but if you return to me and carefully keep my commandments, even though your outcasts have been driven to the farthest corner of the world, I will gather them from there, and bring them back to the place I have chosen as the dwelling place for my name.
They shall not toil in vain, nor beget children for sudden destruction; For they shall be a people blessed by the Lord and their descendants with them.
From Jacob I will bring forth offspring, from Judah, those who are to possess my mountains; My chosen ones shall possess the land, my servants shall dwell there.
See, days are coming—oracle of the Lord—when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of human beings and the seed of animals.
Then your refugees will remember me among the nations to which they have been exiled, after I have broken their lusting hearts that turned away from me and their eyes that lusted after idols. They will loathe themselves for all the evil they have done, for all their abominations.
And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the nations, in the midst of many peoples, Like a lion among beasts of the forest, like a young lion among flocks of sheep; When it passes through it tramples; it tears and no one can rescue.
Now Saul was consenting to his execution. Persecution of the Church. On that day, there broke out a severe persecution of the church in Jerusalem, and all were scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.
For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated one, how much more will they who belong to it by nature be grafted back into their own olive tree. God’s Irrevocable Call.