Acts 22:1-10, 17-21

“Ladies and gentlemen, fellow believers and elders —please listen to me as I offer my defense.” (Now, when everyone realized he was speaking to them in their Judean Aramaic language, the crowd became all the more attentive.) Then Paul said, “I am a Jewish man who was born in Tarsus, a city of Turkey. However, I grew up in this city and was properly trained in the Mosaic law and tutored by Rabbi Gamaliel according to our ancestral customs. I’ve been extremely passionate in my desire to please God, just as all of you are today. I’ve hunted down and killed the followers of this Way. I have seized them and thrown them into prison, both men and women. All of this can be verified by the high priest and the Supreme Council of Elders. For they even wrote letters to our fellow Jews of Damascus, authorizing me to arrest them and bring them back to Jerusalem as prisoners to be punished. “As I was on the road approaching Damascus, about noon, a brilliant heavenly light suddenly appeared, flashing all around me. As I fell to the ground I heard a voice say, ‘Saul, Saul . . . why are you persecuting me?’ “I answered, ‘Who are you, my Lord?’ “He said to me, ‘I am Jesus, the Victorious. I am the one you are persecuting.’ “Those who were with me saw the brilliant light, but they didn’t hear the voice of the one who spoke to me. “So I asked, ‘Lord, what am I to do?’ “And the Lord said to me, ‘Get up and go into Damascus, and there you will be told about all that you are destined to do.’

“Then I returned to Jerusalem. And while I was praying in the temple, I entered another realm and saw him. He said to me, ‘Hurry and depart from Jerusalem quickly, for the people here will not receive the truths you share about me.’ “ ‘But Lord,’ I argued, ‘they all know that I’m the one who went into our Jewish meetings to find those who believe in you and had them beaten and imprisoned. When the blood of your witness Stephen was shed, I stood nearby in full approval of what was happening. I even guarded the cloaks of those who stoned him to death.’ “Then he said to me, ‘Go at once, for I am sending you to preach to the non-Jewish nations.’  ”