Chapter 1

¹In my first volume, Theophilus, I dealt with all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning ²until the day when through the holy Spirit he gave the apostles he had chosen their instructions, and was taken up to heaven. ³He had shown himself alive to them after he had suffered, in many convincing ways, appearing to them through forty days, and telling them about the Kingdom of God. ⁴And once when he ate with them, he instructed them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised.

“You have heard me speak of it,” he said, ⁵“for John baptized people in water, but in a few days you will be baptized in the holy Spirit.”

⁶So those who were present asked him,

“Master, is this the time when you are going to re-establish the kingdom for Israel?”

⁷He said to them,

“It is not for you to know times and dates which the Father has fixed by his own authority, ⁸but you will be given power when the holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be witnesses for me in Jerusalem and all over Judea and Samaria and to the very ends of the earth.”

⁹As he said this, he was caught up before their eyes and a cloud took him up from their sight. ¹⁰And while they were gazing after him into the sky, two men dressed in white suddenly stood beside them, ¹¹and said to them,

“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up into the sky? This very Jesus who has been caught up from you into heaven will come in just the way that you have seen him go up to heaven.”

¹²Then they went back to Jerusalem from the hill called the Olive-orchard, which is near Jerusalem, half a mile away.

¹³When they entered the city they went to the upstairs room where they were staying. There were Peter, John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James, the son of Alpheus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas, the son of James. ¹⁴They were all devoting themselves with one mind to prayer, with the women and Mary, Jesus’ mother, and his brothers.

¹⁵It was at that time that Peter got up among the brothers—there were about a hundred and twenty persons present—and said,

¹⁶“Brothers, the prediction of the Scriptures had to come true that the holy Spirit uttered by the lips of David, about Judas, who acted as guide for the men that arrested Jesus— ¹⁷for he was one of our number and a share in this ministry of ours fell to his lot.” ¹⁸(This man bought a piece of land with the money paid him for his treachery, and his body swelled up and burst open in the middle and all his vitals poured out. ¹⁹This fact was well known to all the residents of Jerusalem, so that the piece of land came to be called in their language Akeldamach, the bloody field.) ²⁰“For in the Book of Psalms it is written,

‘Let his estate be desolate, with no one to live on it,’

and

‘Let someone else take his position.’

²¹“So one of the men who has been associated with us all the time that the Lord Jesus moved about among us, ²²from his baptism by John to the time when he was caught up from us, must join us as a witness to his resurrection.”

²³Then they proposed two men, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was known as Justus, and Matthias. ²⁴And they prayed, saying,

“Lord, you who know all hearts, show us which one of these two you have chosen ²⁵to take this place of service as an apostle which Judas left to go where he belonged.”

²⁶Then they drew lots between them, and the lot fell on Matthias, and he was added to the eleven apostles.