And as a proof that he has raised him from the dead, never to return to decay, he has said this: I will give you the holiness of David that fails not.

But when the Jews saw the crowds they were filled with jealousy; they began to contradict what Paul said and to abuse him.

So Paul and Barnabas spoke out fearlessly. "The word of God," they said, "had to be spoken to you in the first instance; but as you push it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, well, here we turn to the Gentiles!

For these are the Lord's orders to us: I have set you to be a light for the Gentiles, to bring salvation to the end of the earth."

said in a loud voice, "Stand erect on your feet." Up he jumped and began to walk.

But some of the believers who belonged to the Pharisaic party got up and said, "Gentiles must be circumcised and told to observe the law of Moses."

and a keen controversy sprang up; but Peter rose and said to them, "Brothers, you are well aware that from the earliest days God chose that of you all I should be the one by whom the Gentiles were to hear the word of the gospel and believe it.

When they had finished speaking, James spoke. "Brothers," he said, "listen to me.

Some days later, Paul said to Barnabas, "Come and let us go back to visit the brothers in every town where we have proclaimed the word of the Lord. Let us see how they are doing."

On the sabbath we went outside the gate to the bank of the river, where as usual there was a place of prayer; we sat down and talked to the women who had gathered.

Among the listeners there was a woman called Lydia, a dealer in purple who belonged to the town of Thyatira. She reverenced God, and the Lord opened her heart to attend to what Paul said.

When she was baptized, along with her household, she begged us, saying, "If you are convinced I am a believer in the Lord, come and stay at my house." She compelled us to come.

and brought them out (after securing the other prisoners). "Sirs," he said, "what must I do to be saved?"

"Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ," they said, "and then you will be saved, you and your household as well."

The jailer repeated this to Paul. "The praetors," he said, "have sent to release you. So come out and go in peace?"

But the Jews were aroused to jealousy; they got hold of some idle rascals to form a mob and set the town in an uproar; they attacked Jason's house in the endeavour to bring them out before the populace,

where the people were more amenable than at Thessalonica; they were perfectly ready to receive the Word and made a daily study of the scriptures to see if it was really as Paul said.

While Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his soul was irritated at the sight of the idols that filled the city.

Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also came across him. Some said, "Whatever does the fellow mean with his scraps of learning'?" Others said, "He looks like a herald of foreign deities" (this was because he preached 'Jesus' and 'the Resurrection').

So Paul stood in the middle of the Areopagus and said, "Men of Athens, I observe at every turn that you are a most religious people.

for it is in him that we live and move and exist ??as some of your own poets have said, 'We too belong to His race.'

But on hearing of a 'resurrection of dead men,' some sneered, while others said, "We will hear you again on that subject."

And the Lord said to Paul in a vision by night, "Have no fear, speak on and never stop,

Paul was just on the point of opening his lips to reply, when Gallio said to the Jews, "If it had been a misdemeanour or wicked crime, there would be some reason in me listening to you,O Jews.

After waiting on for a number of days Paul said goodbye to the brothers and sailed for Syria, accompanied by Priscilla and Aquila. (As the latter was under a vow, he had his head shaved at Cenchreae.)

who asked him to stay for a while. But he would not consent;

he said goodbye to them, telling them, "I will come back to you, if it is the will of God." Then, sailing from Ephesus,

whom he asked, "Did you receive the holy Spirit when you believed?" "No," they said, "we never even heard of its existence."

"Then," said he, "what were you baptized in?" "In John's baptism," they replied.

"John," said Paul, "baptized with a baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in Him who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus."

After these events Paul resolved in the Spirit to travel through Macedonia and Achaia on his way to Jerusalem. "After I get there," he said, "I must also visit Rome."

So he got them together, along with the workmen who belonged to similar trades, and said to them: "My men, you know this trade is the source of our wealth.

The secretary of state then got the mob calmed down, and said to them, "Men of Ephesus, who on earth does not know that the city of Ephesus is Warden of the temple of the great Artemis and of the statue that fell from heaven?

In the window sat a young man called Eutychus, and as Paul's address went on and on, he got overcome with drowsiness, went fast asleep, and fell from the third storey. He was picked up a corpse,

but Paul went downstairs, threw himself upon him, and embraced him. "Do not lament," he said, "the life is still in him."

Now we had gone on beforehand to the ship and set sail for Assos, intending to take Paul on board there. This was his own arrangement, for he intended to travel by land.

When they came to him, he said, "You know quite well how I lived among you all the time ever since I set foot in Asia,

But then, I set no value on my own life as compared with the joy of finishing my course and fulfilling the commission I received from the Lord Jesus to attest the gospel of the grace of God.

I showed you how this was the way to work hard and succour the needy, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, who said, 'To give is happier than to get.'"

When we had torn ourselves away from them and set sail, we made a straight run to Cos, next day to Rhodes, and thence to Patara;

as we found a ship there bound for Phoenicia, we went on board and set sail.

We found out the local disciples and stayed there for seven days. These disciples told Paul by the Spirit not to set foot in Jerusalem;

and said goodbye to one another. We went on board and they went home.

They glorified God when they heard it. Then they said to him, "Brother, you see how many thousands of believers there are among the Jews, all of them ardent upholders of the Law.

The seven days were almost over when the Asiatic Jews, catching sight of him in the temple, stirred up all the crowd and laid hands on him,

Just as he was being taken into the barracks, Paul said to the commander, "May I say a word to you?" "You know Greek!" said the commander.

Paul said, "I am a Jew, a native of Tarsus in Cilicia, the citizen of a famous town. Pray let me speak to the people."

'Who are you?' I asked. He said to me, 'I am Jesus the Nazarene, and you are persecuting me.'

I said, 'What am I to do?' And the Lord said to me, 'Get up and make your way into Damascus; there?you shall be told about all you are destined to do.'

came to me and standing beside me said, 'Saul, my brother, regain your sight!' The same moment I regained my sight and looked up at him.

Then he said, 'The God of our fathers has appointed you to know his will, to see the Just One, and to hear him speak with his own lips.

'But, Lord,' I said, 'they surely know it was I who imprisoned and flogged those who believed in you throughout the synagogues,

But he said to me, 'Go; I will send you afar to the Gentiles ????'"

Till he said that, they had listened to him. But at that they shouted, "Away with such a creature from the earth! He is not fit to live!"

They had strapped him up, when Paul said to the officer who was standing by, "Are you allowed to scourge a Roman citizen ??and to scourge him without a trial?"

When the officer heard this, he went to the commander and said to him, "What are you going to do? This man is a Roman citizen."

So the commander went to him and said, "Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?" "Yes," he said.

The commander replied, "I had to pay a large sum for this citizenship." "But I was born a citizen," said Paul.

With a steady look at the Sanhedrin Paul said, "Brothers, I have lived with a perfectly good conscience before God down to the present day."

At this Paul said to him, "You whitewashed wall, God will strike you! You sit there to judge me by the Law, do you? And you break the Law by ordering me to be struck!"

The bystanders said, "What! would you rail at God's high priest?"

"Brothers," said Paul, "I did not know he was high priest" (for it is written, You must not speak evil of any ruler of your people).

When he said this, a quarrel broke out between the Pharisees and the Sadducees; the meeting was divided.

On the following night the Lord stood by Paul and said, "Courage! As you have testified to me at Jerusalem, so you must testify at Rome."

Paul summoned one of the officers and said, "Take this young man to the commander, for he has some news to give him."

He summoned two of the officers and said, "Get ready by nine o'clock to-night two hundred infantry to march as far as Caesarea, also seventy troopers, and two hundred spearmen."

he said, "I will go into your case whenever your accusers arrive," giving orders that he was to be kept in the praetorium of Herod.

So Paul was summoned, and then Tertullus proceeded to accuse him. "Your excellency," he said to Felix, "as it is owing to you that we enjoy unbroken peace, and as it is owing to your wise care that the state of this nation has been improved in every way and everywhere,

Then at a nod from the governor Paul made his reply. "As I know you have administered justice in this nation for a number of years," he said, "I feel encouraged to make my defence,

Failing them, let these men yonder tell what fault they found with my appearance before the Sanhedrin! ??21 unless it was with the single sentence I uttered, when I stood and said, 'It is for the resurrection of the dead that I am on my trial to-day before you.'"

but when he argued about morality, self-mastery, and the future judgment, Felix grew uneasy. "You may go for the present," he said; "when I can find a moment, I will send for you"

After staying not more than eight or ten days with them, he went down to Caesarea. Next day he took his seat on the tribunal and ordered Paul to be brought before him.

Paul said, "I am standing before Caesar's tribunal; that is where I ought to be tried. I have done no wrong whatever to the Jews ??you know that perfectly well.

As they were spending several days there, Festus laid Paul's case before the king. "There is a man," he said, "who was left in prison by Felix.

Well, the day after they came here along with me, I took my seat on the tribunal without any loss of time. I ordered the man to be brought in,

The questions at issue referred to their own religion and to a certain Jesus who had died. Paul said he was alive.

"I should like to hear the man myself," said Agrippa to Festus. "You shall hear him to-morrow," said Festus.

"King Agrippa and all here present," said Festus, "you see before you a man of whom the entire body of the Jews at Jerusalem and also here have complained to me. They loudly insist he ought not to live any longer.

Then Agrippa said to Paul, "You have our permission to speak upon your own behalf." At this Paul stretched out his hand and began his defence.

'Who are you?' I asked. And the Lord said, 'I am Jesus, and you are persecuting me.

"Your excellency," said Paul to Festus, "I am not mad, I am speaking the sober truth.

"Long or short," said Paul, "I would to God that not only you but all my hearers to-day could be what I am ??barring these chains!"

"He might have been released," said Agrippa to Festus, "if he had not appealed to Caesar."

Embarking in an Andramyttian ship which was bound for the Asiatic seaports, we set sail, accompanied by a Macedonian from Thessalonica called Aristarchus.

"Men," said he, "I see this voyage is going to be attended with hardship and serious loss not only to the cargo and the ship but also to our own lives."

and, as the harbour was badly placed for wintering in, the majority proposed to set sail and try if they could reach Phoenix and winter there (Phoenix is a Cretan harbour facing S.W. and N.W.).

When they had gone without food for a long time, Paul stood up among them and said, "Men, you should have listened to me and spared yourselves this hardship and loss by refusing to set sail from Crete.

when Paul said to the officer and the soldiers, "You cannot be saved unless these men stay by the ship."

Just before daybreak Paul begged them all to take some food. "For fourteen days," he said, "you have been on the watch all the time, without a proper meal.

When the natives saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to each other, "This man must be a murderer! He has escaped the sea, but Justice will not let him live."

they made us rich presents and furnished us, when we set sail, with all we needed.

We set sail, after three months, in an Alexandrian ship, with the Dioscuri on her figure-head, which had wintered at the island.

where we came across some of the brotherhood, who invited us to stay a week with them. In this way we reached Rome.

Three days later, he called the leading Jews together, and when they met he said to them, "Brothers, although I have done nothing against the People or our ancestral customs, I was handed over to the Romans as a prisoner from Jerusalem.

Some were convinced by what he said, but the others would not believe.

when he said, Go and tell this people, 'You will hear and hear but never understand, you will see and see but never perceive.'

PAUL, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God

for no person will be acquitted in his sight on the score of obedience to law. What the Law imparts is the consciousness of sin.

set free from sin, you have passed into the service of righteousness.

but now that you are set free from sin, now that you have passed into the service of God, your gain is consecration, and the end of that is life eternal.