Acts 26:1-16 ▼

1 Agrippa said to Paul, |You may speak for yourself.| Then Paul stretched out his hand, and made his defense.

2 |I think myself happy, King Agrippa, that I am to make my defense before you this day concerning all the things that I am accused by the Jews,

3 especially because you are expert in all customs and questions which are among Jews. Therefore I beg you to hear me patiently.

4 |Indeed, all Jews know my way of life from my youth up, which was from the beginning among my own nation and at Jerusalem;

5 having known me from the first, if they are willing to testify, that after the strictest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee.

6 Now I stand here to be judged for the hope of the promise made by God to our fathers,

7 which our twelve tribes, earnestly serving night and day, hope to attain. Concerning this hope I am accused by the Jews, O King.

8 Why is it judged incredible with you, if God does raise the dead?

9 |In fact, I thought to myself that I ought to do many things against the name of Jesus the Nazorean.

10 This I also did in Jerusalem. I both shut up many of the saints in prisons, having received authority from the chief priests, and when they were put to death I gave my vote against them.

11 Punishing them often in all the synagogues, I tried to make them blaspheme. Being exceedingly enraged against them, I persecuted them even to foreign cities.

12 |Whereupon as I traveled to Damascus with the authority and commission from the chief priests,

13 at noon, O King, I saw on the way a light from the sky, brighter than the sun, shining around me and those who traveled with me.

14 When we had all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.'

15 |I said, 'Who are you, Lord?' |He said, 'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.

16 But arise, and stand on your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose: to appoint you a servant and a witness both of the things which you have seen me, and of the things which I will reveal to you;