Acts 11:17

⁴⁷“Can anyone forbid these people from being baptized with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just like us.”

²⁰But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed ask him who formed it, “Why did you make me like this?”²¹Or hasn’t the potter a right over the clay, from the same lump to make one part a vessel for honor, and another for dishonor? ²²What if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, ²³and that he might make known the riches of his glory on vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory— ²⁴us, whom he also called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles? ²⁵As he says also in Hosea, “I will call them ‘my people,’ which were not my people; and her ‘beloved,’ who was not beloved.”²⁶“It will be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘children of the living God.’”

³⁴“For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?”³⁵“Or who has first given to him, and it will be repaid to him again?”

³⁶For of him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory for ever! Amen.

¹³Why do you strive against him, because he doesn’t give account of any of his matters?

⁸God, who knows the heart, testified about them, giving them the Holy Spirit, just like he did to us. ⁹He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith.

³⁵All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing; and he does according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; and no one can stop his hand, or ask him, “What are you doing?”

¹⁵For he said to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”¹⁶So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy.

⁴⁵They of the circumcision who believed were amazed, as many as came with Peter, because the gift of the Holy Spirit was also poured out on the Gentiles.

¹⁴Take that which is yours, and go your way. It is my desire to give to this last just as much as to you. ¹⁵Isn’t it lawful for me to do what I want to with what I own? Or is your eye evil, because I am good?’

¹⁵As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them, even as on us at the beginning.