Simon

Then I heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter, kill and eat.’

He told us how he had seen an angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter.

And seeing that this pleased the Jews, Herod proceeded to seize Peter during the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was fervently praying to God for him.

On the night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, with sentries standing guard at the entrance to the prison.

Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He tapped Peter on the side and woke him up, saying, “Get up quickly.” And the chains fell off his wrists.

Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know for sure that the Lord has sent His angel and rescued me from Herod’s grasp and from everything the Jewish people were anticipating.”

He knocked at the outer gate, and a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer it.

When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed that she forgot to open the gate, but ran inside and announced, “Peter is standing at the gate!”

But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astounded.

At daybreak there was no small commotion among the soldiers as to what had become of Peter.

After much discussion, Peter got up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you that the Gentiles would hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe.

Simon has told us how God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people to be His own.

What I mean is this: Individuals among you are saying, “I follow Paul,” “I follow Apollos,” “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.”

whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future. All of them belong to you,

Have we no right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas?

and that He appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve.

Only after three years did I go up to Jerusalem to confer with Cephas, and I stayed with him fifteen days.

On the contrary, they saw that I had been entrusted to preach the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised.

For the One who was at work in Peter’s apostleship to the circumcised was also at work in my apostleship to the Gentiles.

And recognizing the grace that I had been given, James, Cephas, and John—those reputed to be pillars—gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, so that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised.

When Cephas came to Antioch, however, I opposed him to his face, because he stood to be condemned.

When I saw that they were not walking in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, “If you, who are a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To the elect who are exiles of the Dispersion throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, chosen

Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours: