These are the words with which Paul described himself in the Epistle to the Romans: “Called to be an apostle, separated unto the Gospel of God.” Rom. 1:1. So here he says that God “separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by His grace.” Gal. 1:15. That God chose Saul to be an apostle, before Saul himself had any thought that he should ever be even a Christian, is evident from the sacred narrative. On his way to Damascus, whither, “breathing out threatenings and slaughter,” he was proceeding with full authority to seize, bind, and drag to prison all Christians, both men and women, Saul was suddenly arrested, not by human hands, but by the over-powering glory of the Lord. Three days afterward the Lord said to Ananias, when sending him to give Saul his sight, “He is a chosen vessel unto Me, to bear My name before the Gentiles.” Acts 9:15. God arrested Saul in his mad career of persecution, because He had chosen him to be an apostle. So we see that the pricks against which Saul had been kicking were the strivings of the Spirit to turn him to the work to which he had been called. But how long before this had Saul been chosen to be the messenger of the Lord?—He himself tells us that he was “separated,”—“set apart,”—from his birth. He is not the first one of whom we read that from birth he was chosen to his life-work. Recall the case of Samson. Judges 13:2-14. John the Baptist was named, and his character and life-work were described, months before he was born. The Lord said to Jeremiah: “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.” Jer. 1:5. The heathen king Cyrus was named more than a hundred years before he was born, and his part in the work of God was laid out for him. Isa. 44:28; 45:1-4.