that you abstain from everything that is offered to idols, from tasting blood, from the meat of animals that have been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves free from these things, you will prosper. Good-by."

When she and her household were baptized, she begged us by continuing to say, "If you have made up your mind that I am a real believer in the Lord, come and stay at my house." And she continued to insist that we do so.

The jailer reported this message to Paul, saying, "The chiefs of the police court have sent orders to let you go. So now you may come out and go in peace."

They stopped at Jason's house and tried to bring them out to the people. So, as they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the town magistrates, shouting, "These fellows, who have turned the world topsy-turvy, have come here too,

For it is through union with Him that we live and move and exist, as some of your own poets have said, "'For we are His offspring too.'

because I am with you, and no one is going to attack you so as to injure you, because I have many people in this city."

but as it is questions about words and titles and your own law, you will have to see to it yourselves. I refuse to act as judge in these matters."

After these events had been brought to a close, Paul under the guidance of the Spirit decided to pass through Macedonia and Greece on his way to Jerusalem, saying, "After I have gone there I must see Rome too."

For you have brought these men here, although they are not guilty of sacrilege or of abusive speech against our goddess.

So then, if Demetrius and his fellow-workmen have a charge against anybody, there are the courts and the judges; let them go to law.

but constantly and earnestly I urged Greeks as well as Jews to turn with repentance to God and to have faith in our Lord Jesus.

Because I know that after I have gone violent wolves will break in among you and will not spare the flock.

I have never coveted any man's silver or gold or clothes.

They have been repeatedly told about you that you continuously teach the Jews who live among the heathen to turn their backs on Moses, and that you continue to tell them to stop circumcising their children, and to stop observing the cherished customs.

What is your duty, then? They will certainly hear that you have come.

Now you must do just what we tell you. We have here four men who are under a vow.

Take them along with you, purify yourself with them, and bear the expense for them of having their heads shaved. Then everybody will know that none of those things they have been told about you are so, but that you yourself are living as a constant observer of the law.

As for the heathen who have become believers, we have sent them our resolution that they must avoid anything that is contaminated by idols, the tasting of blood, the meat of strangled animals, and sexual immorality."

"Brothers and fathers, listen now to what I have to say in my defense."

because you are to be His witness to all men of what you have seen and heard.

Paul fixed his eyes upon the council and said, "Brothers, with a clear conscience I have done my duty to God up to this very day."

But that same night the Lord stood by Paul's side and said, "Courage! For just as you have testified for me in Jerusalem, you must testify for me in Rome, too."

They went to the high priests and elders and said to them, "We have taken a solemn oath not to taste a morsel till we have killed Paul.

So the colonel took him by the arm, stepped to one side so as to be alone, and asked him, "What is it you have to tell me?"

He answered, "The Jews have agreed to ask you to bring Paul down to the council tomorrow, as though you were going to examine his case more carefully.

But do not yield to them, for more than forty of them are lying in wait for him; they have taken an oath not to eat or drink till they have killed him. They are all ready now, just waiting for your promise."

Because a plot against the man has been reported to me as brewing, I at once am sending him on to you and have directed his accusers to present their charge against him before you."

For we have found this man a perfect pest and a distributor of the peace among the Jews throughout the world. He is a ringleader in the sect of the Nazarenes;

At the governor's signal to Paul, he answered: "Since I know that you for many years have acted as judge for this nation, I cheerfully make my defense,

and they have never found me debating with anybody in the temple nor making a disturbance in the synagogues or about the city,

and they cannot prove the charges they have just made against me.

and I have the same hope in God that they cherish for themselves, that there is to be a resurrection of the upright and the wicked.

So I am always striving to have a conscience that is clear before God and men.

But there were some Jews from Asia who ought to be here before you and to present their charges, if they have any, against me.

He ordered the captain to keep Paul in custody but to let him have freedom and not to prevent his friends from showing him kindness.

and begged the governor as a favor to have Paul come to Jerusalem, because they were plotting an ambush to kill him on the way.

"So have your influential men go down with me," said he, "and present charges against the man, if there is anything wrong with him."

Paul continued to maintain, in his defense, "I have committed no offense against the Jewish law or temple or against the emperor."

But Paul said, "I now am standing before the emperor's court where I ought to be tried. I have done the Jews no wrong, as you very well know.

If I am guilty and have done anything that deserves death, I am not begging to keep from dying, but if there is nothing in the charges which these men make against me, no one can give me up as a favor to them. I appeal to the emperor."

Then Festus, after conferring with the council, answered, "To the emperor you have appealed, to the emperor you shall go!"

But as Paul appealed to have his case kept for his Majesty's decision, I ordered him kept in custody until I could send him up to the emperor."

But I found that he had not done anything for which he deserved to die; however, as he has himself appealed to his Majesty, I have decided to send him up.

Yet, I have nothing definite to write our Sovereign about him. So I have brought him before all of you, especially before you, King Agrippa, to get from your examination something to put in writing.

Then Agrippa said to Paul, "You have permission to speak in defense of yourself." So Paul with outstretched arm began to make his defense.

"I count myself fortunate, King Agrippa," said he, "that it is before you that I can defend myself today against all the charges which the Jews have preferred against me,

"The kind of life I have lived from my youth up, as spent in my early days among my own nation and in Jerusalem, is well known to all Jews,

for they have known all along from the first, if they would but testify to it, that I as a Pharisee have lived by the standard of the strictest sect of our religion.

But get up and stand on your feet, for I have appeared to you for the very purpose of appointing you my servant and a witness to me of the things which you have seen and those which I shall yet enable you to see.

to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light and from Satan's power to God, so as to have their sins forgiven and have a possession among those that are consecrated by faith in me.'

As I have gotten help from God clear down to this very day, I stand here to testify to high and low alike, without adding a syllable to what Moses and the prophets said should take place,

Agrippa said to Festus, "He might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed to the emperor."

After they had gone a long time without any food, then Paul got up among them and said: "Men, you ought to have listened to me and not to have sailed from Crete, and you would have escaped this disaster and loss.

So keep up your courage, men, for I have confidence in my God that it will all come out just as I was told.

Until day was about to break Paul kept begging them all to take something to eat. He said, "For fourteen days today you have been constantly waiting and going without food, not even taking a bite.

Three days later, he invited the leading men of the Jews to come to see him, and when they came, he said to them, "Brothers, I have done nothing against our people or the customs of our forefathers; yet at Jerusalem I was turned over to the Romans as a prisoner.

They answered him, "We have not received any letters from Judea about you, and not one of our Jewish brothers has come and reported or stated anything wicked about you.

For this people's soul has grown dull, and they scarcely hear with their ears, and they have shut tight their eyes, so that they may never see with their eyes, and understand with their souls, and turn to me, that I may cure them."'

through whom we have received God's favor and a commission as an apostle in His name to urge upon all the heathen obedience inspired by faith,

Furthermore, I want you to know, brothers, that I have often planned to come to see you (though until now I have been prevented), in order that I may gather some fruit among you too, as I have among the rest of the heathen.

Forever since the creation of the world, His invisible characteristics -- His eternal power and divine nature -- have been made intelligible and clearly visible by His works. So they are without excuse,

because, although they once knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or give Him thanks, but became silly in their senseless speculations, and so their insensible hearts have been shrouded in darkness.

and have transformed the splendor of the immortal God into images in the form of mortal man, birds, beasts, and reptiles.

This is why God has given them up to degrading passions. For their females have exchanged their natural function for one that is unnatural,

and males too have forsaken the natural function of females and been consumed by flaming passion for one another, males practicing shameful vice with other males, and continuing to suffer in their persons the inevitable penalty for doing what is improper.

Therefore, you have no excuse, whoever you are, who pose as a judge of others, for when you pass judgment on another, you condemn yourself, for you who pose as a judge are practicing the very same sins yourself.

Indeed, when heathen people who have no law instinctively do what the law demands, although they have no law, they are a law to themselves,

on the day when God through Jesus Christ, in accordance with the good news I preach, will judge the secrets people have kept.

a tutor of the foolish, a teacher of the young, since you have a knowledge of the truth as formulated in the law --

And shall not the heathen man who is physically uncircumcised, and yet observes the law, condemn you who have the letter of the law and are physically circumcised, and yet break the law?

What then, if some of them have proved unfaithful? Can their unfaithfulness make null and void God's faithfulness?

What is our conclusion then? Is it that we Jews are better than they? Not at all! For we have already charged that Jews and Greeks alike are all under the sway of sin,

They all have turned aside, all have become corrupt; No one does good, not even one!

Their throats are just like open graves, with their tongues they have spoken treachery; the poison of asps is under their lips.

but anybody may have right standing with God as a free gift of His undeserved favor, through the ransom provided in Christ Jesus.

"Happy are they whose transgressions have been forgiven, whose sins were covered up;

Afterward he received the mark of circumcision as God's seal of his right standing with Him on condition of faith which he had before he was circumcised, that he might be the forefather of all who have faith while still uncircumcised, that they might have their faith credited to them as right standing with God;

as the Scripture says, "I have made you the father of many nations." That is, the promise is in force in the sight of God in whom he put his faith, the God who can bring the dead to life and can call to Himself the things that do not exist as though they did.

Since we have been given right standing with God through faith, then let us continue enjoying peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

by whom we have an introduction through faith into this state of God's favor, in which we safely stand; and let us continue exulting in the hope of enjoying the glorious presence of God.

So if we have already been brought into right standing with God by Christ's death, it is much more certain that by Him we shall be saved from God's wrath.

For if while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son, it is much more certain that since we have been reconciled we shall finally be saved through His new life.

And not only that, but this too: we shall continue exulting in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained our reconciliation.

But God's free gift is not at all to be compared with the offense. For if by one man's offense the whole race of men have died, to a much greater degree God's favor and His gift imparted by His favor through the one man Jesus Christ, has overflowed for the whole race of men.

Not at all! Since we have ended our relation to sin, how can we live in it any longer?

Or, do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into union with Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?

So through baptism we have been buried with Him in death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father's glorious power, so we too should live an entirely new life.

For if we have grown into fellowship with Him by sharing a death like His, surely we shall share a resurrection life like His,

But, thank God, that though you once were slaves of sin, you became obedient from your hearts to that form of teaching in which you have been instructed,

and since you have been freed from sin, you have become the slaves of right-doing.

But now, since you have been freed from sin and have become the slaves of God, the immediate result is consecration, and the final destiny is eternal life.

So, my brothers, you too in the body of Christ have ended your relation to the law, so that you may be married to another husband, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.

But now we have been freed from our relation to the law; we have ended our relation to that by which we once were held in bonds, so that we may serve in a new spiritual way and not in the old literalistic way.

What are we then to conclude? Is the law sin? Of course not! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I should not have learned what sin was, for I should not have known what an evil desire was, if the law had not said, "You must not have an evil desire."

and so, in my case, the command which should have meant life turned out to mean death.

For I know that nothing good has its home in me; that is, in my lower self; I have the will but not the power to do what is right.

For you do not have a sense of servitude to fill you with dread again, but the consciousness of adopted sons by which we cry, "Abba," that is, "Father."

For I have full assurance that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor the present nor the future

that I have deep grief and constant anguish in my heart;

For this is the language of the promise, "About this time next year I will come back, and Sarah will have a son."