Hey guys, welcome back to this week's episode on the Forgotten Jesus with Robbie Gowdy.

I'm Andrew Bolton. Join us again this week at Mr. T.J. Joy. How are you, T.J.?

I'm doing well, man. Okay, pastor. So on the last episode, somebody pointed out that we brought up Paul,

being one of the gospel writers, and then we never circled back around to how were his writings

acceptable, even though he wasn't physically with Jesus. Yeah, he wasn't an apostle, so how is

like technically one of the 12? The answer is paul was one of the apostles

because remember the the qualification is you have to see jesus face to face okay well we know in

acts chapter 9 he has this light on the road then he gets his sight back and then in galatians

chapter 1 paul is building the case in the beginning of the of Galatians because a lot of people were saying this. Paul, you're not an apostle. Who in the world are you? You actually were a Pharisee. You were persecuting us. Now you're preaching for Christ. Who is this guy? And Paul was, and where did he get his gospel from? Where did he learn this from? And Paul makes the case here in Galatians chapter one.

And he says, listen, I did not learn this from anyone.

In fact, he said, I went away from Jerusalem to Arabia.

And after three years, I went and found Cephas or Paul.

So what he's saying is Paul actually learned, this is a little cool insight. Paul actually,

we believe, went away for three years in anonymity in obscurity and learned about who Jesus was

from Jesus. Wow. Now, why three years? It's interesting. Remember, numbers mean something.

We always talk about numbers meaning something. The text says Galatians 118, for those who are interested. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get to know Peter or Seifis, and I stayed with him 15 days. Now, the question is, why three years?

I'm trying to think of the other significance of the number three that we've talked about. Okay. T.J., you got an idea? Why three years? I'm stumped. Okay. How many years do we believe Jesus invested in the 12th? Okay, there you go. Three years. About three years. Isn't it interesting? So Paul's basically making the case. I mean, you have to believe Paul after like six months.

He's like, all right, boss, I got this. I'm ready to go. He's like, no, you need a whole lot more work to do. And I think it's cool because it just shows us just to be patient with the Lord. A lot of us want to get, I hear people all the time. I'm ready to go preach. I'm ready to go in ministry.

I know I was early on, man, I'm ready to go do great things for God.

And God say, no, just be patient. You're going to

have a lifetime of ministry, just spend time laboring and learning behind the scenes. And that's why

education's never bad. That's not why serving in church staff or church staffs as interns or as part-time positions or by vocation,

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