Study Desk

But if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow it, and you would be found even to be fighting against God."

The twelve called the multitude of the disciples to them and said, "It is not appropriate for us to forsake the word of God and serve tables.

The word of God increased and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem exceedingly. A great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.

Then they secretly induced men who said, "We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God."

He said, "Brothers and fathers, listen. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran,

Then he came out of the land of the Chaldaeans, and lived in Haran. From there, when his father was dead, God moved him into this land, where you are now living.

God spoke thus, that his seed would live as aliens in a strange land, and that they would be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years.

'I will judge the nation to which they will be in bondage,' said God, 'and after that will they come out, and serve me in this place.'

"The patriarchs, moved with jealousy against Joseph, sold him into Egypt. God was with him,

"But as the time of the promise came close which God swore to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt,

He supposed that his brothers understood that God, by his hand, was giving them deliverance; but they didn't understand.

'I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.' Moses trembled, and dared not look.

"This Moses, whom they refused, saying, 'Who made you a ruler and a judge?' -- God has sent him as both a ruler and a deliverer with the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush.

This is that Moses, who said to the children of Israel, 'The Lord God will raise up a prophet to you from among your brothers, like me.'

But God turned, and gave them up to serve the host of the sky, as it is written in the book of the prophets, 'Did you offer to me slain animals and sacrifices Forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?

You took up the tent of Moloch, The star of your god Rephan, The figures which you made to worship. I will carry you away beyond Babylon.'

Which also our fathers, in their turn, brought in with Joshua when they entered into the possession of the nations, whom God drove out before the face of our fathers, to the days of David,

who found favor in the sight of God, and asked to find a habitation for the God of Jacob.

But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God,

and said, "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God!"