Acts of the Apostles 1

¹ In my earlier work,[*a] Theophilus, I dealt with everything Jesus had done and I taught from the beginning

² until the day he gave his instructions to the apostles he had chosen through the Holy Spirit, and was taken up to heaven.

³ He had shown himself alive to them after his Passion by many demonstrations: for forty days he had continued to appear to them and tell them about the kingdom of God.

⁴ When he had been at table with them, he had told them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for what the Father had promised. ‘It is’ he had said ‘what you have heard me speak about:

⁵ John baptised with water but you, not many days from now, will be baptised with the Holy Spirit.’

⁶ Now having met together,[*b] they asked him, ‘Lord, has the time come? Are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel?’

⁷ He replied, ‘It is not for you to know times or dates that the Father has decided by his own authority,

⁸ but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and then you will be my witnesses not only in Jerusalem but throughout Judaea and Samaria, and indeed to the ends of the earth’.

⁹ As he said this he was lifted up while they looked on, and a cloud took him from their sight.

¹⁰ They were still staring into the sky when suddenly two men in white were standing near them

¹¹ and they said, ‘Why are you men from Galilee standing here looking into the sky? Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven, this same Jesus will come back in the same way as you have seen him go there.’

¹² So from the Mount of Olives, as it is called, they went back to Jerusalem, a short distance away, no more than a sabbath walk;

¹³ and when they reached the city they went to the upper room where they were staying; there were Peter and John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Jude son of James.[*c]

¹⁴ All these joined in continuous prayer, together with several women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.[*d]

¹⁵ One day Peter stood up to speak to the brothers[*e]-there were about a hundred and twenty persons in the congregation:

¹⁶ ‘Brothers, the passage of scripture had to be fulfilled in which the Holy Spirit, speaking through David, foretells the fate of Judas, who offered himself as a guide to the men who arrested Jesus –

¹⁷ after having been one of our number and actually sharing this ministry of ours.

¹⁸ As you know, he bought a field with the money he was paid for his crime. He fell headlong and burst open, and all his entrails poured out.

¹⁹ Everybody in Jerusalem heard about it and the field came to be called the Bloody Acre, in their language Hakeldama.

²⁰ Now in the Book of Psalms it says: Let his camp be reduced to ruin, Let there be no one to live in it.[*f] And again: Let someone else take his office.[*g]

²¹ ‘We must therefore choose someone who has been with us the whole time that the Lord Jesus was travelling round with us,

²² someone who was with us right from the time when John was baptising until the day when he was taken up from us – and he can act with us as a witness to his resurrection.’

²³ Having nominated two candidates, Joseph known as Barsabbas, whose surname was Justus, and Matthias,

²⁴ they prayed, ‘Lord, you can read everyone’s heart; show us therefore which of these two you have chosen

²⁵ to take over this ministry and apostolate, which Judas abandoned to go to his proper place’.

²⁶ They then drew lots for them, and as the lot fell to Matthias, he was listed as one of the twelve apostles.