Genesis Butler Quotes

When Pharoah restored the chief butler to his position as foretold by Joseph in his interpretation of the butler's dream, he forgot Joseph. "Yet the chief butler did not remember Joseph but forgot him." (Genesis 40:23). Why does the Bible use this repetitive language? It is obvious that if the butler forgot Joseph, he did not remember him. Yet both verbs are used, "not remembering" and "forgetting." The Bible, in using this language, is teaching us a very important lesson. There are events of such overbearing magnitude that one ought not to remember them all the time, but one must not forget them either. Such an event is the Holocaust.

Jews, Christians, and Muslims share a creation story from the Bible, found in the early chapters of the book of Genesis. Like many such stories, it begins with sky and earth intertwined in darkness. God first brings forth light, then separates what is above from what is below, thus making oceans, land, and sky. Although some people insist that Genesis 1 is a literal scientific account, it is best understood as what Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann calls a “liturgical poem,” a form for use in worship that invites a community “to confess and celebrate the world as God has intended it.”4 In the opening pages of the Bible, a cosmic vision of creation unfolds with the making of plants and forests, the stars and suns and moons beyond, all the fishes and birds and animals, and finally human beings. At each juncture, God proclaims blessing on what has been made, declaring it good, and with the creation of humankind the whole of the universe is pronounced “very good.” At the end of the poem, God sends human beings out to till and keep the soil and to work on behalf of the earth, delighting in all its gifts.5

The demand for a new edition of The Fair Haven gives me an opportunity of saying a few words about the genesis of what, though not one of the most popular of Samuel Butler’s books, is certainly one of the most characteristic.  Few of his works, indeed, show more strikingly his brilliant powers as a controversialist and his implacable determination to get at the truth of whatever engaged his attention.

I’m vegan for animals because they deserve to live in peace just like we do.

Millions have come to the Lord because someone on this end prayed and God worked on the other end to bring them to Christ. This is the way the Lord works. This is the way God moves. God speaks to people. In Psalm 85:8 the Bible says, “I will hear what God the LORD will speak: for he will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints: but let them not turn again to folly.” God will speak to us. If you have read Genesis chapter forty-one, you know that through a dream God stirred Pharaoh and also prodded the memory of the butler. God spoke to those men. God dealt with them.