Acts 11

¹Now the apostles and the brothers throughout Judea heard that the nations had also welcomed the word of God. ²When Peter went up to Jerusalem, those of the circumcision party took issue with him, ³saying, "You entered the house of uncircumcised men and shared a meal with them!"

⁴Peter began to explain the matter to them in sequence, saying: ⁵"I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision—a certain vessel descending like a great linen sheet, being lowered from heaven by its four corners, and it came right to me. ⁶Looking closely at it, I observed and saw the four-footed animals of the earth, the wild beasts, the crawling things, and the birds of the sky. ⁷I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Rise, Peter, sacrifice and eat.’ ⁸But I said, ‘By no means, Lord, for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ ⁹But a voice from heaven answered a second time, ‘What God has made clean, you must not treat as common.’ ¹⁰This happened three times, and then everything was pulled up again into heaven.

¹¹At that very moment, three men stood at the house where we were, having been sent to me from Caesarea. ¹²The Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction. These six brothers also came with me, and we entered the man’s house. ¹³He reported to us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and summon Simon, the one called Peter; ¹⁴he will speak words to you by which you will be saved, you and your whole household.’ ¹⁵As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as he fell upon us at the beginning. ¹⁶Then I remembered the word of the Lord, how he used to say, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized in the Holy Spirit.’ ¹⁷If, therefore, God gave them the equal gift that he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to be able to hinder God?"

¹⁸When they heard these things, they were silenced and they glorified God, saying, "So then, even to the nations God has granted the change of heart that leads to life."

¹⁹Now those who had been scattered by the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. ²⁰But there were some of them, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, who came to Antioch and began speaking to the Greeks also, proclaiming the good news of the Lord Jesus. ²¹The hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.

²²News of this reached the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas as far as Antioch. ²³When he arrived and saw the grace of God, he was glad and began to encourage them all to remain true to the Lord with a purposeful heart, ²⁴because he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith. And a sizeable crowd was added to the Lord. ²⁵Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, ²⁶and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. For an entire year they met together within the church and taught a sizeable crowd. It was in Antioch that the disciples were first identified as 'Christians.'

²⁷In those days, prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. ²⁸One of them named Agabus stood up and signaled through the Spirit that a great famine was about to come upon the whole inhabited world (which happened during the reign of Claudius). ²⁹So the disciples determined that, according to their own prosperity, each of them would send relief for the service of the brothers living in Judea. ³⁰This they did, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul.