Acts 26:4-16

⁴“Therefore my way of life from my youth, which from the beginning was spent among my own nation in Jerusalem, all the Jews know,

⁵since they have known me for a long time, if they are willing to testify, that according to the strictest sect of our religion I lived as a Pharisee.

⁶And now for the hope of the promise having been made by God to the fathers, I stand before you judged,

⁷a promise to which our twelve tribes, as they earnestly serve God night and day, hope to attain. Concerning which hope I am accused by the Jews, King Agrippa.

⁸Why is it considered such an unbelievable thing by you people if God raises the dead?

⁹“Therefore I thought in myself that it was necessary to do many hostile things against the name of Jesus the Nazarene;

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

¹¹And I punished them often in all the synagogues, and compelled them to blaspheme; and being exceedingly enraged against them, I persecuted them even as far as to foreign cities.

¹²“In which pursuits also, as I traveled to Damascus with authority and commission from the chief priests,

¹³at midday, O king, along the road I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and those traveling with me.

¹⁴And when we all had fallen down to the ground, I heard a voice speaking to me and saying in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’

¹⁵So I said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.

¹⁶But arise and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you, to appoint you a minister and a witness both of the things which you have seen, and of the things which I will appear to you,