Romans 4:17 : (As it is written, a father of many nations have I made thee) before whom he believed, even God, who giveth life to the dead, and called, the things that are not, as though they were. In the parenthesis is a quotation from Genesis 17:5. To see the force of the past tense of this quotation, it is necessary to go back and consider the events narrated in Genesis 17:1-14. Jehovah appeared to Abraham when Abraham was ninety-nine years old and said to him: "I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be thou perfect. And I will make a covenant between me and thee." Here was a covenant about to be made, and the sequel shows that it was the land covenant, with circumcision as the sign of the covenant. Be it remembered that God had (Genesis 12:1-3) promised Abraham that in his seed all the families of the earth should be blessed, and also that Peter, in Acts 3:25, quotes this promise and calls it a covenant. That was not the covenant that God proposed to make with Abraham in Genesis 17:2. When this covenant was proposed, "Abraham fell on his face and God talked with him, saying, As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be the father of a multitude of nations." "My covenant is with thee"--that is, he had already covenanted with him to make him a father of a multitude of nations. Hence, he says in the next verse: "the father of a multitude of nations have I made thee." He had already constituted him a father of many nations. This shows that the covenant to make him the father of a multitude of nations, which was made in Ur of the Chaldees, was distinct from the land and circumcision covenant. And Paul's use of the statement in Genesis 17:5 shows that it was fulfilled in Christ as the Savior of the world. The law of Moses, which the Judaizing teachers were so zealously seeking to fasten on the Gentile Christians, had nothing to do with the promise, or covenant, to make Abraham the father of a multitude of nations. This is made still plainer in Galatians 3:16-17 : "Now to Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his seed. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. Now this I say: A covenant confirmed beforehand by God, the law which came four hundred and thirty years after, cloth not disannul, so as to make the promise of none effect." Here, again, the promise to bless the world through Abraham's seed is called a covenant, and its absolute distinction from the law of Moses is emphasized. God gives life to the dead. He is the source of all life, both physical and spiritual. Dead matter comes to life at his command. At the time God constituted Abraham the father of a multitude of nations, Abraham had no son. Before Isaac was born, God changed his name from "Abram," exalted father, to "Abra-ham," the father of a multitude. Thus he "calleth the things that are not, as though they were." Abraham is the father of all who walk in the steps of his faith. To understand some things Paul says about Abra-ham's faith and hope, it is necessary to bear in mind some facts and dates in the life of Abraham. Before he was seventy-five years old, "by faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out unto a place which he was to receive for an inheritance" (Hebrews 11:8). On the way to Canaan he tarried at Haran till his father died; "and Abraham was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran" (Genesis 12:4). He was eighty-six years old at the birth of Ishmael, and one hundred years old at the birth of Isaac (Genesis 16:16; Genesis 21:5).