and ask the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, to give you the Spirit, who will make you wise and reveal God to you, so that you will know him.

"I went back to Jerusalem, and while I was praying in the Temple, I had a vision,

'Go,' the Lord said to me, 'for I will send you far away to the Gentiles.' "

The shouting became louder, and some of the teachers of the Law who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and protested strongly: "We cannot find a thing wrong with this man! Perhaps a spirit or an angel really did speak to him!"

'Who are you, Lord?' I asked. And the Lord answered, 'I am Jesus, whom you persecute.

I will rescue you from the people of Israel and from the Gentiles to whom I will send you.

"And so, King Agrippa, I did not disobey the vision I had from heaven.

However, as the scripture says, "What no one ever saw or heard, what no one ever thought could happen, is the very thing God prepared for those who love him."

But it was to us that God made known his secret by means of his Spirit. The Spirit searches everything, even the hidden depths of God's purposes.

I did not receive it from any human being, nor did anyone teach it to me. It was Jesus Christ himself who revealed it to me.

to reveal his Son to me, so that I might preach the Good News about him to the Gentiles, I did not go to anyone for advice,

It was three years later that I went to Jerusalem to obtain information from Peter, and I stayed with him for two weeks.

and of making all people see how God's secret plan is to be put into effect. God, who is the Creator of all things, kept his secret hidden through all the past ages,

There is a secret truth, my friends, which I want you to know, for it will keep you from thinking how wise you are. It is that the stubbornness of the people of Israel is not permanent, but will last only until the complete number of Gentiles comes to God.

Let us give glory to God! He is able to make you stand firm in your faith, according to the Good News I preach about Jesus Christ and according to the revelation of the secret truth which was hidden for long ages in the past.

which is the secret he hid through all past ages from all human beings but has now revealed to his people.

God's plan is to make known his secret to his people, this rich and glorious secret which he has for all peoples. And the secret is that Christ is in you, which means that you will share in the glory of God.

God did what he had purposed, and made known to us the secret plan he had already decided to complete by means of Christ.

All things are done according to God's plan and decision; and God chose us to be his own people in union with Christ because of his own purpose, based on what he had decided from the very beginning.

You Gentiles by birth---called "the uncircumcised" by the Jews, who call themselves the circumcised (which refers to what men do to their bodies)---remember what you were in the past.

But now, in union with Christ Jesus you, who used to be far away, have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

He abolished the Jewish Law with its commandments and rules, in order to create out of the two races one new people in union with himself, in this way making peace.

So Christ came and preached the Good News of peace to all---to you Gentiles, who were far away from God, and to the Jews, who were near to him.

So then, you Gentiles are not foreigners or strangers any longer; you are now citizens together with God's people and members of the family of God.

He is the one who holds the whole building together and makes it grow into a sacred temple dedicated to the Lord.