Acts 17:13-32

¹³But when the Jews from Thessalonica found out that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul in Berea, they came there also, agitating the crowds.

¹⁴Then immediately the brothers sent Paul away to go toward the sea; but both Silas and Timothy remained there.

¹⁵Now those who escorted Paul brought him to Athens; and receiving a command for Silas and Timothy, that as quickly as possible they should come to him, they departed.

¹⁶And in Athens, while Paul waited for them, his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was full of idols.

¹⁷Therefore he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with the Gentile worshipers, and in the marketplace daily with those coming by.

¹⁸And also some of the Epicurean and of the Stoic philosophers were conversing with him. And some were saying, “What does this seed-picker wish to say?” But others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign deities,” because he was preaching the good news of Jesus and the resurrection.

¹⁹And taking hold of him, they brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new doctrine is you speak about?

²⁰For you are bringing some strange things to our ears. Therefore we desire to know what these things might mean.”

²¹Now all the Athenians and the strangers staying there as visitors spent their time in nothing other than to say or to hear some new thing.

²²Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men, Athenians, according to all things I perceive you as being very religious;

²³for as I passed by and considered the objects of your worship, I found also an altar on which it had been inscribed: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Therefore, Him whom being ignorant of you worship, this One I announce to you:

²⁴The God who made the world and all the things in it, He being Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands,

²⁵nor by the hands of men is He served, as though He needed anything, for He gives to all life and breath with respect to all things.

²⁶And He made from one blood every nation of men to dwell upon all the face of the earth, and He ordained their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings,

²⁷in order for them to seek the Lord, if perhaps indeed they might grope for Him and find Him, and yet being indeed not far from each one of us;

²⁸for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’

²⁹Therefore, being the offspring of God, we ought not to suppose that the Godhead is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and the imagination of man.

³⁰So then these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now He commands all men everywhere to repent,

³¹because He has appointed a day in which He is going to judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has appointed, having given proof to all, by raising Him from the dead.”

³²But when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some were scoffing, but others said, “We will hear you again concerning this.”