I don’t remember what sparked my desire to study the whole group of what we call the General Epistles, but I did do that, and I’m so glad I did. For years I was satisfied in studying only Peter’s epistles, then Paul’s letter to the Hebrews. However, once I began my study of James I was hooked. I felt I had to go on and completed the task if time permitted. Each study is a milestone in my own life as I seek to know the Lord more and more deeply. He has permitted me to come to know him in new and different ways with each study. I feel so blessed.
The General Epistles are letters to the Jews, and they can be divided in two main outreaches. Paul’s letter to the Hebrews represents an outreach to the Jerusalem church, which was being persecuted, and many were leaving to embrace the new Judaism that provided salvation (a false salvation) without Christ. It was a new and false doctrine that sprung up late in the Gospel period, after Paul’s imprisonment. It was the beginning of the ‘great falling away’ (Matthew 24:10-12; 2Thessalonian 2:3). It was at this time, as well, that the Apostles, James, Peter, John and Jude wrote their epistles to the Jews of the Diaspora, which seems to have been in the Roman provinces that are now part of modern Turkey. The fact that so much was done over a widespread area at the same time indicates a common source for the persecution and doctrinal challenges. The high priest in Jerusalem was behind the thrust to undermine the faith of Jewish believers in Christ in the Diaspora. Of that, we can be certain, and I speak to this point in some of my studies below. May all who come here be blessed in their walk with Christ.
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