What God?

While Paul was waiting for them in Athens,
he was greatly distressed to see that the city
was full of idols.

So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews
and the God-fearing Greeks,
as well as in the marketplace day by day
with those who happened to be there.

A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers
began to dispute with him. Some of them asked,
"What is this babbler trying to say?" Others remarked,
"He seems to be advocating foreign gods."
They said this because Paul was preaching the good news
about Jesus and the resurrection.

Then they took him and brought him to a meeting
of the Areopagus, where they said to him,
"May we know what this new teaching is
that you are presenting?

You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears,
and we want to know what they mean."

(All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there
spent their time doing nothing but talking about
and listening to the latest ideas.)

Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said:
"Men of Athens!
I see that in every way you are very religious.

For as I walked around and looked carefully
at your objects of worship, I even found an altar
with this inscription:

TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.

Now what you worship as something unknown
I am going to proclaim to you.

"The God who made the world and everything in it
is the Lord of heaven and earth
and does not live in temples built by hands.

And he is not served by human hands,
as if he needed anything,
because he himself gives all men life and breath
and everything else.

From one man he made every nation of men,
that they should inhabit the whole earth;
and he determined the times set for them
and the exact places where they should live.

God did this so that men would seek him
and perhaps reach out for him and find him,
though he is not far from each one of us.

`For in him we live and move and have our being.'
As some of your own poets have said,
`We are his offspring.'

"Therefore since we are God's offspring,
we should not think that the divine being is like gold or
silver or stone--an image made by man's design and skill.

In the past God overlooked such ignorance,
but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.

For he has set a day when he will judge the world
with justice by the man he has appointed.
He has given proof of this to all men
by raising him from the dead."

(Acts 17:16-31;   All scripture taken from New International Version.)

Do YOU know the God YOU are serving?


Return to List
Previous    Next

----------------------------------------------------

Return to Home Page

Copyright © 1998,  Believer's International
Revised -- 1998-12-20
URL: http://bowss.org 
E-Mail: BOWSS' Home Page at bowss@comcast.net