I said again: Do you think, Gentlemen, that we should ever have been able to have understood these things in the Scriptures unless we had received grace to understand them by the will of Him who willed them, in order that what was said in the time of Moses should take place?
They provoked me with strangers; they embittered me with their abominations; they sacrificed to demons whom they know not; new and fresh ones have come, whom their fathers knew not. Thou didst forsake God who begat thee, and thou didst forget God who nourisheth thee. And the Lord saw, and was jealous, and was provoked because of the anger of His sons and daughters, and said: I will turn my face away from them, and will show what shall happen to them in the last times, because it is a perverse generation, sons in whom there is no faith. They made Me jealous with a no-god, they made Me angry with their idols. And I will make them jealous with a non-nation, with a nation that understandeth not will I make them angry. Because fire has been kindled by my wrath, and it shall burn as far as Hades. It shall devour the earth and its increase; it shall burn up the foundations of the mountains. I will gather evils together against them.Deuteronomy 32:16-23
And after that Righteous One was slain we sprouted up afresh as another people, and shot forth as new and thriving ears as the prophets said: And many nations shall flee unto the Lord in that day to become a people, and shall have their dwelling in the midst of all the earth.Zechariah 2:11 But we are not only a people, but also a holy people, as we have already proved: And they shall call it a holy people, redeemed by the Lord.Isaiah 62:12
Wherefore we are not a people to be despised, nor a clan of barbarians, nor like the nations of the Carians or the Phrygians, but God has even chosen us, and has been made manifest to them that enquired not after Him. Behold, I am God, He says, to the nation, who called not upon My name.Deuteronomy 14:2 For this is that nation which God long since undertook to give Abraham, and promised to make him father of many nations, not saying in particular, father of Arabs or Egyptians or Idumaeans. For he became also the father of Ishmael, a great nation, and of Esau, and there are still a great number of Ammonites. But Noah was also the father of Abraham and in fact of every human race, and others became ancestors of different nations.
What more then does Christ here grant to Abraham? This, that by a similar calling He called Him with His voice, telling him to go forth from the land in which he was dwelling.Genesis 12:1 And all of us also did He call by that voice, and we went forth from the state of life in which we were living, yea, and living evilly according to the common ways of all other inhabitants of the earth. And we shall inherit the Holy Land together with Abraham, receiving our inheritance for a boundless eternity, as being children of Abraham because we have like faith with him.Galatians 3:29
For in the same way that he believed the voice of God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness, in that very way have we also believed the voice of God, which was repeated by the apostles of Christ, and also was preached to us by the prophets, and we have bidden farewell to all the things that are in the world, even to the point of death. Therefore does He promise him the nation when it is of like faith with him, and truly religious, and righteous, making the father glad. But He does not include you, in whom there is not faith.