Acts 22:17-29 - Paul's Call To Preach To The Gentiles
17 After I had come back to Jerusalem, one day while I was praying in the temple, I fell into a trance, 18 and saw Him saying to me, 'Make haste and at once get out of Jerusalem, because they will not accept your testimony about me.'
19 So I said, 'Lord, they know for themselves that from one synagogue to another I used to imprison and flog those who believed in you, 20 and when the blood of your martyr Stephen was being shed, I stood by and approved it, and held the clothes of those who killed him.'
21 Then He said to me, 'Go, because I am to send you out and far away among the heathen.'"
22 They listened to him until he said this, and then all at once they shouted, "Away with such a fellow from the earth! He is certainly not fit to live!"
23 While they were shouting and tossing their clothes about and flinging dust into the air, 24 the colonel ordered Paul to be brought into the barracks, and told them to examine him by flogging, in order that he might find out why they were crying out against him in such a way. 25 But when they had tied him for the flogging, Paul asked the captain who was standing by, "Is it lawful for you to flog a Roman, and one who is uncondemned at that?"
26 When the captain heard that, he went to the colonel and reported it. Then he asked him, "What are you going to do? This man is a Roman citizen."
27 So the colonel came to Paul and asked, "Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?" He answered, "Yes."
28 Then the colonel said, "I paid a large sum for this citizenship of mine." Paul said, "But I was born a citizen."
29 So the men who were going to examine him left him at once, and the colonel himself was frightened when he learned that he was a Roman citizen and that he had had him bound.