Professor Horner’s Reading Plan

¹“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.

²In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?

³And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

⁴And you know the way to the place where I am going.”

⁵Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

⁶Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

⁷If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

⁸Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”

⁹Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

¹⁰Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.

¹¹Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.

¹²Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.

¹³I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

¹⁴If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.

¹⁵“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

¹⁶And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.

¹⁷This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

¹⁸“I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.

¹⁹In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.

²⁰On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.

²¹They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

²²Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?”

²³Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.

²⁴Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.

²⁵“I have said these things to you while I am still with you.

²⁶But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.

²⁷Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

²⁸You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.

²⁹And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.

³⁰I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no power over me;

³¹but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us be on our way.

¹When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”

²Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.”

³So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron.

⁴He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”

⁵When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the LORD.”

⁶They rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.

⁷The LORD said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely;

⁸they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’”

⁹The LORD said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are.

¹⁰Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.”

¹¹But Moses implored the LORD his God, and said, “O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?

¹²Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people.

¹³Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’”

¹⁴And the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

¹⁵Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain, carrying the two tablets of the covenant in his hands, tablets that were written on both sides, written on the front and on the back.

¹⁶The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved upon the tablets.

¹⁷When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.”

¹⁸But he said, “It is not the sound made by victors, or the sound made by losers; it is the sound of revelers that I hear.”

¹⁹As soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’ anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets from his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain.

²⁰He took the calf that they had made, burned it with fire, ground it to powder, scattered it on the water, and made the Israelites drink it.

²¹Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them?”

²²And Aaron said, “Do not let the anger of my lord burn hot; you know the people, that they are bent on evil.

²³They said to me, ‘Make us gods, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’

²⁴So I said to them, ‘Whoever has gold, take it off’; so they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!”

²⁵When Moses saw that the people were running wild (for Aaron had let them run wild, to the derision of their enemies),

²⁶then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, “Who is on the LORD’s side? Come to me!” And all the sons of Levi gathered around him.

²⁷He said to them, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘Put your sword on your side, each of you! Go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill your brother, your friend, and your neighbor.’”

²⁸The sons of Levi did as Moses commanded, and about three thousand of the people fell on that day.

²⁹Moses said, “Today you have ordained yourselves for the service of the LORD, each one at the cost of a son or a brother, and so have brought a blessing on yourselves this day.”

³⁰On the next day Moses said to the people, “You have sinned a great sin. But now I will go up to the LORD; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.”

³¹So Moses returned to the LORD and said, “Alas, this people has sinned a great sin; they have made for themselves gods of gold.

³²But now, if you will only forgive their sin — but if not, blot me out of the book that you have written.”

³³But the LORD said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book.

³⁴But now go, lead the people to the place about which I have spoken to you; see, my angel shall go in front of you. Nevertheless, when the day comes for punishment, I will punish them for their sin.”

³⁵Then the LORD sent a plague on the people, because they made the calf — the one that Aaron made.

¹What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh?

²For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

³For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.”

⁴Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due.

⁵But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.

⁶So also David speaks of the blessedness of those to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works:

⁷“Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered;

⁸blessed is the one against whom the Lord will not reckon sin.”

⁹Is this blessedness, then, pronounced only on the circumcised, or also on the uncircumcised? We say, “Faith was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness.”

¹⁰How then was it reckoned to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised.

¹¹He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the ancestor of all who believe without being circumcised and who thus have righteousness reckoned to them,

¹²and likewise the ancestor of the circumcised who are not only circumcised but who also follow the example of the faith that our ancestor Abraham had before he was circumcised.

¹³For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith.

¹⁴If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void.

¹⁵For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation.

¹⁶For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us,

¹⁷as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”) — in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

¹⁸Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become “the father of many nations,” according to what was said, “So numerous shall your descendants be.”

¹⁹He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb.

²⁰No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God,

²¹being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.

²²Therefore his faith “was reckoned to him as righteousness.”

²³Now the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were written not for his sake alone,

²⁴but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead,

²⁵who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.

¹You must understand this, that in the last days distressing times will come.

²For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,

³inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good,

⁴treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,

⁵holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid them!

⁶For among them are those who make their way into households and captivate silly women, overwhelmed by their sins and swayed by all kinds of desires,

⁷who are always being instructed and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

⁸As Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these people, of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith, also oppose the truth.

⁹But they will not make much progress, because, as in the case of those two men, their folly will become plain to everyone.

¹⁰Now you have observed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness,

¹¹my persecutions, and my suffering the things that happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.

¹²Indeed, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

¹³But wicked people and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving others and being deceived.

¹⁴But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it,

¹⁵and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

¹⁶All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,

¹⁷so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

¹Then Zophar the Naamathite answered:

²“Pay attention! My thoughts urge me to answer, because of the agitation within me.

³I hear censure that insults me, and a spirit beyond my understanding answers me.

⁴Do you not know this from of old, ever since mortals were placed on earth,

⁵that the exulting of the wicked is short, and the joy of the godless is but for a moment?

⁶Even though they mount up high as the heavens, and their head reaches to the clouds,

⁷they will perish forever like their own dung; those who have seen them will say, ‘Where are they?’

⁸They will fly away like a dream, and not be found; they will be chased away like a vision of the night.

⁹The eye that saw them will see them no more, nor will their place behold them any longer.

¹⁰Their children will seek the favor of the poor, and their hands will give back their wealth.

¹¹Their bodies, once full of youth, will lie down in the dust with them.

¹²“Though wickedness is sweet in their mouth, though they hide it under their tongues,

¹³though they are loath to let it go, and hold it in their mouths,

¹⁴yet their food is turned in their stomachs; it is the venom of asps within them.

¹⁵They swallow down riches and vomit them up again; God casts them out of their bellies.

¹⁶They will suck the poison of asps; the tongue of a viper will kill them.

¹⁷They will not look on the rivers, the streams flowing with honey and curds.

¹⁸They will give back the fruit of their toil, and will not swallow it down; from the profit of their trading they will get no enjoyment.

¹⁹For they have crushed and abandoned the poor, they have seized a house that they did not build.

²⁰“They knew no quiet in their bellies; in their greed they let nothing escape.

²¹There was nothing left after they had eaten; therefore their prosperity will not endure.

²²In full sufficiency they will be in distress; all the force of misery will come upon them.

²³To fill their belly to the full God will send his fierce anger into them, and rain it upon them as their food.

²⁴They will flee from an iron weapon; a bronze arrow will strike them through.

²⁵It is drawn forth and comes out of their body, and the glittering point comes out of their gall; terrors come upon them.

²⁶Utter darkness is laid up for their treasures; a fire fanned by no one will devour them; what is left in their tent will be consumed.

²⁷The heavens will reveal their iniquity, and the earth will rise up against them.

²⁸The possessions of their house will be carried away, dragged off in the day of God’s wrath.

²⁹This is the portion of the wicked from God, the heritage decreed for them by God.”

¹God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:

²“How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah

³Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute.

⁴Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”

⁵They have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk around in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

⁶I say, “You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you;

⁷nevertheless, you shall die like mortals, and fall like any prince.”

⁸Rise up, O God, judge the earth; for all the nations belong to you!

¹Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise.

²The dread anger of a king is like the growling of a lion; anyone who provokes him to anger forfeits life itself.

³It is honorable to refrain from strife, but every fool is quick to quarrel.

⁴The lazy person does not plow in season; harvest comes, and there is nothing to be found.

⁵The purposes in the human mind are like deep water, but the intelligent will draw them out.

⁶Many proclaim themselves loyal, but who can find one worthy of trust?

⁷The righteous walk in integrity — happy are the children who follow them!

⁸A king who sits on the throne of judgment winnows all evil with his eyes.

⁹Who can say, “I have made my heart clean; I am pure from my sin”?

¹⁰Diverse weights and diverse measures are both alike an abomination to the LORD.

¹¹Even children make themselves known by their acts, by whether what they do is pure and right.

¹²The hearing ear and the seeing eye — the LORD has made them both.

¹³Do not love sleep, or else you will come to poverty; open your eyes, and you will have plenty of bread.

¹⁴“Bad, bad,” says the buyer, then goes away and boasts.

¹⁵There is gold, and abundance of costly stones; but the lips informed by knowledge are a precious jewel.

¹⁶Take the garment of one who has given surety for a stranger; seize the pledge given as surety for foreigners.

¹⁷Bread gained by deceit is sweet, but afterward the mouth will be full of gravel.

¹⁸Plans are established by taking advice; wage war by following wise guidance.

¹⁹A gossip reveals secrets; therefore do not associate with a babbler.

²⁰If you curse father or mother, your lamp will go out in utter darkness.

²¹An estate quickly acquired in the beginning will not be blessed in the end.

²²Do not say, “I will repay evil”; wait for the LORD, and he will help you.

²³Differing weights are an abomination to the LORD, and false scales are not good.

²⁴All our steps are ordered by the LORD; how then can we understand our own ways?

²⁵It is a snare for one to say rashly, “It is holy,” and begin to reflect only after making a vow.

²⁶A wise king winnows the wicked, and drives the wheel over them.

²⁷The human spirit is the lamp of the LORD, searching every inmost part.

²⁸Loyalty and faithfulness preserve the king, and his throne is upheld by righteousness.

²⁹The glory of youths is their strength, but the beauty of the aged is their gray hair.

³⁰Blows that wound cleanse away evil; beatings make clean the innermost parts.

¹After this David inquired of the LORD, “Shall I go up into any of the cities of Judah?” The LORD said to him, “Go up.” David said, “To which shall I go up?” He said, “To Hebron.”

²So David went up there, along with his two wives, Ahinoam of Jezreel, and Abigail the widow of Nabal of Carmel.

³David brought up the men who were with him, every one with his household; and they settled in the towns of Hebron.

⁴Then the people of Judah came, and there they anointed David king over the house of Judah. When they told David, “It was the people of Jabesh-gilead who buried Saul,”

⁵David sent messengers to the people of Jabesh-gilead, and said to them, “May you be blessed by the LORD, because you showed this loyalty to Saul your lord, and buried him!

⁶Now may the LORD show steadfast love and faithfulness to you! And I too will reward you because you have done this thing.

⁷Therefore let your hands be strong, and be valiant; for Saul your lord is dead, and the house of Judah has anointed me king over them.”

⁸But Abner son of Ner, commander of Saul’s army, had taken Ishbaal son of Saul, and brought him over to Mahanaim.

⁹He made him king over Gilead, the Ashurites, Jezreel, Ephraim, Benjamin, and over all Israel.

¹⁰Ishbaal, Saul’s son, was forty years old when he began to reign over Israel, and he reigned two years. But the house of Judah followed David.

¹¹The time that David was king in Hebron over the house of Judah was seven years and six months.

¹²Abner son of Ner, and the servants of Ishbaal son of Saul, went out from Mahanaim to Gibeon.

¹³Joab son of Zeruiah, and the servants of David, went out and met them at the pool of Gibeon. One group sat on one side of the pool, while the other sat on the other side of the pool.

¹⁴Abner said to Joab, “Let the young men come forward and have a contest before us.” Joab said, “Let them come forward.”

¹⁵So they came forward and were counted as they passed by, twelve for Benjamin and Ishbaal son of Saul, and twelve of the servants of David.

¹⁶Each grasped his opponent by the head, and thrust his sword in his opponent’s side; so they fell down together. Therefore that place was called Helkath-hazzurim, which is at Gibeon.

¹⁷The battle was very fierce that day; and Abner and the men of Israel were beaten by the servants of David.

¹⁸The three sons of Zeruiah were there, Joab, Abishai, and Asahel. Now Asahel was as swift of foot as a wild gazelle.

¹⁹Asahel pursued Abner, turning neither to the right nor to the left as he followed him.

²⁰Then Abner looked back and said, “Is it you, Asahel?” He answered, “Yes, it is.”

²¹Abner said to him, “Turn to your right or to your left, and seize one of the young men, and take his spoil.” But Asahel would not turn away from following him.

²²Abner said again to Asahel, “Turn away from following me; why should I strike you to the ground? How then could I show my face to your brother Joab?”

²³But he refused to turn away. So Abner struck him in the stomach with the butt of his spear, so that the spear came out at his back. He fell there, and died where he lay. And all those who came to the place where Asahel had fallen and died, stood still.

²⁴But Joab and Abishai pursued Abner. As the sun was going down they came to the hill of Ammah, which lies before Giah on the way to the wilderness of Gibeon.

²⁵The Benjaminites rallied around Abner and formed a single band; they took their stand on the top of a hill.

²⁶Then Abner called to Joab, “Is the sword to keep devouring forever? Do you not know that the end will be bitter? How long will it be before you order your people to turn from the pursuit of their kinsmen?”

²⁷Joab said, “As God lives, if you had not spoken, the people would have continued to pursue their kinsmen, not stopping until morning.”

²⁸Joab sounded the trumpet and all the people stopped; they no longer pursued Israel or engaged in battle any further.

²⁹Abner and his men traveled all that night through the Arabah; they crossed the Jordan, and, marching the whole forenoon, they came to Mahanaim.

³⁰Joab returned from the pursuit of Abner; and when he had gathered all the people together, there were missing of David’s servants nineteen men besides Asahel.

³¹But the servants of David had killed of Benjamin three hundred sixty of Abner’s men.

³²They took up Asahel and buried him in the tomb of his father, which was at Bethlehem. Joab and his men marched all night, and the day broke upon them at Hebron.

¹The word of the LORD came to me:

²You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place.

³For thus says the LORD concerning the sons and daughters who are born in this place, and concerning the mothers who bear them and the fathers who beget them in this land:

⁴They shall die of deadly diseases. They shall not be lamented, nor shall they be buried; they shall become like dung on the surface of the ground. They shall perish by the sword and by famine, and their dead bodies shall become food for the birds of the air and for the wild animals of the earth.

⁵For thus says the LORD: Do not enter the house of mourning, or go to lament, or bemoan them; for I have taken away my peace from this people, says the LORD, my steadfast love and mercy.

⁶Both great and small shall die in this land; they shall not be buried, and no one shall lament for them; there shall be no gashing, no shaving of the head for them.

⁷No one shall break bread for the mourner, to offer comfort for the dead; nor shall anyone give them the cup of consolation to drink for their fathers or their mothers.

⁸You shall not go into the house of feasting to sit with them, to eat and drink.

⁹For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: I am going to banish from this place, in your days and before your eyes, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.

¹⁰And when you tell this people all these words, and they say to you, “Why has the LORD pronounced all this great evil against us? What is our iniquity? What is the sin that we have committed against the LORD our God?”

¹¹then you shall say to them: It is because your ancestors have forsaken me, says the LORD, and have gone after other gods and have served and worshiped them, and have forsaken me and have not kept my law;

¹²and because you have behaved worse than your ancestors, for here you are, every one of you, following your stubborn evil will, refusing to listen to me.

¹³Therefore I will hurl you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your ancestors have known, and there you shall serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.

¹⁴Therefore, the days are surely coming, says the LORD, when it shall no longer be said, “As the LORD lives who brought the people of Israel up out of the land of Egypt,”

¹⁵but “As the LORD lives who brought the people of Israel up out of the land of the north and out of all the lands where he had driven them.” For I will bring them back to their own land that I gave to their ancestors.

¹⁶I am now sending for many fishermen, says the LORD, and they shall catch them; and afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks.

¹⁷For my eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from my presence, nor is their iniquity concealed from my sight.

¹⁸And I will doubly repay their iniquity and their sin, because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and have filled my inheritance with their abominations.

¹⁹O LORD, my strength and my stronghold, my refuge in the day of trouble, to you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth and say: Our ancestors have inherited nothing but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit.

²⁰Can mortals make for themselves gods? Such are no gods!

²¹“Therefore I am surely going to teach them, this time I am going to teach them my power and my might, and they shall know that my name is the LORD.”

¹Agrippa said to Paul, “You have permission to speak for yourself.” Then Paul stretched out his hand and began to defend himself:

²“I consider myself fortunate that it is before you, King Agrippa, I am to make my defense today against all the accusations of the Jews,

³because you are especially familiar with all the customs and controversies of the Jews; therefore I beg of you to listen to me patiently.

⁴“All the Jews know my way of life from my youth, a life spent from the beginning among my own people and in Jerusalem.

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

⁶And now I stand here on trial on account of my hope in the promise made by God to our ancestors,

⁷a promise that our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship day and night. It is for this hope, your Excellency, that I am accused by Jews!

⁸Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?

⁹“Indeed, I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things against the name of Jesus of Nazareth.

¹⁰And that is what I did in Jerusalem; with authority received from the chief priests, I not only locked up many of the saints in prison, but I also cast my vote against them when they were being condemned to death.

¹¹By punishing them often in all the synagogues I tried to force them to blaspheme; and since I was so furiously enraged at them, I pursued them even to foreign cities.

¹²“With this in mind, I was traveling to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests,

¹³when at midday along the road, your Excellency, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and my companions.

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

¹⁵I asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The Lord answered, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.

¹⁶But get up and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and testify to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you.

¹⁷I will rescue you from your people and from the Gentiles — to whom I am sending you

¹⁸to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’

¹⁹“After that, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision,

²⁰but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout the countryside of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God and do deeds consistent with repentance.

²¹For this reason the Jews seized me in the temple and tried to kill me.

²²To this day I have had help from God, and so I stand here, testifying to both small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would take place:

²³that the Messiah must suffer, and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles.”

²⁴While he was making this defense, Festus exclaimed, “You are out of your mind, Paul! Too much learning is driving you insane!”

²⁵But Paul said, “I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I am speaking the sober truth.

²⁶Indeed the king knows about these things, and to him I speak freely; for I am certain that none of these things has escaped his notice, for this was not done in a corner.

²⁷King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you believe.”

²⁸Agrippa said to Paul, “Are you so quickly persuading me to become a Christian?”

²⁹Paul replied, “Whether quickly or not, I pray to God that not only you but also all who are listening to me today might become such as I am — except for these chains.”

³⁰Then the king got up, and with him the governor and Bernice and those who had been seated with them;

³¹and as they were leaving, they said to one another, “This man is doing nothing to deserve death or imprisonment.”

³²Agrippa said to Festus, “This man could have been set free if he had not appealed to the emperor.”