Study Desk

But when the Temple guards went to the jail, the men were gone. So they returned to the council and reported,

When the captain of the Temple guard and the leading priests heard this, they were perplexed, wondering where it would all end.

The captain went with his Temple guards and arrested the apostles, but without violence, for they were afraid the people would stone them.

When they heard this, the high council was furious and decided to kill them.

"So my advice is, leave these men alone. Let them go. If they are planning and doing these things merely on their own, it will soon be overthrown.

The others accepted his advice. They called in the apostles and had them flogged. Then they ordered them never again to speak in the name of Jesus, and they let them go.

And every day, in the Temple and from house to house, they continued to teach and preach this message: "Jesus is the Messiah."

Everyone liked this idea, and they chose the following: Stephen (a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit), Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas of Antioch (an earlier convert to the Jewish faith).

But one day some men from the Synagogue of Freed Slaves, as it was called, started to debate with him. They were Jews from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia, and the province of Asia.

So they persuaded some men to lie about Stephen, saying, "We heard him blaspheme Moses, and even God."

This roused the people, the elders, and the teachers of religious law. So they arrested Stephen and brought him before the high council.

‘But I will punish the nation that enslaves them,' God said, ‘and in the end they will come out and worship me here in this place.'

"These patriarchs were jealous of their brother Joseph, and they sold him to be a slave in Egypt. But God was with him

The second time they went, Joseph revealed his identity to his brothers, and they were introduced to Pharaoh.

This king exploited our people and oppressed them, forcing parents to abandon their newborn babies so they would die.

When they had to abandon him, Pharaoh's daughter adopted him and raised him as her own son.

"So God sent back the same man his people had previously rejected when they demanded, ‘Who made you a ruler and judge over us?' Through the angel who appeared to him in the burning bush, God sent Moses to be their ruler and savior.

"But our ancestors refused to listen to Moses. They rejected him and wanted to return to Egypt.

So they made an idol shaped like a calf, and they sacrificed to it and celebrated over this thing they had made.

Name one prophet your ancestors didn't persecute! They even killed the ones who predicted the coming of the Righteous One—the Messiah whom you betrayed and murdered.