as seen on facebook #4

The whole course of history is represented as the development of the plan and purposes of God; and yet human history is little else than the history of sin. No one can read the simple narrative concerning Joseph, as given in the book of Genesis, without seeing that everything in his history occurred in execution of a preconceived purpose of God. The envy of his brethren, their selling him into Egypt, and his unjust imprisonment, were all embraced in God’s plan. “God,” as Joseph himself said to his brethren, “sent me before you, to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God.” (Gen. 45:7, 8.)

• Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology