After He had suffered, He had shown Himself alive to them, by many convincing proofs, appearing to them through a period of forty days, and telling them the things about the kingdom of God.

At that time Peter got up among the brothers (there were about a hundred and twenty present) and said,

Cretans and Arabs -- we hear them all alike telling in our own tongues the great wonders of God."

'It will occur in the last days, says God, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all mankind. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will have visions. Your old men will have dreams.

"Fellow Israelites, listen to what I say. Jesus of Nazareth, as you yourselves well know, a man accredited to you by God through mighty deeds and wonders and wonder-works which God performed through Him right here among you,

this very Jesus, I say, after He was betrayed, in accordance with the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you had wicked men kill by nailing Him to a cross;

but God raised Him up by loosing Him from the pangs of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held by the power of death.

So, as he was a prophet and knew that God with an oath had promised to put one of his descendants on his throne,

I mean Jesus whom God raised from the dead, to which fact we are all witnesses,

So He has been exalted to God's right hand and has received from His Father, as promised, and poured out upon us the Holy Spirit, as you see and hear.

"Therefore, let all the descendants of Israel understand beyond a doubt that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ."

for the promise belongs to you and your children, as well as to all those who are far away whom the Lord our God may call to Him."

constantly praising God and always having the favor of all the people. And every day the Lord continued to add to them the people who were being saved.

when a man crippled from his birth was being carried by, who used to be laid every day at what was called The Beautiful Gate of the temple, to beg from people on their way into the temple.

The beggar looked at them, supposing that he was going to get something from them.

and at once he leaped to his feet and started walking; then he went into the temple with them, walking, leaping, and praising God.

When all the people saw him walking about and praising God,

and recognized him as the very man who used to sit at The Beautiful Gate of the temple to beg, they were completely astounded and bewildered at what occurred to him.

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our forefathers, has glorified His Servant Jesus, whom you yourselves betrayed and disowned before Pilate, although he had decided to set Him free.

and you killed the Prince of life, but God raised Him from the dead, to which fact we are witnesses.

But in this way God fulfilled what He by the lips of all the prophets foretold, that the Christ should suffer.

Yet heaven must retain Him till the time for the universal restoration of which God in the early ages spoke through the lips of His holy prophets.

Moses, indeed, said: 'The Lord God will raise up a prophet for you from among your brothers, as He did me. You must attentively listen to everything that He tells you.

And you are the descendants of the prophets and the heirs of the sacred compact which God made with your forefathers, when He said to Abraham: 'All the families of the earth are to be blessed through your posterity.'

if it is for a good deed to a helpless man, or to learn how he was cured, that we are today being tried,

you and all the people of Israel must know that it is by the authority of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead -- yes, I repeat it, it is by His authority that this man stands here before you well.

But Peter and John answered them, "You must decide whether it is right in the sight of God to obey you instead of Him,

So, after further threatening them, they turned them loose, because they could not find any way to punish them, on account of the people, because they all continued to praise God for what had taken place,

When they heard this, with one united prayer to God they said: "O Lord, you are the Maker of heaven, earth, and sea, and everything that is in them, and the One

When they had prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and continued courageously to speak God's message.

So with great power the apostles continued to give their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and God's favor rested richly on them all.

As long as it was unsold, was it not yours, and when it was sold, was not the money at your disposal? How could you have the heart to do such a thing! You did not lie to men but to God!"

The younger men, however, got up, wrapped up his body, carried it out, and buried it.

Peter and the apostles answered, "We must obey God rather than men.

The God of our forefathers raised Jesus to life after you had hanged Him on a cross and killed Him.

God has exalted to His right hand this very One as our Leader and Saviour, in order to give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel.

We and the Holy Spirit that God has given to those who practice obedience to Him are witnesses to these things."

But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, highly respected by all the people, got up in the council and gave orders to put the men out of the council a little while;

but if it has its origin in God, you can never stop it. It is to be feared that you may find yourselves fighting God."

and not for a single day did they stop teaching in the temple square and in private houses the good news of Jesus the Christ.

So the Twelve called together the whole body of the disciples, and said, "It is not desirable that we should leave off preaching the word of God to wait on tables.

So, brothers, you must select from your number seven men of good standing, full of the Spirit, and of good practical sense, and we will assign them to this business,

while we will go on devoting ourselves to prayer and the word of God."

So God's message continued to spread, and the number of the disciples in Jerusalem continued to grow rapidly; a large number, even of priests, continued to surrender to the faith.

But members of the synagogue known as that of the Libyans, Cyreneans, and Alexandrians, and men from Cilicia and Asia, got to debating with Stephen,

but they could not cope with his good practical sense and the spiritual power with which he usually spoke.

So they instigated men to say, "We have heard him speaking abusive words against Moses and God."

He answered: "Listen, brothers and fathers. The glorious God appeared to our forefather Abraham while he was in Mesopotamia before he ever made his home in Haran,

So he left the country of the Chaldeans and for a time made his home in Haran. Then after the death of his father, God had him move to this country in which you now live.

This is what God promised: 'His descendants will be strangers living in a foreign land, and its people will enslave and oppress them for four hundred years.'

But God further promised: 'I will pass sentence on the nation that enslaves them, and after that they will leave that country and worship me on this very spot.'

And the patriarchs became jealous of Joseph and sold him as a slave into Egypt. But God was with him

As the time approached for realizing the promise which God had made to Abraham, the people multiplied and became more numerous in Egypt,

He supposed that his brothers would understand that God through his instrumentality was going to deliver them, but they did not.

The next day he showed himself to two of them engaged in a fight, and he tried to get them to make friends, saying, 'You are brothers, why should you harm each other?'

'I am the God of your forefathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.' Moses was so terrified that he did not dare to look at the bush.

That very Moses whom they refused, saying, 'Who made you our ruler and referee?' was the man whom God sent to be both their ruler and deliverer, by the help of the angel who had appeared to him in the bush.

It was this Moses who said to the descendants of Israel, 'God will raise up a prophet for you from among you, just as He did me.'

So God turned away from them and gave them over to worship the starry host, as it is written in the Book of the Prophets: 'Did you really offer me victims and sacrifices those forty years in the desert, O house of Israel?

No, you offered me the tent of Moloch and the star of your god Rompha, the images you had made to worship! So I will now remove you beyond Babylon.'

"In the desert our forefathers had the tent of the testimony, like the model Moses had seen, as God who spoke to him ordered him to make it.

This tent our forefathers brought in and passed on when under Joshua they dispossessed the nations which God drove out before them, and it remained until the time of David.

He found favor with God and begged to design a dwelling for the God of Jacob,

But since he was full of the Holy Spirit, he looked right into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at God's right hand.

So he said, "Look! I see heaven open, and the Son of Man standing at God's right hand."

Now those who were scattered went from place to place preaching the good news of the message.

Everybody, high and low, kept running after him, saying, "He is certainly what is known as the Great Power of God!"

But when the people came to believe the good news proclaimed by Philip about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, both men and women were constantly baptized.

When the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted God's message, they sent Peter and John there.

But Peter said to him, "Your money go to perdition with you for even dreaming you could buy the gift of God with money!

You have no share or part in this matter, for your heart is not sincere in the sight of God.

So after they had given their testimony and spoken the Lord's message, they started back to Jerusalem, and on the way continued to tell the good news in many Samaritan villages.

Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Get up and go south by the road that leads from Jerusalem to Gaza; this is the desert road."

So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian official, a member of the court of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, her chief treasurer, who had come to Jerusalem to worship,

He answered, "How in the world could I, unless someone teaches me?" And he begged him to get up and sit with him.

Then Philip opened his mouth, and starting from this passage, he told him the good news about Jesus.

but Philip was found at Ashdod, and he went on telling the good news in all the towns until he reached Caesarea.

But get up and go into the city, and there it will be told you what you ought to do."

Then Saul got up off the ground, but he could not see anything, although his eyes were wide open. So they took him by the hand and led him into Damascus,

And the Lord said to him, "Get up and go to the street called 'The Straight Street,' and ask at the house of Judas for one named Saul, from Tarsus, for he is now praying there.

And all at once something like scales fell from his eyes, he regained his sight, got up and was baptized,

and at once he began to preach in their synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God.

Now, as Peter was going here and there among them all, he finally went down to God's people who lived at Lydda.

So Peter said to him, "Aeneas, Jesus Christ now cures you! Get up and make your bed!" And at once he got up.

At Joppa there was a woman, a disciple, whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek means Dorcas, that is, Gazelle. She had filled her life with good deeds and works of charity, which she was always doing.

So Peter at once got up and went with them. When he reached there, they took him to the room upstairs, and all the widows took their stand around him, crying and showing him the shirts and coats that Dorcas had made while she was still with them.

Then Peter put them all out of the room, knelt down and prayed, and, turning to the body, said, "Tabitha, get up!" Then she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter, she sat up.

a religious man, too, who revered God with all his household, who was always liberal in his many deeds of charity to the people, and who had the habit of praying to God.

One afternoon about three o'clock he had a vision and clearly saw an angel of God come to him and say, "Cornelius!"

He stared at him and in terror asked, "What is it, sir?" The angel answered him, "Your prayers and your deeds of charity have gone up and been remembered before God.

But he got very hungry and wanted something to eat. While they were getting it ready, he fell into a trance

A voice came to him, "Get up, Peter, kill something and eat it."

A second time the voice came to him, "The things that God has cleansed you must not call unclean."

Now while Peter was still at a loss to know what the vision he had seen could mean, the men who had been sent by Cornelius had asked for the way to Simon's house and had stopped at the gate;

Get up and go down, and without hesitation go on with them, for I have sent them."

They answered, "Cornelius, a colonel in the army, an upright man and one who reveres God, and a man of high reputation with the whole Jewish nation, was instructed by a holy angel to send for you to come to his house and to listen to a message you would bring."

But Peter lifted him to his feet, saying, "Get up, I too am just a man myself."

and he said to him, "You know that it is against the law for a Jew to associate with a foreigner or to visit one, but God has taught me not to call any man vulgar or ceremonially unclean;

and said, 'Cornelius, your prayer has been heard and your deeds of charity have been remembered by God.

So at once I sent for you, and you have been kind enough to come. So now we are all here in God's presence to listen to anything that the Lord has commanded you to say."