Chapter 3

  One day Peter and John were going up to the Temple for the hour of prayer--the ninth hour--and, just then,

  some men were carrying there one who had been lame from birth, whom they were wont to place every day close to the Beautiful Gate (as it was called) of the Temple, for him to beg from the people as they went in.

  Seeing Peter and John about to go into the Temple, he asked them for alms.

  Peter fixing his eyes on him, as John did also, said, 'Look at us.'

  So he looked and waited, expecting to receive something from them.

  'I have no silver or gold,' Peter said, 'but what I have, I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ, the Nazarene-- walk!'

  Then taking his hand Peter lifted him up, and immediately his feet and ankles were strengthened.

  Leaping up, he stood upright and began to walk, and went into the Temple with them, walking, leaping, and praising God.

  All the people saw him walking and praising God;

  and recognizing him as the man who used to sit at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple asking for alms, they were filled with awe and amazement at what had happened to him.

  While he still clung to Peter and John, the people, awe-struck, ran up crowding round them in what was known as Solomon's Portico.

  Peter, seeing this, spoke to the people. 'Israelites,' he said, 'why do you wonder at this man? Or why gaze at us, as though by any power or piety of our own we had enabled him to walk?

  The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our forefathers, has conferred this honour on His Servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and disowned in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to let Him go.

  Yes, you disowned the holy and righteous One, and asked as a favour the release of a murderer.

  The Prince of Life you put to death; but God has raised Him from the dead, and we are witnesses as to that.

  It is His name-- faith in that name being the condition--which has strengthened this man whom you behold and know; and the faith which He has given has made this man sound and strong again, as you can all see.

  'And now, brethren, I know that it was in ignorance that you did it, as was the case with your rulers also.

  But in this way God has fulfilled the declarations He made through all the Prophets, that His Christ would suffer.

  Repent, therefore, and reform your lives, so that the record of your sins may be cancelled, and that there may come seasons of revival from the Lord,

  and that He may send the Christ appointed beforehand for you--even Jesus.

  Heaven must receive Him until those times of which God has spoken from the earliest ages through the lips of His holy Prophets--the times of the reconstitution of all things.

  Moses declared, ''The Lord your God will raise up a Prophet for you from among your brethren as He has raised me. In all that He says to you, you must listen to Him.

  And every one, without exception, who refuses to listen to that Prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the People.'

  Yes, and all the Prophets, from Samuel onwards--all who have spoken--have also announced the coming of this present time.

  'You are the heirs of the Prophets, and of the Covenant which God made with your forefathers when He said to Abraham, 'And through your posterity all the families of the world shall be blessed.'

  It is to you first that God, after raising His Servant from the grave, has sent Him to bless you, by causing every one of you to turn from your wickedness.'