said to them, “Listen. Those men that you put in the jail are in the yard of God’s ceremony house. They are standing there teaching the people.”