Acts
11* And the apostles, and the Palestinian brothers, heard that the foreigners too had received the word of God.
2 But when Peter came up to Jerusalem, the circumcised took issue with him, 3 saying “You went in where men with uncircumcised bodies were and ate with them.” 4 But Peter began and stated the case to them in detail, 5 “I was in the city of Joppa, praying, and in a trance I saw a vision, a thing coming down, like a great sheet being let down by four corners out of the sky, and it came clear down to me. 6 I fixed my eyes on it and looked, and saw the different quadrupeds, the wild beasts, the reptiles, the birds of the air. 7 And I also heard a voice say to me ‘Up, Peter, kill and eat.’ 8 And I said ‘No, no, sir, because a thing vile or unclean has never gone into my mouth.’ 9 And a second time a voice out of the sky answered ‘What God has made clean do not you make vile.’ 10 And this happened three times, and it was all of it drawn up into the sky again.
11* “And instantly three men made their appearance standing outside the house I was in, sent from Cesarea to me. 12 And the Spirit told me to go along with them without making any difference. And these six brothers too went with me, and we went into the man’s house. 13 And he reported to us how he had seen the angel take its stand in his house and say ‘Send to Joppa for Simon, also named Peter, 14 who will speak words to you by which you and all your family shall be saved.’
15 “And as I began to speak the Holy Spirit fell on them just the same as it had on us at first. 16 And I remembered the Lord’s word, how he said ‘John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized in Holy Spirit.’ 17** So if God gave them the same gift equally with us when they believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to claim to veto God?”
18 At hearing this they let the matter drop, and glorified God, saying “Then God has given the foreigners too repentance into life.”
19 So those who dispersed at the distress that arose over Stephen went along as far as Phenicia and Cyprus and Antioch speaking the word to nobody but Jews alone; 20 but there were some of them, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, who, when they came to Antioch, spoke also to the Greek-speaking population, announcing the gospel of the Lord Jesus; 21 and the Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number that believed turned to the Lord.
22 And word about them came to the ears of the church at Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas off to Antioch; 23* and when he arrived and saw the grace of God he was glad, and exhorted them all to stick to their hearts’ purpose in the Lord, 24* because he was a good man and full of Holy Spirit and of faith; and a considerable number joined the Lord. 25 And he went out to Tarsus to look up Saul, 26** and when he found him he brought him to Antioch. And it came to pass that they met with the church through a whole year, and taught a considerable crowd; and that in Antioch the disciples first came to be styled Christians.
27 And meanwhile prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch; 28 and one of them, Agabus by name, stood up and gave an indication by the Spirit that there was to be a great famine all over the world of men; which there was in Claudius’s time. 29 And the converts, as one and another of them could afford, each set a sum apart to send for relief to the brothers that lived in Palestine; 30 and so they did, sending to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.