Chapter 3

¹Peter and John were on their way up to the Temple for the three o’clock hour of prayer, ²when a man who had been lame from his birth was carried by. He used to be placed every day at what was known as the Beautiful Gate of the Temple, to beg from the people on their way into the Temple, ³and when he saw Peter and John on the point of going into the Temple he asked them to give him something. ⁴Peter fixed his eyes on him, as John did also, and said to him,

“Look at us!”

⁵He looked at them, supposing that they were going to give him something. ⁶But Peter said,

“I have no silver or gold, but I will give you what I have. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk!”

⁷And he took him by the right hand and raised him up, and his feet and ankles immediately became strong, ⁸and he sprang to his feet and began to walk, and he went into the Temple with them, walking, leaping, and praising God. ⁹When all the people saw him walking about, praising God, ¹⁰and recognized him as the man who used to sit and beg at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple, they were perfectly astonished and amazed at what had happened to him.

¹¹And as he still clung to Peter and John, all the people crowded about them in the utmost astonishment in what was known as Solomon’s Colonnade. ¹²When Peter saw this, he said to the people.

“Men of Israel, why are you so surprised at this? Why do you stare so at us, as though it were some power or some piety of ours that had made him able to walk? ¹³The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our forefathers, has done this honor to his servant Jesus, whom you betrayed and disowned before Pilate, when he had decided to let him go. ¹⁴But you disowned the Holy, Righteous One. You asked to have a murderer released for you, ¹⁵and killed the very source of life. But God raised him from the dead, as we can testify. ¹⁶It is by his power and through faith in him that this man whom you see and recognize has been made strong again, and it is faith inspired by him that has given him the perfect health you all see. ¹⁷Yet I know, brothers, that you did not know what you were doing, any more than your leaders did; ¹⁸it was in this way that God fulfilled what he by all the prophets foretold that his Christ must suffer. ¹⁹So repent and turn to God, to have your sins wiped out, and happier times will come from the presence of the Lord, ²⁰and he will send Jesus, your destined Christ. ²¹Yet he must remain in heaven till the time for the universal reformation of which God told in ancient times by the lips of his holy prophets. ²²Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up a prophet for you from among your brothers, as he raised me up. You must listen to everything that he tells you. ²³Anyone that will not listen to that prophet will be annihilated from among the people.’ ²⁴Why, all the prophets from Samuel down, who have spoken, have also foretold these days. ²⁵You are the descendants of the prophets and the heirs of the agreement that God made with your forefathers when he said to Abraham, ‘Through your posterity all the families of the earth will be blessed.’ ²⁶It was to you that God first sent his servant after he had raised him from the dead, to bless you by making every one of you turn from his wickedness.”