Acts 17:31

Acts 17:31. Because he hath appointed a day in the which he will Judge the world in righteousness. The Greek word translated ‘because' is better rendered ‘inasmuch as.' This statement gives the reason why the Heathen world must repent the day of judgment is fixed, and the Judge appointed. If now, after they have been warned, the Heathen still refuse to repent, they will be condemned.

He hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is mentioned as showing the possibility of a general resurrection of all men from the dead.

It was the assertion of this fact, that the body would be raised again, which excited the attention of some and the bitter scorn of others in Athens. He had been previously, we read, in the marketplace (the Agora), preaching Jesus and the resurrection; and it was the desire to hear more fully and quietly of this, to them strange and startling doctrine, that the leaders in the various schools of philosophy invited him to address them in the more retired court on Mars' Hill; but when in his argument he had come to speak of this resurrection, and was proceeding to tell them more of this Jesus who had been dead but now lived and reigned, they interrupted him and firmly but not discourteously adjourned the meeting. They felt, did these Epicurean and Stoic teachers, that if the single instance of Christ's resurrection was admitted or even allowed to be spoken of before such an assembly as that of the powerful Areopagites, the possibility of rising from the dead would be in a way conceded, and the teaching of these famous schools would be shown to be false.