Dual Panel1THEN the High Priest said, "Is this statement true?"
2And Stephen answered, "My brothers and my fathers, listen to me. Our glorious God appeared to our forefather Abraham while he was in Mesopotamia before he ever came to live in Charran,
3and said to him, 'Get thee out of thy land and from thy kindred, and come into a land which I shall show thee.'
4That was how he came to leave the land of the Chaldeans and settle in Charran. And it was from there after his father's death that God moved him into this very land where you are living today.
5Yet God gave him no part of it as an inheritance, not a foot that he could call his own, and yet promised that it should eventually belong to him and his descendantseven though at the time he had no descendant at all.
6And this is the way in which God spoke to him: he told him that his descendants should live as strangers in a foreign land where they would become slaves and be illtreated for four hundred years,
7'And the nation to which they shall be in bondage will I judge, said God: and after that shall they come forth, and serve me in this place.'
8"Further, he gave him the agreement of circumcision, so that when Abraham became the father of Isaac he circumcised him on the eighth day. "Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of the twelve patriarchs.
9Then the patriarchs in their jealousy of Joseph sold him as a slave into Egypt. But God was with him
10and saved him from all his troubles and gave him favor and wisdom in the eyes of Pharaoh the king of Egypt. Pharaoh made him governor of Egypt and put him in charge of his own entire household.
11"Then came the famine over all the land of Egypt and Canaan which caused great suffering, and our forefathers could find no food.
12But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt he sent oar forefathers out of their own country for the first time.
13It was on their second visit that Joseph was recognised by his brothers, and his ancestry became plain to Pharaoh.
14Then Joseph sent and invited to come and five with him his father and all his kinsmen, seventyfive people in all.
15So Jacob came down to Egypt and both he and our fathers ended their days there.
16After their death they were carried back into Sychem and laid in the tomb which Abraham had bought with silver from the sons of Hemmor in Sychem.
17"But as the time drew near for the fulfillment of the promise which God had made to Abraham, our people grew and became more and more numerous in Egypt.
18But at last another king came to the Egyptian throne who knew nothing of Joseph.
19This man cleverly victimized our race. He treated our forefathers with cunning cruelty, forcing them to expose their infant children so that they should not survive.
20"It was at this very time that Moses was born. He was a child of divine beauty, and for three months he was brought up in his father's home,
21and then when the time came for him to be abandoned Pharaoh's daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son.
22So Moses was trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and became not only an excellent speaker but a man of action as well.
23"Now when he was forty years old the thought came into his mind that he should go and look into the condition of his own brothers, the sons of Israel.
24He saw one of them being unjustly treated, went to the rescue and avenged the man who had been illtreated by striking down the Egyptian.
25He fully imagined that his brothers would understand that God was using him to rescue them. But they did not understand.
26Indeed, on the very next day he came upon two of them who were quarrelling and urged them to make peace, saying, 'Men, you are brothers. What good can come from your injuring each other?"
27But the man who was wronging his neighbour pushed Moses aside, saying, 'Who made you a ruler and judge over us?
28Do you want to kill me as you killed that Egyptian yesterday?'
29At that retort Moses fled and lived as an exile in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons.
30"It was forty years later in the desert of Mount Sinai that an angel appeared to him in the flames of a burning bush,
31and the sight filled Moses with wonder. As he approached to look at it more closely the voice of the Lord spoke to him,
32saying, 'I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.' Then Moses trembled and was afraid to look any more.
33But the Lord spoke to him and said, 'Loose the shoes from thy feet: for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.
34I have surely seen the affliction of my people which is in Egypt, and have heard their groaning, and I am come down to deliver them: and now come, I will send thee into Egypt.'
35"So this same Moses whom they had rejected in the words, "Who appointed you a ruler and judge?' God sent to be both ruler and deliverer with the help of the angel who had appeared to him in the bush.
36This is the man who showed wonders and signs in Egypt and in the Red Sea, the man who led them out of Egypt and was their leader in the desert for forty years.
37He was Moses, the man who said to the sons of Israel, 'A prophet shall God raise up unto you from among your brethren, like unto me.'
38In that assembly in the desert this was the man who was the mediator between the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai and our fathers. This was the man who received words, living words, which were to be given to us;
39and this was the man to whom our forefathers turned a deaf ear! They disregarded him, and in their hearts hankered after Egypt.
40They said to Aaron, 'Make us gods to go before us. For as for this Moses who led us out of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.'
41In those days they even made a calf, and offered sacrifices to their idol. They rejoiced in the work of their own hands.
42So God turned away from them and left them to worship the Host of Heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets, Did ye offer unto me slain beasts and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?
43And ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of the god Rephan, the figures which ye made to worship them: And I will carry you away beyond Babylon.
44"There in the desert our forefather possessed the Tabernacle of witness made according to the pattern which Moses saw when God instructed him to build it.
45This Tabernacle was handed down to our forefathers, and they brought it here when the gentiles were defeated under Joshua, for God drove them out as our ancestors advanced. Here it stayed until the time of David.
46David won the approval of God and prayed that he might find a habitation for the God of Jacob, even though it was not he
47but Solomon who actually built a house for him.
48Yet of course the Most High does not live in manmade houses. As the prophet says,
49The heaven is my throne. And the earth the footstool of my feet: What manner of house will ye build me? saith the Lord: Or what is the place of my rest?
50Did not my hand make all these things?
51"You obstinate people, heathen in your thinking, heathen in the way you are listening to me now! It is always the sameyou never fail to resist the Holy Spirit! Just as your fathers did so are you doing now.
52Can you name a single prophet whom your fathers did not persecute? They killed the man who foretold the coming of the just one, and now in our own day you have become his betrayers and his murderers.
53You are the men who have received the Law of God by the hand of angels, and you are the men who have failed to keep it!"
54These words stung them to fury and they ground their teeth at him in rage.
55Stephen, filled through all his being with the Holy Spirit, looked steadily up into Heaven. He saw the glory of God, and Jesus himself standing at his right hand.
56"Look!" he exclaimed, "the heavens are opened and I can see the Son of Man standing at God's right hand!"
57At this they put their fingers in their ears. Yelling with fury, as one man they made a rush at him
58and hustled him out of the city and stoned him. The witnesses of the execution flung their clothes at the feet of a young man by the name of Saul.
59So they stoned Stephen while he culled upon God, and said, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!"
60Then, on his knees, he cried in ringing tones, "Lord, forgive them for this sin." And with these words he fell into the sleep of death, while: