11. Many a time I went from one synagogue to another to have them punished, and I tried to force them to blaspheme. I was so obsessed with persecuting them that I even hunted them down in foreign cities.
12. ‘On one of these journeys I was going to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests.
13. About noon, King Agrippa, as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazing around me and my companions.
14. We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.”
15. ‘Then I asked, “Who are you, Lord?”‘ “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” the Lord replied.
16. “Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen and will see of me.
17. I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them
18. to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.”
19. ‘So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven.
20. First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and then to the Gentiles, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and demonstrate their repentance by their deeds.
21. That is why some Jews seized me in the temple courts and tried to kill me.
22. But God has helped me to this very day; so I stand here and testify to small and great alike. I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen –
23. that the Messiah would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would bring the message of light to his own people and to the Gentiles.’