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“Timothy was a convert of St. Paul.”

Really? That’s not what St. Paul said: “... filled with joy, when I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also.” (2 Timothy 1:4-5)

Ah, you wish to debate sola scriptura. Very well, I will hold you to that.

If you had actually read the NT and “kept all these things in [your] heart” instead of pasting some slapped together boilerplate from some Catholic (TM) approved website, you might have grasped that Timothy was already a believer in the Christ when Paul came upon him, as were his mother and grandmother. You might also have realized that the reason Timothy had from childhood “known the Holy Scriptures” (in this case, certainly the OT Holy Scriptures), that “make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus,” is because his mother and grandmother saw to it that he was taught them, that he was “trained in the way he should go.”

The Messiah that was prophesied was a great king and warrior leading Israel out of bondage. A super David. Read the OT and the NT together. The training was in the super man David, not in the divinity of Jesus Christ in the NT.

But then you’d have to admit that genuine faith, faith in the promised Messiah to come, resided in the hearts of many in Israel, because it was taught by Moses and all the faithful prophets who came after, and that therefore the limbus patrum, imagined by your Roman magisterium, could not be upheld as truth since it is in conflict with the Holy Scriptures.

The reason that Jesus was rejected by the Jew was precisely the fact that he was humble and not a great warrior king.

I wish you would at least cherry pick the Holy Scriptures. You might grab on to a few that way. But you will only go to your approved authorities, who do not know the Scriptures half as well as even the child Timothy. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste, and never grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I shall not even need waders in this debate. I find it amusing that you instruct me in the ways of Scripture. I shall answer your post with the words of Peter:

1 There were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will introduce destructive heresies and even deny the Master who ransomed them, bringing swift destruction on themselves. 2 Many will follow their licentious ways, and because of them the way of truth will be reviled. 3 In their greed they will exploit you with fabrications, but from of old their condemnation has not been idle and their destruction does not sleep. 4 2 3 For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but condemned them to the chains of Tartarus and handed them over to be kept for judgment; 5 4 and if he did not spare the ancient world, even though he preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, together with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the godless world; 6 and if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (to destruction), reducing them to ashes, making them an example for the godless (people) of what is coming; 7 and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man oppressed by the licentious conduct of unprincipled people 8 (for day after day that righteous man living among them was tormented in his righteous soul at the lawless deeds that he saw and heard), 9 then the Lord knows how to rescue the devout from trial and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, 10 5 and especially those who follow the flesh with its depraved desire and show contempt for lordship. 6 Bold and arrogant, they are not afraid to revile glorious beings, 11 7 whereas angels, despite their superior strength and power, do not bring a reviling judgment against them from the Lord.

12 But these people, like irrational animals born by nature for capture and destruction, revile things that they do not understand, and in their destruction they will also be destroyed, 13 suffering wrong 8 as payment for wrongdoing. Thinking daytime revelry a delight, they are stains and defilements as they revel in their deceits while carousing with you. 14 Their eyes are full of adultery and insatiable for sin. They seduce unstable people, and their hearts are trained in greed. Accursed children!

15 Abandoning the straight road, they have gone astray, following the road of Balaam, the son of Bosor, 9 who loved payment for wrongdoing, 16 but he received a rebuke for his own crime: a mute beast spoke with a human voice and restrained the prophet's madness. 17 These people are waterless springs and mists driven by a gale; for them the gloom of darkness has been reserved. 18 For, talking empty bombast, they seduce with licentious desires of the flesh those who have barely escaped 10 from people who live in error. 19 They promise them freedom, though they themselves are slaves of corruption, for a person is a slave of whatever overcomes him. 20 For if they, having escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of (our) Lord and savior Jesus Christ, again become entangled and overcome by them, their last condition is worse than their first. 21 For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment handed down 11 to them. 22 12 What is expressed in the true proverb has happened to them, "The dog returns to its own vomit," and "A bathed sow returns to wallowing in the mire."

How are the sties of the Reformation these days? What is the state of the Episcopalian Church? How is ELCA doing? What percentage of Presbyterians, Methodists and the other mainstream denominations actually believe in God?