Acts 17:12-26

¹²As a consequence, many of them became believers in Christ, besides a considerable number of Greek women of position, and of men also.

¹³But, when the Jewish leaders in Thessalonica found out that God's message had been delivered by Paul at Beroea, they came there too, exciting and disturbing the minds of the people.

¹⁴The followers immediately arranged for Paul to go away to the coast, but both Silas and Timothy stayed behind in Beroea.

¹⁵The friends who escorted Paul took him as far as Athens, and, after receiving a message for Silas and Timothy to join him as quickly as possible, they started on their return.

¹⁶While Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his heart was stirred at seeing the whole city full of idols.

¹⁷So he argued in the synagogue with the Jews and with those who joined in their worship, as well as daily in the public Square with those who happened to be there.

¹⁸Amongst others, some Epicurean and Stoic Philosophers joined issue with him. Some asked “What is this prater wanting to make out?”, while others said “He seems to be a preacher of foreign Deities.” (This was because he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection).

¹⁹So they laid hold of him and took him to the Court of Areopagus. “May we hear,” they asked, “what new teaching this is which you are giving?

²⁰For you are bringing some strange things to our notice, and we should like to know what they mean.”

²¹(All Athenians and the foreigners staying in the city found no time for anything else but telling, or listening to, the last new thing.)

²²So Paul took his stand in the middle of the Court, and said — “People of Athens, on every hand I see signs of your being very devout.

²³For as I was going about, looking at your sacred shrines, I came upon an altar with this inscription — ‘To an Unknown God.’ What, therefore, you worship in ignorance, that I am now proclaiming to you.

²⁴The God who made the world and all things that are in it — he, Lord as he is of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by hands,

²⁵neither do human hands minister to his wants, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives, to all, life, and breath, and all things.

²⁶He made all races of the earth's surface — fixing a time for their rise and fall, and the limits of their settlements —