"And now, my friends, I know that what you and your leaders did to Jesus was due to your ignorance.

"I tell you, Peter," Jesus said, "the rooster will not crow tonight until you have said three times that you do not know me."

So he said to them, "When you lift up the Son of Man, you will know that 'I Am Who I Am'; then you will know that I do nothing on my own authority, but I say only what the Father has instructed me to say.

But they will do all this to you because you are mine; for they do not know the one who sent me.

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

As the scripture says, "God made their minds and hearts dull; to this very day they cannot see or hear."

May their eyes be blinded so that they cannot see; and make them bend under their troubles at all times."

None of the rulers of this world knew this wisdom. If they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

Their minds, indeed, were closed; and to this very day their minds are covered with the same veil as they read the books of the old covenant. The veil is removed only when a person is joined to Christ.

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.

even though in the past I spoke evil of him and persecuted and insulted him. But God was merciful to me because I did not yet have faith and so did not know what I was doing.

Jesus answered them, "How wrong you are! It is because you don't know the Scriptures or God's power.

Then Jesus said to them, "How foolish you are, how slow you are to believe everything the prophets said!

And Jesus explained to them what was said about himself in all the Scriptures, beginning with the books of Moses and the writings of all the prophets.

They went on from Perga and arrived in Antioch in Pisidia, and on the Sabbath they went into the synagogue and sat down.

After the reading from the Law of Moses and from the writings of the prophets, the officials of the synagogue sent them a message: "Friends, we want you to speak to the people if you have a message of encouragement for them."

For the Law of Moses has been read for a very long time in the synagogues every Sabbath, and his words are preached in every town."

But to this very day I have been helped by God, and so I stand here giving my witness to all, to small and great alike. What I say is the very same thing which the prophets and Moses said was going to happen:

that the Messiah must suffer and be the first one to rise from death, to announce the light of salvation to the Jews and to the Gentiles."

So they set a date with Paul, and a large number of them came that day to the place where Paul was staying. From morning till night he explained to them his message about the Kingdom of God, and he tried to convince them about Jesus by quoting from the Law of Moses and the writings of the prophets.

You plotted evil against me, but God turned it into good, in order to preserve the lives of many people who are alive today because of what happened.

But in that case, how could the Scriptures come true which say that this is what must happen?"

But all this has happened in order to make come true what the prophets wrote in the Scriptures." Then all the disciples left him and ran away.

Our chief priests and rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and he was crucified.

Some of our group went to the tomb and found it exactly as the women had said, but they did not see him."

Jesus knew that by now everything had been completed; and in order to make the scripture come true, he said, "I am thirsty."

Jesus drank the wine and said, "It is finished!" Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

This was done to make the scripture come true: "Not one of his bones will be broken."

And there is another scripture that says, "People will look at him whom they pierced."