Scriptures

New Living Translation (NLT)

Acts 6
¹³ The lying witnesses said, “This man is always speaking against the holy Temple and against the law of Moses.
¹⁴ We have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy the Temple and change the customs Moses handed down to us.”
¹⁵ At this point everyone in the high council stared at Stephen, because his face became as bright as an angel’s.
Acts 7
¹ Then the high priest asked Stephen, “Are these accusations true?”
² This was Stephen’s reply: “Brothers and fathers, listen to me. Our glorious God appeared to our ancestor Abraham in Mesopotamia before he settled in Haran.
³ God told him, ‘Leave your native land and your relatives, and come into the land that I will show you.’
⁴ So Abraham left the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran until his father died. Then God brought him here to the land where you now live.
⁵ “But God gave him no inheritance here, not even one square foot of land. God did promise, however, that eventually the whole land would belong to Abraham and his descendants—even though he had no children yet.
⁶ God also told him that his descendants would live in a foreign land, where they would be oppressed as slaves for 400 years.
⁷ ‘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.’
⁸ “God also gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision at that time. So when Abraham became the father of Isaac, he circumcised him on the eighth day. And the practice was continued when Isaac became the father of Jacob, and when Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs of the Israelite nation.