7. a promise that our twelve tribes hope to attain as they earnestly serve God night and day. Concerning this hope the Jews are accusing me, Your Majesty!
8. Why do you people think it is unbelievable that God raises the dead?
9. Of course, I myself was convinced that it was necessary to do many things hostile to the name of Jesus the Nazarene.
10. And that is what I did in Jerusalem: Not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons by the authority I received from the chief priests, but I also cast my vote against them when they were sentenced to death.
11. I punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to force them to blaspheme. Because I was so furiously enraged at them, I went to persecute them even in foreign cities.
12. “While doing this very thing, as I was going to Damascus with authority and complete power from the chief priests,
13. about noon along the road, Your Majesty, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining everywhere around me and those traveling with me.
14. When we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? You are hurting yourself by kicking against the goads.’
15. So I said, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And the Lord replied, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.
16. But get up and stand on your feet, for I have appeared to you for this reason, to designate you in advance as a servant and witness to the things you have seen and to the things in which I will appear to you.
17. I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles, to whom I am sending you