Galatians 1:13-24

13 You have surely heard how I lived in the past, within Judaism, and how there was simply no limit to the way I persecuted the Church of God in my attempts to destroy it;

14 and how, in Judaism, I outstripped most of my Jewish contemporaries in my limitless enthusiasm for the traditions of my ancestors.

15 But when God, who had set me apart from the time when I was in my mother's womb, called me through his grace and chose

16 to reveal his Son in me, so that I should preach him to the gentiles, I was in no hurry to confer with any human being,

17 or to go up to Jerusalem to see those who were already apostles before me. Instead, I went off to Arabia, and later I came back to Damascus.

18 Only after three years did I go up to Jerusalem to meet Cephas. I stayed fifteen days with him

19 but did not set eyes on any of the rest of the apostles, only James, the Lord's brother.

20 I swear before God that what I have written is the truth.

21 After that I went to places in Syria and Cilicia;

22 and was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judaea which are in Christ,

23 they simply kept hearing it said, 'The man once so eager to persecute us is now preaching the faith that he used to try to destroy,'

24 and they gave glory to God for me.