Galatians 1:15

But when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, even from my mother's womb, and called me through his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles; straightway I conferred not with flesh and blood; neither went I up to Jerusalem to them that were apostles before me: but I went away into Arabia, and again I returned unto Damascus.

The whole burden of Paul's defense of his apostleship in this and in Galatians 2 was summarized thus by Hayes:

I was an apostle before I ever saw an apostle; I was recognized as an equal by the apostles the first time they ever met me or heard what gospel I preached ... I have preached it with the official sanction of the apostles, and I have preached it in defiance of the apostles (Galatians 2:14). I am an apostle of God, and my gospel is the gospel of God.[43]

The revelation which Jesus Christ gave personally to Paul was exactly the same as that given to the Twelve. Paul did not claim superiority to them but equality with them, and that implies the equality of the revelation to himself with that of the Twelve. Since the three verses above concern the source of Paul's revelation, there is a strong inference that Arabia was the place where Christ met him to expound the truth of the gospel. It could also have been there that Paul experienced the visit (whether in the body or out of it being unknown) to the third heaven and to Paradise. It should be carefully noted that the revelation did not "flash into Paul's mind," as some claim; but it was conveyed personally by Jesus Christ our Lord.

Called me through his grace... It was not the Holy Spirit which called Paul, for Paul himself taught that the Spirit was an endowment only of those already sons of God; and, as always in the New Testament, the call of God means God's invitation accepted. Paul became a Son of God in the same manner as all Christians, by believing, repenting, confessing Christ and being baptized into him (Acts 22:16).

I conferred not with flesh and blood... Tenney noted that this is a figure of speech, called synecdoche, in which some significant and essential part is used to identify the whole.[44] The meaning is, "I did not confer with any human being." Sanday also detected a special meaning in "conferred," as used here. "The Greek word contains the idea of taking counsel in a personal interview, much as we now use the word apply in the phrase to apply to a person."[45] Paul did not apply to the Twelve for permission to accept his call from Christ to the apostleship.

Nothing of the length of time Paul spent in Arabia is known except that from the time of his conversion at Damascus and his preaching in that city for an undetermined length of time, until his escape from the plot under Aretas, was three years, including the sojourn in Arabia.

[43] D. A. Hayes, Paul and His Epistles (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1915, reprint 1969), p. 293.

[44] Merrill C. Tenney, Galatians the Charter of Christian Liberty (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1950), p. 138.

[45] William Sanday, op. cit., p. 431.