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Agrippa said to Paul, "You have permission to speak on your own behalf." Paul stretched out his hand and defended himself as follows:
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"King Agrippa! I consider myself fortunate that today I am to defend myself before you from all the things these Jews accuse me of,
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particularly since you know so well all the Jewish customs and disputes. I ask you, then, to listen to me with patience.
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"All the Jews know how I have lived ever since I was young. They know how I have spent my whole life, at first in my own country and then in Jerusalem.
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They have always known, if they are willing to testify, that from the very first I have lived as a member of the strictest party of our religion, the Pharisees.
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And now I stand here to be tried because of the hope I have in the promise that God made to our ancestors -
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the very thing that the twelve tribes of our people hope to receive, as they worship God day and night. And it is because of this hope, Your Majesty, that I am being accused by these Jews!
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Why do you who are here find it impossible to believe that God raises the dead?
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"I myself thought that I should do everything I could against the cause of Jesus of Nazareth.
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That is what I did in Jerusalem. I received authority from the chief priests and put many of God's people in prison; and when they were sentenced to death, I also voted against them.
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Many times I had them punished in the synagogues and tried to make them deny their faith. I was so furious with them that I even went to foreign cities to persecute them.