Galatians 1:11-24 - Paul's Defense Of His Apostleship

¹¹ For I make known to you, brothers, the good-news that was preached by me, that it is not according to man. ¹² For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it was through revelation of Jesus Christ.

¹³ For ye heard of my former behavior in Judaism, that I persecuted the church of God to extraordinariness, and ravaged it. ¹⁴ And I advanced in Judaism beyond many contemporaries among my race, being a more extreme zealot of my paternal traditions. ¹⁵ But when it pleased God who separated me from my mother's belly, and called me through his grace, ¹⁶ to reveal his Son in me, so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not straightaway confer with flesh and blood, ¹⁷ nor did I go up to Jerusalem to the apostles before me, but I went into Arabia and returned again to Damascus.

¹⁸ Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit with Peter, and I remained with him fifteen days. ¹⁹ But I did not see another of the apostles except James the Lord's brother. ²⁰ Now what I write to you, behold before God, I do not lie.

²¹ Later I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. ²² And I was unknown by face to the congregations of Judea in Christ, ²³ but they were only hearing that the man who once persecuted us now preaches the good-news, the faith that he once ravaged. ²⁴ And they glorified God in me.