Acts 7:32-59

³²‘I am the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ Moses trembled, and did not dare to look.

³³Then the Lord said to him — ‘Take your sandals off your feet, for the spot where you are standing is holy ground.

³⁴I have seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt, and heard their groans, and I have come down to deliver them. Come now and I will send you into Egypt.’

³⁵This same Moses, whom they had disowned with the words — ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge?’ was the man whom God sent to be both a ruler and a deliverer, under the guidance of the angel that had appeared to him in the bush.

³⁶He it was who led them out, after he had shown wonders and signs in Egypt, in the Red Sea, and in the desert during forty years.

³⁷This was the Moses who said to the people of Israel — ‘God will raise up for you, from amongst yourselves, a prophet, as he raised up me.’

³⁸He, too, it was who was present at the assembly in the desert, with the angel who talked to him on Mount Sinai, and with our ancestors, and who received living truths to impart to you.

³⁹Yet our ancestors refused him obedience; more than that, they rejected him, and in their hearts turned back to Egypt,

⁴⁰while they said to Aaron — ‘Make us Gods who will lead the way for us, since, as for this Moses who has brought us out of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’

⁴¹That was the time when they made the calf and offered sacrifice to their idol, and held festivities in honour of their own handiwork!

⁴²So God turned from them and left them to the worship of the Starry Host, as is written in the book of the prophets — ‘Did you offer victims and sacrifices to me, house of Israel, all those forty years in the desert?

⁴³You took with you the tent where Moloch is worshipped and the star of the god Rephan — the images which you had made to worship. Therefore I will exile you beyond Babylon.’

⁴⁴Our ancestors had the tent where they worshipped God in the desert, constructed, just as he who spoke to Moses had directed him to make it, after the model which he had seen.

⁴⁵This tent, which was handed down to them, was brought into this country by our ancestors who accompanied Joshua (at the conquest of the nations that God drove out before their advance), and remained here until the time of David.

⁴⁶David found favour with God, and prayed that he might provide the God of Jacob with a place to reside.

⁴⁷But it was Solomon who built a house for God.

⁴⁸Yet it is not in buildings made by hands that the Most High dwells. As the prophet says —

⁴⁹‘The heavens are a throne for me, and the earth a stool for my feet. What manner of house will you build me, asks the Lord, or what place is there where I may rest?

⁵⁰Was it not my hand that made all these things?’

⁵¹Stubborn people, heathen in heart and ears, you are for ever resisting the Holy Spirit; your ancestors did it, and you are doing it still.

⁵²Which of the prophets escaped persecution at their hands? They killed those who foretold the coming of the righteous one; of whom you, in your turn, have now become the betrayers and murderers —

⁵³You who received the Law as transmitted by angels and yet failed to keep it.”

⁵⁴As they listened to this, the Council grew frantic with rage, and gnashed their teeth at Stephen.

⁵⁵He, filled as he was with the Holy Spirit, fixed his eyes intently on the heavens, and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at God's right hand.

⁵⁶“Look,” he exclaimed, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at God's right hand!”

⁵⁷At this, with a loud shout, they stopped their ears and all rushed on him, forced him outside the city,

⁵⁸and began to stone him, the witnesses laying their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul.

⁵⁹And they stoned Stephen, while he cried to the Lord, “Lord Jesus! Receive my spirit!”