07/11/2019
A reading from the Acts of the Apostles (Chapter 17) -
16: Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.
17: So he argued in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the market place every day with those who chanced to be there.
18: Some also of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers met him. And some said, "What would this babbler say?" Others said, "He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities" -- because he preached Jesus and the resurrection.
19: And they took hold of him and brought him to the Are-op'agus, saying, "May we know what this new teaching is which you present?
20: For you bring some strange things to our ears; we wish to know therefore what these things mean."
21: Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.
22: So Paul, standing in the middle of the Are-op'agus, said: "Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.
23: For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, `To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.
24: The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man,
25: nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all men life and breath and everything.
26: And he made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their habitation,
27: that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel after him and find him. Yet he is not far from each one of us,
28: for `In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your poets have said, `For we are indeed his offspring.'
29: Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, a representation by the art and imagination of man.
30: The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent,
31: because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead."
32: Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked; but others said, "We will hear you again about this."
33: So Paul went out from among them.
34: But some men joined him and believed, among them Dionys'ius the Are-op'agite and a woman named Dam'aris and others with them.
