ke a basket of good apples and place a bad one among them, in a
short time they will be spoiled.

After the deluge Noe and his family settled once more upon the land, and
for a time their descendants remained faithful to God; but later they
became wicked and undertook to build a great tower (Gen. 11), which they
thought would reach up to Heaven. They believed, perhaps, that if ever
there should be another deluge upon the earth, they could take refuge in
the tower. But God was displeased with their conduct and prevented them
from completing the tower by confusing their tongues or language so that
they could not understand one another. Then those who spoke the same
language went to live in the same part of the country, and thus the
human race was scattered over the earth, and the different nations had
different languages.

After a time they were all losing the knowledge of the true God and
beginning to worship idols. God did not wish that the whole human race
should forget Him, so He selected Abraham to be the father and head of
one chosen people who should always worship the true God. He sent
Abraham from his own country into another, and promised him great
things, and renewed to him the promises of the Redeemer first made to
Adam and Eve. After the death of Abraham, God raised up, from time to
time, prophets to tell the people His holy will, to warn them of their
sins and the punishment they would receive, and to remind them of the
promised Messias. Prophets are men that God inspires to tell the future.
They tell what will happen often hundreds of years after their own
death. They do not guess at these things, but tell them with certainty.
At times, statesmen can foresee that there will be a war in a country at
a certain time; but they are not prophets, because they only guess at
such things, or know them by natural signs; and very often things thus
foretold do not occur. True prophecy is the foretelling of something
which could not be known by any means but inspiration from God.

Neither are persons who call themselves fortune-tellers prophets, but
only sinful people, who for money tell lies or guess at the future. It
is a great sin to go to them or listen to them, as we shall see later in
another question.

At the time promised, God sent His Son--Our Lord--to redeem the world
and save all men. He came to save all men, and yet He remained upon
earth only thirty-three years. We can easily understand that by His
deat