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- Then Agrippa said to Paul, "You have permission to speak for yourself." So Paul motioned with his hand and began his defense:
- "King Agrippa, I consider myself fortunate to stand before you today as I make my defense against all the accusations of the Jews,
- and especially so because you are well acquainted with all the Jewish customs and controversies. Therefore, I beg you to listen to me patiently.
- "The Jews all know the way I have lived ever since I was a child, from the beginning of my life in my own country, and also in Jerusalem.
- They have known me for a long time and can testify, if they are willing, that according to the strictest sect of our religion, I lived as a Pharisee.
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- And now it is because of my hope in what God has promised our fathers that I am on trial today.
- This is the promise our twelve tribes are hoping to see fulfilled as they earnestly serve God day and night. O king, it is because of this hope that the Jews are accusing me.
- Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead?
- "I too was convinced that I ought to do all that was possible to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth.
- And that is just what I did in Jerusalem. On the authority of the chief priests I put many of the saints in prison, and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them.
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- Many a time I went from one synagogue to another to have them punished, and I tried to force them to blaspheme. In my obsession against them, I even went to foreign cities to persecute them.
- "On one of these journeys I was going to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests.
- About noon, O king, as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazing around me and my companions.
- We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.'
- "Then I asked, 'Who are you, Lord?' " 'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,' the Lord replied.
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- 'Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen of me and what I will show you.
- I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them
- to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.'
- "So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven.
- First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and to the Gentiles also, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds.
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- That is why the Jews seized me in the temple courts and tried to kill me.
- But I have had God's help to this very day, and so I stand here and testify to small and great alike. I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen--
- that the Christ would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would proclaim light to his own people and to the Gentiles."
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