---
title: Acts 9:14
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/acts-9-14/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/acts-9-14.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Acts 9:14
testament: NT
section: Acts
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Acts 9:14

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> And now he is here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on Your name.”

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (1984 edition): "all those calling upon your name"
- NWT (2013 revision): "all those calling on your name"

## JW Usage

Ananias's report to the Lord that Saul has come to Damascus to arrest "all those calling on your name" is treated in JW publications as the description of early Christians as a people identified by the name they invoked. JWs emphasise the parallel between Christian persecution and modern Witness persecution. The Watchtower passes lightly over the fact that the name Saul was tracking was Jesus' — and that Ananias is addressing the risen Christ when he says "your name."

## Protestant Usage

The "Lord" Ananias speaks to in v.13-15 is Jesus — verses 10-12 record the vision in which Christ commissions Ananias to go to Saul. The "your name" of v.14 therefore refers to Jesus' name. The earliest Christians were identified — by outsiders, by persecutors, and by themselves — as people who called on Jesus. Calling on the name of the Lord (Romans 10:13, quoting Joel 2:32) is, in Paul's deliberate redirection of the Joel text, calling on Jesus. The verse is part of the dense Acts pattern showing that the apostolic invocation was christological, not Tetragrammaton-centred.

## NWT Issue

The NWT keeps "your name" — referring to Jesus, addressed by Ananias — without inserting "Jehovah." The selectivity is the point: the same NWT inserts "Jehovah" 237 times across the NT where Greek manuscripts read kyrios, but declines to do so in passages where the pronoun-referent or address is unambiguously Jesus. Across Acts 2:38, 4:18, 9:14, and 22:16, the pattern is identical — the NWT keeps the natural christological reading wherever inserting "Jehovah" would identify Jesus as the saving name. That single observation explains the rule that governs the 237 insertions.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [No New Testament Command to Use 'Jehovah'](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/jehovah-name-no-NT-mandate.md) — The NT's only command about the saving name redirects it to Jesus [Deity of Christ]