Acts 7 (NMV)
1 Then the high priest asked, "Are these things true?"
2 Stephen replied, "Brothers and fathers, listen: The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran,
3 and said to him, 'Leave your land and your relatives, and come to the land that I will show you.'
4 Then he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. After his father died, God brought him into this land where you now live.
5 He gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot of ground, but He promised to give it to him as a possession and to his descendants after him, even though he had no child at the time.
6 God spoke this way: 'Your descendants will be strangers in a foreign land, and they will be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years.
7 But I will judge the nation they serve as slaves, and after that they will come out and worship Me in this place.'
8 Then He gave him the covenant of circumcision. So Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day. Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs.
9 The patriarchs became jealous of Joseph and sold him into Egypt, but God was with him
10 and rescued him from all his troubles. He gave him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who appointed him ruler over Egypt and over his whole household.
11 Now a famine and great suffering came over all Egypt and Canaan, and our ancestors could find no food.
12 When Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our ancestors there the first time.
13 On their second visit, Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and Pharaoh came to know Joseph's family.
14 Joseph then invited his father Jacob and all his relatives, seventy-five people in all.
15 So Jacob went down to Egypt. He and our ancestors died there.
16 They were carried back to Shechem and placed in the tomb that Abraham had bought with silver from the sons of Hamor in Shechem.
17 As the time drew near for God to fulfill His promise to Abraham, the people in Egypt increased and multiplied,
18 until a different king, who had not known Joseph, came to power in Egypt.
19 He exploited our people and mistreated our ancestors, forcing them to abandon their infants so they would die.
20 At that time Moses was born, and he was beautiful in God's sight. He was cared for in his father's house for three months.
21 When he was abandoned, Pharaoh's daughter took him in and raised him as her own son.
22 So Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and in action.
23 When he was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites.
24 When he saw one of them being mistreated, he defended him and avenged the oppressed man by striking down the Egyptian.
25 He assumed his people would understand that God was giving them deliverance through him, but they did not understand.
26 The next day he appeared to them as they were fighting and tried to reconcile them by saying, 'Men, you are brothers; why are you hurting each other?'
27 But the one who was mistreating his neighbor pushed Moses aside and said, 'Who made you ruler and judge over us?
28 Are you going to kill me just like you killed the Egyptian yesterday?'
29 When he heard this, Moses fled and became a foreigner in the land of Midian, where he had two sons.
30 After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in the flames of a burning bush.
31 When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight. As he approached to look at it more closely, the voice of the Lord came to him:
32 I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.' Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look.
33 Then the Lord said to him: 'Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.
34 I have certainly seen the oppression of My people in Egypt; I have heard their cries of deep suffering and have come down to rescue them. Now come, I will send you to Egypt.'
35 This same Moses they had rejected by saying, 'Who made you a ruler and judge?', this one God sent as both ruler and deliverer through the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush.
36 He led them out, performing wonders and signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for forty years.
37 This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, 'God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers.'
38 He is the one who was with the congregation in the wilderness, with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our ancestors. He received living words to give to us.
39 But our ancestors refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt.
40 They told Aaron, 'Make us gods who will go before us. As for this Moses who brought us out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him.'
41 So they made a calf in those days, offered a sacrifice to the idol, and celebrated what their hands had made.
42 But God turned away from them and handed them over to worship the stars of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: 'Did you bring Me offerings and sacrifices for forty years in the wilderness, house of Israel?
43 You took along the tent of Moloch, and the star of your god Rephan, the images you made to worship. So I will send you into exile beyond Babylon.'
44 Our ancestors had the tabernacle of the testimony in the wilderness. Just as He who spoke to Moses directed him to make it according to the pattern he had seen,
45 Our ancestors in turn received it and brought it in with Joshua when they entered the land and God drove out the nations before them. It remained until the time of David,
46 who found favor with God and asked that he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob.
47 But it was Solomon who built a house for Him.
48 However, the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands, as the prophet says:
49 Heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool. What kind of house will you build for Me? says the Lord, or what is the place of My rest?
50 Did not My hand make all these things?'
51 You stiff-necked [like a stubborn ox] people with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit"”just like your ancestors did!
52 Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They even killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become,
53 you who received the Law ordained through angels, but have not kept it."
54 When they heard these things, they were enraged in their hearts and clenched their teeth in seething rage at him.
55 But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.
56 He said, "Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!"
57 But they screamed with a loud voice, covered their ears, and rushed at him all at once.
58 They dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. The witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.
59 While they were stoning Stephen, he called out, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!"
60 Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them!" After saying this, he fell asleep.