Acts 17:19–34

¹⁹So they took Paul and brought him to the Areopagus,^b where they asked him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? ²⁰For you are bringing some strange notions to our ears, and we want to know what they mean.”

²¹Now all the Athenians and foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing more than hearing and articulating new ideas.

²²Then Paul stood up in the meeting^c of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious. ²³For as I walked around and examined your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription:

TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.

Therefore what you worship as something unknown, I now proclaim to you.

²⁴The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples made by human hands. ²⁵Nor is He served by human hands, as if He needed anything, because He Himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. ²⁶From one man^d He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their lands.

²⁷God intended that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. ²⁸‘For in Him we live and move and have our being.’^e As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are His offspring.’^{f 29}Therefore, being offspring of God, we should not think that the Divine Being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by man’s skill and imagination.

³⁰Although God overlooked the ignorance of earlier times, He now commands all people everywhere to repent. ³¹For He has set a day when He will judge the world with justice by the Man He has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising Him from the dead.”

³²When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some began to mock him, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this topic.” ³³At that, Paul left the Areopagus. ³⁴But some^g joined him and believed, including Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others who were with them.