Pauls Great Speech At Athens

While Paul was waiting at Athens for Silas and Timothy, his anger was

aroused when he saw that the city was filled with idols. So he argued in

the synagogue with the Jews and with the Greeks who joined in their

worship, and every day with those whom he happened to meet in the

market-place. A few of the philosophers also met him. Some of them said,

"What has this picker-up of scraps of learning to say?" Others said, "He

seems to be a herald of some new deities." This was because he had been

telling the good news about Jesus and how he rose from the dead. And

they took him to the Court of Areopagus and said, "May we hear what this

new teaching of yours is? For the things you are saying sound strange to

us; so we want to know what they mean." (For all the Athenians and the

foreign visitors spent their time doing nothing but telling or hearing

something new.)



So Paul stood in the middle of the Court and said, "Men of Athens, I see

wherever I go that you are very religious, for as I passed along and

looked at your objects of worship, I found an altar with the

inscription,



TO AN UNKNOWN GOD



Whom, therefore, you worship without knowing, him I proclaim to you. The

God who made the world and all things in it is Lord of heaven and

earth and does not live in temples made by men. He is not served by

men's hands, as though he needed anything, for he it is who gives to all

men life and breath and all things. He has made all nations from one

family that they may live over the whole earth. He has also fixed for

them when and where they are to live, that they should seek God in the

hope that, as they feel after him, they may find him, for he is not far

from each one of us; for it is in him that we live, and move, and have

our being, as in fact, some of your own poets have said, 'We also are

his children.'



"Therefore, as the children of God, we ought not to think of the divine

nature as being like gold or silver or stone, carved by man's art and

invention. God overlooked the ages of ignorance, but now he commands all

men everywhere to repent, for he has fixed a day on which he will judge

the world justly by the one whom he has appointed, and he has given

proof of this to all mankind by raising him from the dead."



When they heard of raising one from the dead, some sneered, but others

said, "We will hear what you have to say about that some other time." So

Paul went out from among them. Some men, however, joined him and

believed, among whom were Dionysius, a member of the Court of the

Areopagus, a woman named Damaris, and several others. After this Paul

left Athens and went to Corinth.