by one who recognizes that laws were not made for good men, but for the lawless and disorderly, for irreligious and wicked people, for those who are irreverent and profane, for those who ill-treat their fathers or mothers, for murderers,

As for profane legends and old wives' tales, leave them alone. Train yourself to lead a religious life;

Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you. Avoid the profane prattle and contradictions of what some miscall 'theology,'

Avoid profane prattle. Those who indulge in it only get deeper into irreligious ways,

Surely in the past you have spent time enough living as the Gentiles delight to live. For your path has lain among scenes of debauchery, licentiousness, drunkenness, revelry, hard-drinking, and profane idolatry.

We know that God never listens to bad men, but, when a man is god-fearing and does God's will, God listens to him.

'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not the God of dead men, but of living."

As to the dead, and the fact that they rise, have you never read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the Bush, how God spoke to him thus--'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'?

What agreement can thee be between a temple of God and idols? And we are a temple of the Living God. That is what God meant when he said--'I will dwell among them, and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

And, moreover, we have learned to know, and have accepted as a fact, the love which God has for us. God is Love; and he who lives in love lives in God, and God in him.

We realize, too, that the Son of God has come among us, and has given us the discernment to know the True God; and we are in union with the True God by our union with his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the True God and he is Immortal Life.

He who conquers--I will make him a pillar in the Temple of my God; and never more shall he leave it; and I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the City of my God, the New Jerusalem, which is coming down out of Heaven from my God, and I will write on him my new name.