What then does Paul mean in Galatians when he says that he received his gospel directly from Christ? The answer is perfectly plain. He does not mean that when he drew near to Damascus on that memorable day he knew none of the facts about Jesus; he does not mean that after that day his knowledge of the facts was not enriched by intercourse with Jesus' friends. What Jesus really gave him near Damascus was not so much the facts as a new interpretation of the facts. He had known some of the facts before, but they had filled him with hatred. The Galilean prophet had cast despite upon the Law; He had broken down the prerogatives of Israel; it was blasphemous, moreover, to proclaim a crucified malefactor as the Lord's Anointed. Paul had known the facts before; he had known them only too well. Now, however, he obtained a new interpretation of the facts; he obtained that new interpretation not by human intermediation, not by reflection upon the testimony of the disciples, not by the example of the holy martyrs, but by revelation from Jesus Himself. Jesus Himself appeared to him. He might have appeared in anger, to destroy him for his unspeakable sin. Instead, He appeared in love, to call him into fellowship and into glorious service, to commission him as apostle of the One whose Church he had laid waste. That is what Paul means when he says that he received his gospel directly from the risen Christ. The truth is, it never occurred to Paul to regard the bare facts about Jesus as constituting a "gospel"; it never even occurred to Paul to reflect upon all the sources of information about the facts. To us the sources of information about Jesus are limited: therefore they are searched out and numbered and weighed. But to Paul the sources of information were so numerous that they could not be catalogued. It never occurred to him to regard with supreme gratitude the particular source from which he derived any particular bit of information about Jesus any more than we regard with special gratitude the newspaper from which we derive our knowledge of current events. If one newspaper had not printed the news, others would have done so; the sources of information are so numerous that we do not reflect upon them. So it was in the case of Paul's information about Jesus. Bare detailed information about the words and deeds of Jesus did not in Paul's mind constitute a "gospel"; they constituted only the materials upon which the gospel was based. When he says, therefore, that he did not receive his gospel from men he does not mean that he received no information from Peter or Barnabas or Mark or James or the five hundred brethren who had seen the risen Lord. What he does mean is that he himself was convinced of the decisive fact--the fact of the resurrection--not by the testimony of these men, but by the divine interposition on the road to Damascus, and that none of these men told him how he himself was to be saved or what he was to say to the Gentiles about the way of