Acts 5:3-20

³Then Peter said to him, “Ananias, why did you let Satan be your boss and get you to lie to the Holy Spirit? You kept for yourself some of the money that you got for that land.

⁴Look, that land was yours and you didn’t have to sell it. But you sold it and got some money. Then you could do whatever you liked with that money. You didn’t have to bring it to us. So why did you think you could trick us and tell us that this little bit of money was all you got for that land? You lied to us, and you lied to God too.”

⁵As soon as Ananias heard Peter say that he fell down and died. A lot of people heard about what happened and they were frightened.

⁶And the young men there got up and wrapped up his body in cloth, then they took it out of the house and buried it.

⁷About 3 hours later the wife of Ananias came into that house, but she didn’t know that her husband was dead.

⁸Peter asked her, “Can you tell me, is this all the money that you and Ananias got for that land?” She said, “Yes, that’s all the money.”

⁹So Peter said to her, “Why did you and your husband agree with each other to try to trick the Holy Spirit? Listen. Your husband is dead, and the men that buried him are near the door right now, and they will carry you out too.”

¹⁰Right then, Sapphira fell down and died in front of Peter. Then the young men came in and saw her dead, so they took her out and buried her next to her husband.

¹¹Then all the Christians were really frightened. And all the other people that heard about those things were really frightened too.

¹²The close followers of Jesus kept doing powerful things to show everyone that God is powerful. All the Christians kept meeting together in God’s ceremony house, in the part called Solomon’s shade area.

¹³There were other people in that city that were too frightened to join the Christians. But most of the people thought the Christians were really good people,

¹⁴and some of them kept listening, and then a lot of men and women started believing in Jesus, and then they joined up with the Christians.

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.”