Acts 26:12–23

¹²In this pursuit I was on my way to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests. ¹³About noon, O king, as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and my companions. ¹⁴We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice say to me in Hebrew,^a‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’

¹⁵‘Who are You, Lord?’ I asked.

‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ the Lord replied. ¹⁶‘But get up and stand on your feet. For I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen from Me and what I will show you. ¹⁷I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them ¹⁸to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those sanctified by faith in Me.’

¹⁹So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. ²⁰First to those in Damascus and Jerusalem, then to everyone in the region of Judea, and then to the Gentiles, I declared that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds worthy of their repentance. ²¹For this reason the Jews seized me in the temple courts^b and tried to kill me.

²²But I have had God’s help to this day, and I stand here to testify to small and great alike. I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen: ²³that the Christ would suffer, and as the first to rise from the dead, would proclaim light to our people and to the Gentiles.”