In Thessalonica
17
📚✭Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue✭. 2 📚And Paul, as his habit was, went in to them and for three Sabbath days reasoned with them out of the Scriptures, 3 📚explaining and demonstrating that Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I preach to you, is the Christ”. 4 📚And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, and with them a large number of devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women. 5 📚But the Jews who were not persuaded, moved with envy, took some wicked idlers from the marketplace, collected a crowd, and set all the city in an uproar, and rushed to the house of Jason and sought to bring them out to the people. 6 📚✭And when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brethren to the rulers of the city, crying out, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also, 7 📚and Jason has shown them hospitality. And all of them are acting contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus”. 8 📚And they stirred up the people and the rulers of the city when they heard these things. 9 📚And when they had taken bail from Jason, and from the others, they let them go.
In Berea
10 📚✭And the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away at night to Berea, who, upon their arrival, went into the Jewish synagogue. 11 📚✭These Jews were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the Word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily to see if those things Paul taught were so. 12 📚Therefore many of them believed, and also some prominent Greek women and not a few of the men.
13 📚✭But when the Jews of Thessalonica learned that the word of God was being preached by Paul at Berea, they came there also and stirred up the people. 14 📚✭And so immediately the brethren sent Paul away to go as far as the sea coast, but Silas and Timothy still remained there. 15 📚✭And those who conducted Paul brought him to Athens, and receiving instructions from Paul for Silas and Timothy to come to him with all speed, they left.
In Athens
16 📚✭Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit within him was greatly agitated, when he saw that the city was full of idolatry. 17 📚✭Therefore he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout Greeks, and also in the marketplace daily with those who came near him.
18 📚✭Then some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him and some of them said, “What does this babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be proclaiming foreign gods”. This was because he was preaching to them the good news of Jesus and the resurrection. 19 📚✭And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is about which you are talking? 20 📚For you are bringing some strange things to our ears, and so we want to know what these things mean”. 21 📚✭(For all the Athenians, and the foreigners who were there, spent their time in nothing else but telling or hearing some new thing.)
22 📚✭Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus, and said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious✭. 23 📚✭For as I passed by and looked at the objects of your worship, I found an altar with this inscription:
TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.
“Therefore, I am going to make known to you the one whom you worship without knowing. 24 📚✭God, who made the world and everything in it, since he is the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, 25 📚✭nor is he served by men’s hands, as though he needed anything, since he gives to everyone life, and breath, and everything else. 26 📚✭And he has made from one blood every nation of man to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined the times set for them, and the boundaries of the regions where they live, 27 📚✭so that they would seek the Lord, and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each of us; 28 📚✭for in him we live, and move, and have our being. As some of your own poets also have said, we are also his offspring.
29 📚“Since then we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that God’s nature is like gold or silver or stone, a thing carved by man’s art and design. 30 📚✭The times of such ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, 31 📚✭because he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom he has ordained. He has given proof to all by raising him from the dead”.
32 📚✭And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, and others said, “We want to hear you again about this matter”. 33 So Paul went away from them. 34 📚✭However some men joined him and believed, among whom was Dionysius the Areopagite, and also a woman named Damaris, and others with them.