"I Know Abraham."--When God said of Abraham: "I know him," [19] it is hardly probable that He was referring merely to a knowledge of him in the present life. The founder of the Hebrew nation must have been one of the foreknown and predestined, mentioned by Paul [20] and by Alma [21]--must have been among those "called and prepared from the foundation of the world, on account of their exceeding faith and good works." It was "according to the foreknowledge of God;" but that foreknowledge, that divine prescience, was based upon experience, and had history as well as prophecy for a foundation. Such characters as Abraham were cast for their parts in life's drama long before the curtain rose on the first act of the play. A Spirit Israel.--There was a House of Israel in heaven before there was a Hebrew Nation on earth. Else what does Moses mean when he tells how the Most High, in "the days of old," in "the years of many generations," "separated the sons of Adam" and "set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel?" [22] He must have had in mind, not a temporal Israel, unborn at the early period indicated, but a spirit Israel, according to whose numbers, known in heaven before they had taken bodies on earth, the boundaries of "the people" were determined. Privileges and Requirements.--It was intended that this chosen nation should have "room to dwell." It was of the utmost consequence that a people upon whom rested so weighty a responsibility should be well placed, with every facility for the accomplishment of the sacred mission unto which they had been called. They were the oracles of God, the custodians and dispensers of heavenly wisdom. Upon them devolved the high duty of keeping alive on earthly altars the fires of Divine Truth. They were not to bow down to idols, as did the heathen nations around them, but worship the true God, the invisible Jehovah, walking by faith where others, less worthy, walked by sight, demanding to see before they would believe. They were forbidden to intermarry with other nations, lest they might worship the gods of those nations, practice their vices, and corrupt the noble lineage through which was to come the Savior of the World. The Lamb of God had to be "without blemish," and that he was so, physically and in every way, was partly due, no doubt, to the choice ancestry and parentage provided for him.