Why are the writings of the apostles trustworthy?

Question:

The New Testament contains the writings of the apostles about Jesus’ teachings. What proofs do we have, that what the apostles say is true. Why should we follow what Paul and Peter said? They were simple people, not messengers, as Jesus was. Maybe we should follow only what God said through His messengers (Moses, Jesus, etc.)? You have written an article about the clothing of the women and you said that if apostle Paul didn’t make some rules regarding women’s clothes, priests don’t have this right, as well. Why then Paul had that right to make rules?

Apostles are the disciples and witnesses of Jesus Christ

Saint Jude wrote the epistle of Jude based on the danger of the church to be influenced by a wrong and destructive teaching. At the beginning of the epistle, he says:

Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. (Jude 1:3–4)(NASB)

In the end of the epistle, Jude wrote:

But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Jude 1:17)(NASB)

Apostles are eye witnesses, those who heard and learnt from the Lord Jesus Christ. Being guided by the Holy Spirit, these people registered in written form the teaching of the Savior.

Where was Paul’s authority from?

In the old times, the enemies of the Gospel disputed Paul’s authority the most. Their argument was that Apostle Paul was not near the Lord Jesus during the Savior’s three years ministry on earth. In the Epistle to Galatians, Apostle Paul dedicated the first chapter to touch this subject and he writes:

For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. (Galatians 1:11–12)(NASB)

When one reads this chapter attentively, he will see that Paul had very powerful arguments that prove that he had received the whole teaching of the Gospel through the revelation of Jesus Christ and then he presented  that teaching systematized and deeply in the Epistles he had written, being guided by the Holy Spirit. And then, apostles Paul didn’t make rules he liked, but he wrote the things received from the Lord Jesus through divine revelation.

Apostle Peter acknowledged the divine inspiration of Paul’s writings

In the second Epistle, Apostle Peter wrote:

And regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:15–16)(NASB)

When he says Scriptures, Apostle Peter refers to the Holy Scriptures, and these verses sets Paul’s epistles side by side with the rest of the Scriptures.

God keep each of us not to take away and not to add anything to the Words of God, but to believe them all, to fulfill them in our lives and to preach them with boldness and zeal to others.

Translated by Felicia Djugostran