2 Timothy

About Paul's second letter to Timothy

This is Paul's second letter to Timothy. Paul was a great Christian teacher. He wrote this second letter to Timothy from a prison in Rome. Rome is the capital of the country that we call Italy. At that time, the Romans were powerful and they ruled many other countries. They had put Paul in prison because they did not like Christians. Timothy was a young man who had travelled with Paul on many of Paul's journeys. See Acts 16:1-5.
Some time earlier, Paul had made Timothy the leader of the Christians in Ephesus city. Ephesus was a city in the country that we call Turkey. When Paul wrote his first letter to Timothy, Timothy was in Ephesus. See 1 Timothy 1:3. And we think that Timothy was still in Ephesus when Paul wrote this letter to him.
We think that Paul wrote this letter at some time between AD 64 and AD 67. That was more than 30 years after Jesus returned to heaven.
Among the Christians at Ephesus, there were some people who were teaching wrong things. In his first letter to Timothy, Paul had told Timothy to stop those teachers. He told Timothy to teach the true Christian message. And in this letter, he tells Timothy to continue teaching it.
When Paul writes this letter, he knows that he will die soon. See 2 Timothy 4:6. He wants to see Timothy again before he dies. See 2 Timothy 4:9. Also, he wants Timothy to be ready for trouble. Timothy must remember that it is very important to obey Christ. He must be strong. He must continue to live in a way that pleases Christ.
We think that this is the last letter in the Bible that Paul wrote. A short time after he wrote it, we think that the Romans killed him.