People will pressure you to read too much of what they consider the historically significant works. I have studied many of them myself, and much of it has been a regret and a waste of time. I needed to become familiar with them in order to discuss them and to teach others, but I read too much to be worthwhile. People push you to study so much of these writings because of their false religious humility and their idolatry toward mere men. You do not have to accept this judgment just because it comes from me. Try it for yourself. Select whoever you wish that is supposed to be essential. They are not entirely useless if you have never read them before, but after you have become familiar with some basic concepts, what do you get from them but bad arguments, convoluted prose, and then a whole lot of unbelief, man-made inventions, and self-contradiction? The good things that they teach have been reproduced elsewhere, often with better clarity and precision, and without the unbelief. So why keep hitting your head against the wall for no benefit? Why hurt yourself to make yourself acceptable to others? Why make any effort to earn the respect of losers? This is not faith or humility, but insanity.

Sometimes there are indeed reasons to read the traditionally important works. For example, if you wish to become a theology professor, you will have to become familiar with them. If you need to pass a seminary test, then you will have to read them. If you have many conversations with Christians that talk about them, you might wish to gain some basic familiarity about them. Thus there might be practical reasons to read them as demanded by your circumstances. But spiritual reasons? If we are thinking about how to build faith and knowledge, how to grow in Christ, how to live a life worthy of the gospel, and how to make you a man of God who can preach and defend the faith – then, no, you do not need to study these writings. They are a drag on faith, and they waste your precious time – they waste your life. This is your life, so it is your choice. But I think that regarding the people who pressure or criticize you on this issue, it would be better to spit on them and cut them off from your life than to submit to their stupid advice. Just look at their lives! Are they the kind of believers that you want to become? Are they full of knowledge and power, doing the feats of faith that you want? Do they produce the kind of preaching and writing for the gospel that you wish to imitate? They do not, isn’t that true? Then why listen to them? If you are reading them for school or work, then read them for school or work. If you are reading for faith and knowledge, then read things that build up faith and knowledge. It is irrelevant whether they are considered historically significant. Many historically significant works promote unbelief and misinformation.

People want you to conform to their standard of judgment, and to become failures like them. In their hearts, they know that they are failures, and they know that they defy God in their unbelief, and they know that they idolize mere men. When someone comes along that does things differently, it draws attention to their sins, and becomes a witness against them. It becomes a reminder that they are not in a good place with God. So they suppress the knowledge of God in unrighteousness. Of course they would want you to conform and become the same as they are. They don’t want to help you. They want to silence you. They wish to say that the authors that they favor are relevant, and that someone like me is irrelevant. However, the most relevant materials are not those that have been respected by the world of tradition, but what have been aligned to the word of God. When it comes to spiritual things, tradition cannot make anything relevant, but only God makes something relevant. It is not that I am irrelevant, but I am so relevant that I am a threat against them. They want to make me irrelevant, so that I will not disturb them in their unbelief and complacent religion. Just by intending to diverge from their unbelief, you have become too relevant for them and a threat to them. They are irrelevant to God, to Satan, and to the world. Their religion is nothing more than a book club that discusses various opinions about the Bible, and much of the time they do not even believe the Bible itself. There is no reality and no power. This is why they want to make you the same as they are, so that you will also become irrelevant, and no longer a threat and a witness against them.