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1[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 1Then the high priest asked, "Is this true?" |
2[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 2Stephen replied: "Listen, brothers and fathers! "The glorious God appeared to our ancestor Abraham while he was in Mesopotamia before he settled in Haran. |
3[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 3God told him, 'Leave your country and your relatives and go to the land I'll show you.' |
4[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 4So he left the country of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. Then after the death of his father, God had him move to this country where you now live. |
5[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 5God gave him no property here, not even a foot of land, yet he promised to give it to him and to his descendants after him as a permanent possession, even though he had no child. |
6[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 6"This is what God promised: His descendants would be strangers in a foreign country, and its people would enslave them and oppress them for 400 years. |
7[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 7But I will punish the nation they serve,' said God, 'and afterwards they will leave and worship me in this place.' |
8[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 8Later, God gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision. Later, he fathered Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day. Then Isaac fathered Jacob, and Jacob fathered the twelve patriarchs. |
9[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 9"Joseph's brothers became jealous of him and sold Joseph as a slave in Egypt. However, God was with him |
10[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 10and rescued him from all his troubles. He granted him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who appointed him ruler of Egypt and of his whole household. |
11[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 11"But a famine spread throughout Egypt and Canaan, and with it great suffering, and our ancestors couldn't find any food. |
12[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 12But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our ancestors on their first trip. |
13[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 13On their second trip, Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and Joseph introduced his family to Pharaoh. |
14[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 14Then Joseph invited his father Jacob and all his relatives to come to him in Egypt —75 persons in all. |
15[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 15So Jacob went down to Egypt. Then he and our ancestors died. |
16[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 16They were brought back to Shechem and laid in the tomb that Abraham had bought at a high price from Hamor's descendants in Shechem. |
17[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 17"Now as the time approached for the fulfillment of the promise that God had made to Abraham, the people's population increased a great deal in Egypt. |
18[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 18Eventually, a different king who had not known Joseph became ruler of Egypt. |
19[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 19By shrewdly scheming against our people, he oppressed our ancestors and forced them to abandon their infants to the elements, so that they wouldn't live. |
20[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 20"At this time Moses was born. He was beautiful in the sight of God, and for three months he was cared for in his father's house. |
21[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 21When he was placed outside, Pharaoh's daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son. |
22[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 22So Moses learned all the wisdom of the Egyptians and became a great man, both in words and in deeds. |
23[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 23"When he was 40 years old, he decided to visit his brothers, the descendants of Israel. |
24[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 24When he saw one of them being mistreated, he defended him and avenged the man who was being mistreated by killing the Egyptian. |
25[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 25He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was using him to rescue them, but they didn't understand. |
26[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 26The next day, he presented himself to some of them while they were fighting and tried to reconcile them. He said, 'Men, you are brothers. Why should you be hurting another?' |
27[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 27"But the man who was harming his neighbor pushed Moses away and said, 'Who made you ruler and judge over us? |
28[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 28You don't want to kill me like you killed the Egyptian yesterday, do you?' |
29[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 29Because of this, Moses fled and lived as a foreigner in the land of Midian. There he had two sons. |
30[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 30"After 40 years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai. |
31[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 31When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight, and when he approached the bush to look at it, the voice of the Lord said, |
32[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 32I am the God of your ancestors—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.' Moses became terrified and didn't dare to look. |
33[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 33Then the Lord told him, 'Remove your sandals from your feet, because the place where you are standing is holy ground. |
34[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 34I have surely seen the oppression of my people in Egypt, I've heard their groans, and I've come down to rescue them. Now come, I'll send you to Egypt.' |
35[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 35"This same Moses—whom they rejected by saying, 'Who made you ruler and judge?' —was the man whom God sent to be both their ruler and deliverer with the help of the angel who had appeared to him in the bush. |
36[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 36It was he who led them out, performing wonders and signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for 40 years. |
37[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 37It was this Moses who told the Israelis, 'God will raise up a prophet for you from among your own brothers, just as he did me.' |
38[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 38This Moses is the one who was in the assembly in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai and to our ancestors. He received living truths to give to us, |
39[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 39but our ancestors refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him and wished to return to Egypt. |
40[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 40They told Aaron, 'Make gods for us who will lead us. This Moses who led us out of the land of Egypt—we don't know what happened to him!' |
41[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 41"At that time they even made a calf to be their idol, offered a sacrifice to it, and delighted in what they had made with their hands. |
42[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 42So God turned away from them and gave them over to worship the heavenly bodies. As it is written in the book of the Prophets: 'O house of Israel, you didn't offer me slaughtered animals and sacrifices those 40 years in the wilderness, did you? |
43[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 43You even took along the tent of Moloch, the star of your god Rephan, and the images you made in order to worship them. So I will take you into exile as far as Babylon.' |
44[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 44"Our ancestors had the Tent of Testimony in the wilderness constructed, just as the one who spoke to Moses directed him to make it according to the pattern he had seen. |
45[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 45Our ancestors brought it here with Joshua when they replaced the nations that God drove out in front of our ancestors, and it was here until the time of David. |
46[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 46He found favor with God and asked to design a dwelling for the house of Jacob, |
47[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 47but it was Solomon who built a house for him. |
48[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 48However, the Most High does not live in buildings made by human hands. As the prophet says, |
49[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 49"'Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house can you build for me,' declares the Lord, "or what place is there in which I can rest? |
50[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 50It was my hand that made all these things, wasn't it?'" |
51[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 51"You stubborn people with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are always opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do. |
52[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 52Which of the prophets did your ancestors fail to persecute? They killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One, and now you have become his betrayers and murderers. |
53[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 53You received the Law as ordained by angels, and yet you haven't obeyed it!" |
54[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 54While they were listening to these things, they became more and more furious and began to grind their teeth at him. |
55[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 55But Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. |
56[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 56He said, "Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!" |
57[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 57But they shouted out loud, stopped listening, and together they all rushed at him, |
58[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 58ran him outside of the city, and began to stone him to death. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. |
59[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 59As they continued to stone Stephen, he kept praying, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!" |
60[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 60Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, "Lord, don't hold this sin against them!" After he had said this, he died. |
[an error occurred while processing this directive] | The Holy Bible: International Standard Version® Release 2.1 Copyright © 1996-2012 The ISV Foundation ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INTERNATIONALLY. |
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