Acts 26:5-16

⁵having known me from the first, if they are willing to testify, that after the strictest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee.

⁶Now I stand here to be judged for the hope of the promise made by God to our fathers,

⁷which our twelve tribes, earnestly serving night and day, hope to attain. Concerning this hope I am accused by the Judeans, King Agrippa!

⁸Why is it judged incredible with you if God does raise the dead?

⁹“I myself most certainly thought that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Yeshua of Nazareth.

¹⁰I also did this in Jerusalem. I both shut up many of the holy ones in prisons, having received authority from the chief priests; and when they were put to death I gave my vote against them.

¹¹Punishing them often in all the synagogues, I tried to make them blaspheme. Being exceedingly enraged against them, I persecuted them even to foreign cities.

¹²“Whereupon as I travelled to Damascus with the authority and commission from the chief priests,

¹³at noon, O king, I saw on the way a light from the sky, brighter than the sun, shining around me and those who travelled with me.

¹⁴When we had all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’

¹⁵“I said, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ “He said, ‘I am Yeshua, whom you are persecuting.

¹⁶But arise, and stand on your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose: to appoint you a servant and a witness both of the things which you have seen and of the things which I will reveal to you;