Acts 16:20

⁴You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

²Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God.

¹⁸If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you. ¹⁹If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, since I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. ²⁰Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his lord.’If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.

²²But we desire to hear from you what you think. For, as concerning this sect, it is known to us that everywhere it is spoken against.”

³⁴But when they perceived that he was a Jew, all with one voice for a time of about two hours cried out, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”

³When King Herod heard it, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.

⁶When they didn’t find them, they dragged Jason and certain brothers^[+] before the rulers of the city, crying, “These who have turned the world upside down have come here also, ⁷whom Jason has received. These all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus!” ⁸The multitude and the rulers of the city were troubled when they heard these things.

⁸Haman said to King Ahasuerus, “There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom, and their laws are different from other people’s. They don’t keep the king’s laws. Therefore it is not for the king’s profit to allow them to remain. ⁹If it pleases the king, let it be written that they be destroyed; and I will pay ten thousand talents^[+] of silver into the hands of those who are in charge of the king’s business, to bring it into the king’s treasuries.”

¹²Be it known to the king that the Jews who came up from you have come to us to Jerusalem. They are building the rebellious and bad city, and have finished the walls and repaired the foundations. ¹³Be it known now to the king that if this city is built and the walls finished, they will not pay tribute, custom, or toll, and in the end it will be hurtful to the kings. ¹⁴Now because we eat the salt of the palace and it is not appropriate for us to see the king’s dishonor, therefore we have sent and informed the king, ¹⁵that search may be made in the book of the records of your fathers. You will see in the book of the records, and know that this city is a rebellious city, and hurtful to kings and provinces, and that they have started rebellions within it in the past. That is why this city was destroyed.

²He found a certain Jew named Aquila, a man of Pontus by race, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome. He came to them,