Acts 22:13-26

¹³He came to me, stood by me, and said, 'Brother Saul, receive your sight.' In that very hour I saw him.

¹⁴Then he said, 'The God of our fathers has chosen you to know his will, to see the Righteous One, and to hear the voice coming from his own mouth.

¹⁵For you shall be a witness for him to all men about what you have seen and heard.

¹⁶Now why are you waiting? Arise, be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on his name.'

¹⁷After I had returned to Jerusalem, and while I was praying in the temple, it happened that I was given a vision.

¹⁸I saw him say to me, 'Hurry and leave Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about me.'

¹⁹I said, 'Lord, they themselves know that I imprisoned and beat those who believed in you in every synagogue.

²⁰When the blood of Stephen your witness was spilled, I also was standing by and agreeing, and I was guarding the cloaks of those who killed him.'

²¹But he said to me, 'Go, because I will send you far away to the Gentiles.'”

²²They listened to him until he said this. Then they shouted and said, “Away with such a fellow from the earth, for it is not right that he should live.”

²³As they were shouting, throwing off their cloaks, and throwing dust into the air,

²⁴the chief captain commanded Paul to be brought into the fortress. He ordered that he should be questioned with scourging, so that he himself might know why they were shouting against him like that.

²⁵When they had tied him up with the thongs, Paul said to the centurion who was standing by, “Is it lawful for you to scourge a man who is a Roman and who has not been put on trial?”

²⁶When the centurion heard this, he went to the chief captain and told him, saying, “What are you about to do? For this man is a Roman citizen.”