However, for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first, Jesus Christ might display all his patience, for an example of those who were going to believe in him for eternal life.

 (ii) Gnosticism was concerned with this long series of emanations. It gave to each of them a biography and a pedigree and an importance in the chain between God and men. These gnostics were concerned with "endless genealogies" ( 1 Timothy 1:4). They went in for "godless and silly myths" about them ( 1 Timothy 4:7). They turned their ears away from the truth to myths ( 2 Timothy 4:4). They dealt in fables like the Jewish myths ( Titus 1:14). Worst of all, they thought in terms of two gods and of Jesus as one of a whole series of mediators between God and man; whereas "there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" ( 1 Timothy 2:5). There is only one King of ages, immortal, invisible, there is only one God ( 1 Timothy 1:17). Christianity had to repudiate a religion which took their unique place from God and from Jesus Christ. 