The Epistles were for 'babe' churches Although it may offend some, still it must be said that the epistles of Paul, Peter and thers just aren't in the same class as the Lord's direct words. We talked about this earlier, in our discussions about red letter Bibles being expanded to include all prophecy of THUS SAITH THE LORD in the Old and New Testaments. So if that be true and it is, then other writings don't carry as much weight as the Lord's direct words from his prophets and from Himself directly when he was here. In fact, after the Lord's departure, the early disciples didn't have many scrolls from the past prophets like the Scribes and Pharisees had. And they didn't have much of what Jesus said and did until they started to write afterwards. Right ? And besides their huge followings didn't know too much about the Lord and were babes in Christ in almost all cases. Yes, the apostles and some of the disciples had direct experiences which were very valuable, but sometimes even the flesh got in the way so that they didn’t understand. They talked about the Lord after he had gone and reviewed all the scriptures concerning him from the Old testament prophets. But they didn’t have hardly anything written down and because the disciples of the Lord spread out everywhere because of persecution, each of them seemed to start writing down what they knew which eventually turned into the GOSPELS. But with the establishments of new groups of believers, again more written facts about Jesus’ teaching was needed to ground the new converts in the true faith. They didn’t have published Bibles to distribute to the sheep as we do today. Their writers of these epistles to the churches tried to give them the basics and so stuck to the basics they knew and tried to get their converts established in the faith away from the worldly views their people had known before. In other words, they were writing to 'babe' churches. And needed to feed them milk and not the heavier words of the Lord. Yet church system people today deem the Epistles, the ultimate expression of the Lord's words as if that’s the end-all of the Christian experience. And that we are suppose to go backward in time to the beginning stages of the early babe churches. Sure we could use some of their means and forsake all and follow him to the ends of the Earth Spirit which is an eternal principle of the Lord, but we have greater mountains to climb and more to battle than they, and therefore need to go beyond what they knew and have more faith and determination and strength than them. For how else can we do the mighty exploits as mentioned in Daniel? The church people of today omit all the prophets and the principles of the Lord from the past, and concentrate mainly on their own joy, peace, and praise while the other words of the Lord are deleted from their Bible's either in non-belief or in disregard as unimportant. They worship the opinions expressed by Paul, even though these opinions were definitely sexist and anti-woman (I Corinthians 7 etc.). Yet these opinions go directly against the Lord's words on equality, but still church system people put Paul's words above the Lord's principles. So Yes, the Epistles are worthy to be read over and over again, but not worshipped word for word as are the direct words of the Lord should be. The Lord's opinion should be of much more value than Paul's or Peter's, unless they were in the ‘Spirit’ When they got it spot on, as in their writings about Grace over the Law, they are exactly coinciding with the Lord's truth, but when they strayed from what they knew to what they thought in their own minds and experiences or bad experiences then their words have to be read with a little less awe and a grain of salt.. IMHO Jay August 24, 2001