Acts of the Apostles. After Paul's escorts had taken him to Athens, they came away with instructions

for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible. Then Paul stood up at the Arothicus

and said, You Athenians, I see that in every respect, you are very religious.

For as I walk around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an alter and scribe

to an unknown God.

What therefore you unknowingly worshiped, I proclaim to you.

That God, who made the world in all this in it, the

Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in sanctuaries made by human hands, nor is he served by

human hands because he needs anything. Rather, it is he who gives to everyone life and breath and everything. He made from one the whole

human race to dwell for the entire surface of the earth, and he fixed and ordered seasons and boundaries

of their regions so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for him and find him, though indeed he is not very far from any of us.

For in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your poets have said, for we too are his offspring.

Since therefore, we are the offspring of God.

We ought not to think that the divinity is like an image fashioned from gold or silver or stone by human art and imagination.

God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now he

demands that all people everywhere repent, because he has established a day on which he will

judge the world with justice. Through a man he has appointed, and he has provided confirmation

for all by raising him from the dead.

When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some began to scoff, but others said,

we should like to hear you on this some other time. And so Paul left that, but some did join

him, became believers. Among them were Dionysius,

a member of the court of the Aereophagus, a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

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