Go west across the sea to the coasts of Cyprus and see. Send someone east to Kedar and have them look carefully. See if such a thing as this has ever happened:

I planted you in the land like a special vine of the very best stock. Why in the world have you turned into something like a wild vine that produces rotten, foul-smelling grapes?

But I, the Lord, make the following promise: I have made a covenant governing the coming of day and night. I have established the fixed laws governing heaven and earth.

When the cherubim stood still, the wheels stood still, and when they rose up, the wheels rose up with them, for the spirit of the living beings was in the wheels.

Can horses run on rocky cliffs? Can one plow the sea with oxen? Yet you have turned justice into a poisonous plant, and the fruit of righteous actions into a bitter plant.

But as for me, I promise to offer a sacrifice to you with a public declaration of praise; I will surely do what I have promised. Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

But they do not know what the Lord is planning; they do not understand his strategy. He has gathered them like stalks of grain to be threshed at the threshing floor.

While he was still speaking, suddenly a crowd appeared, and the man named Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them. He walked up to Jesus to kiss him.

Jesus replied, “Are there not twelve hours in a day? If anyone walks around in the daytime, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world.

When Jesus had said this, one of the high priest’s officers who stood nearby struck him on the face and said, “Is that the way you answer the high priest?”

But it is your custom that I release one prisoner for you at the Passover. So do you want me to release for you the king of the Jews?”

Then Paul left the synagogue and went to the house of a person named Titius Justus, a Gentile who worshiped God, whose house was next door to the synagogue.

Think about the circumstances of your call, brothers and sisters. Not many were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were born to a privileged position.

Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things that are freely given to us by God.

For we who are alive are constantly being handed over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our mortal body.

But since we have the same spirit of faith as that shown in what has been written, “I believed; therefore I spoke,” we also believe, therefore we also speak.

For this reason, take up the full armor of God so that you may be able to stand your ground on the evil day, and having done everything, to stand.

He is the head of the body, the church, as well as the beginning, the firstborn from among the dead, so that he himself may become first in all things.

And he must be well thought of by those outside the faith, so that he may not fall into disgrace and be caught by the devil’s trap.

Then I saw in the right hand of the one who was seated on the throne a scroll written on the front and back and sealed with seven seals.