listen to their prayers. If any of your people Israel, out of heartfelt sorrow, stretch out their hands in prayer toward this Temple,

After thinking it over, he made two bull-calves of gold and said to his people, "You have been going long enough to Jerusalem to worship. People of Israel, here are your gods who brought you out of Egypt!"

listen to their prayers. If any of your people Israel, out of heartfelt sorrow, stretch out their hands in prayer toward this Temple,

"Don't they know?" God asks. "Are these evildoers ignorant? They live by robbing my people, and they never pray to me."

Why do you keep on rebelling? Do you want to be punished even more? Israel, your head is already covered with wounds, and your heart and mind are sick.

You are doomed! You call evil good and call good evil. You turn darkness into light and light into darkness. You make what is bitter sweet, and what is sweet you make bitter.

The old and honorable men are the head---and the tail is the prophets whose teachings are lies!

The city's rulers govern for bribes, the priests interpret the Law for pay, the prophets give their revelations for money---and they all claim that the LORD is with them. "No harm will come to us," they say. "The LORD is with us."

but if your eyes are no good, your body will be in darkness. So if the light in you is darkness, how terribly dark it will be!

So the prophecy of Isaiah applies to them: 'This people will listen and listen, but not understand; they will look and look, but not see,

because their minds are dull, and they have stopped up their ears and have closed their eyes. Otherwise, their eyes would see, their ears would hear, their minds would understand, and they would turn to me, says God, and I would heal them.'

You will be expelled from the synagogues, and the time will come when those who kill you will think that by doing this they are serving God.

People will do these things to you because they have not known either the Father or me.

"I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up here in Jerusalem as a student of Gamaliel. I received strict instruction in the Law of our ancestors and was just as dedicated to God as are all of you who are here today.

I persecuted to the death the people who followed this Way. I arrested men and women and threw them into prison.

"I myself thought that I should do everything I could against the cause of Jesus of Nazareth.

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.

For if the gospel we preach is hidden, it is hidden only from those who are being lost.

They do not believe, because their minds have been kept in the dark by the evil god of this world. He keeps them from seeing the light shining on them, the light that comes from the Good News about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.

And so God sends the power of error to work in them so that they believe what is false.

The result is that all who have not believed the truth, but have taken pleasure in sin, will be condemned.