1 Timothy 1:18

This charge I commit unto thee, my child Timothy, according to the prophecies which led the way to thee, that by them thou mayest war the good warfare;

According to the prophecies ... does not refer, as Nute thought, "to a premonition granted to Paul as he approached Lystra,"[39] but to factual prophetic declarations uttered by some of the New Testament prophets mentioned repeatedly in Acts, of whom was Agabus, and also Barnabas, the latter probably being the one who gave the prophecies mentioned here.

My child Timothy ... It was to Timothy, the beloved young man, whom Paul had converted and whose faithfulness never wavered, that Paul turned as he contemplated the dreadful historical situation then closing in upon the Christians. "The charge" to him was the total precious treasure of Christian truth which together they had done so much to advance. Those awful dangers which Paul saw in the future would soon be closing around the beloved Christians in Asia; there would be many who could not stand the test; the blessed apostle sensed that he would not survive to be of any help; and therefore his whole hope was rested in the fidelity of that glorious companion, Timothy, who had so long suffered and toiled with the apostle. It would appear also that, prophetically, Timothy had been designated as a man who would persevere to the end; and thus the prophecies corroborated Paul's own personal evaluation of Timothy as one capable of being left in charge of the fortunes of God's church on earth.

War the good warfare ... These were appropriate words for Christians living in the age of the great persecution under Nero, soon to break upon the defenseless church. The metaphor of a man at war was employed again and again by Paul.