Acts Chapter 7
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
7:40. Saying to Aaron: Make us gods to go before us. For as for this Moses, who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we know not what is become of him.
7:41. And they made a calf in those days and offered sacrifices to the idol and rejoiced in the works of their own hands.
7:42. And God turned and gave them up to serve the host of heaven, as it is written in the books of the prophets: Did you offer victims and sacrifices to me for forty years, in the desert, O house of Israel?
7:43. And you took unto you the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of your god Rempham, figures which you made to adore them. And I will carry you away beyond Babylon.
7:44. The tabernacle of the testimony was with our fathers in the desert, as God ordained for them, speaking to Moses, that he should make it according to the form which he had seen.
7:45. Which also our fathers receiving, brought in with Jesus, into the possession of the Gentiles: whom God drove out before the face of our fathers, unto the days of David,
Jesus.... That is Josue, so called in Greek.
7:46. Who found grace before God and desired to find a tabernacle for the God of Jacob.
7:47. But Solomon built him a house,
7:48. Yet the most High dwelleth not in houses made by hands, as the prophet saith:
Dwelleth not in houses, etc.... That is, so as to stand in need of earthly dwellings, or to be contained, or circumscribed by them. Though, otherwise by his immense divinity, he is in our houses; and every where else; and Christ in his humanity dwelt in houses; and is now on our altars.
7:49. Heaven is my throne and the earth my footstool. What house will you build me (saith the Lord)? Or what is the place of my resting?
7:50. Hath not my hand made all these things?
7:51. You stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Ghost. As your fathers did, so do you also.
7:52. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? And they have slain them who foretold of the coming of the Just One: of whom you have been now the betrayers and murderers.
7:53. Who have received the law by the disposition of angels and have not kept it.
7:54. Now hearing these things, they were cut to the heart: and they gnashed with their teeth at him.
7:55. But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looking up steadfastly to heaven, saw the glory of God and Jesus standing on the right hand of God. And he said: Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.
7:56. And they, crying out with a loud voice, stopped their ears and with one accord ran violently upon him.
7:57. And casting him forth without the city, they stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man, whose name was Saul.
7:58. And they stoned Stephen, invoking and saying: Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.
7:59. And falling on his knees, he cried with a loud voice, saying: Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep in the Lord. And Saul was consenting to his death.