Acts 26:4-19

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

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

⁶And now I stand here being judged for the hope of the promise made by God to our fathers,

⁷to which our twelve tribes, earnestly serving God night and day, hope to attain. It is because of this hope that I am accused by the Jews, King Agrippa.

⁸Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead?

⁹“However, I myself thought that I had to perpetrate many things in opposition to the name of Jesus the Natsorean;

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

¹¹Yes, I punished them often in every synagogue, trying to force them to blaspheme; I was so excessively enraged against them that I persecuted them even to foreign cities.

¹²“It was on one of those journeys, as I was going to Damascus with authority and a commission from the chief priests,

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

¹⁴Well we all fell to the ground and 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.

¹⁶Now get up and stand on your feet; because I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and a witness both of the things you have seen and of the things I will reveal to you,

¹⁷delivering you from ‘the people’ and the ethnic nations, to which I am sending you:

¹⁸to open their eyes, so as to bring them back from darkness into light and from the authority of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified, by faith into me.’

¹⁹Therefore, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision