Pauline Letters to the church.

[Vicki Q]

The Pauline epistles were letters to the church from Paul telling them what to do on orders from god.

Weren't the church members praying already? Wasn't god already talking to them? Why the need for a stranger's claims of god messages? One can only conclude that the prayers from the church people were going unanswered and they were just talking to themselves during prayer time. Then they were taking at face value the god claims of a crazy person who said that he did hear god's voice.

What else fits?

I wonder if I might examine the OP in a different direction to so far.

I don't recognise the historical situation described. Paul's churches weren't looking to him to generate God-breathed scripture in the way described in the OP.

Paul was the lead member of a team of people charged with spreading Xianity outside Israel. Given the limited communications of the day, writing letters to deal with issues that came up was a sensible means of operating. These were supplemented by visits from his team and others (a visit by Peter is discussed in Galatians 2, for example).

There certainly was revelationary content emerging from prayer sessions, and in places like 1 Corinthians 14 he investigates some aspects of this.

The churches would have looked to him to give leadership guidance, and 2 Corinthians 12:12 gives a good reason for accepting this- Paul's activity amongst them showed very clear signs of God's action through him. “The signs of a true apostle were performed among you in all patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works”.

Which, BTW, seems an odd comment to make if these things hadn't happened.