Over the last century people have really been overtaken by the rainbow. They have sayings like, “At the end of the rainbow is a pot of gold.” “Count your rainbows instead of thunderstorms.” “Follow every rainbow till you find your dream.” Then there are the songs like in the Wizard of Oz, Judy Garland sang the song, “Somewhere over the Rainbow.” Elvis sang, “A Pocketful of Rainbows.” The Rolling Stones sang, “She’s a Rainbow.” Then there is “Chasing Rainbows” and we have the Pride flag that started with the rainbow. So what is it about rainbows and how does one form? A rainbow is a multicolored arc made by light striking water droplets. The most familiar type of rainbow is produced when sunlight strikes raindrops in front of a viewer at a precise angle. The colors on a primary rainbow are always in order of their wavelength, from longest to shortest: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Rainbows are actually full circles. The antisolar point is the center of the circle. Viewers in aircraft can sometimes see these circular rainbows. So I guess there is no end to a rainbow and so there is no pot of gold, and I guess you can not follow a rainbow and find your dream. And yes, somewhere over the rainbow are blue skies because the rainbow appears after a storm. But did you know when the first rainbow appeared? It was about one thousand years after Creation. God was angry with mankind, angry enough to destroy His creation, angry enough to become man’s enemy, angry enough to say He was sorry that He even created man. From the time of Adam and Eve’s fall from glory, to the fallen angels as we read here in Genesis 6:1-4 “Now it came about, when mankind began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of mankind were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not remain with man forever, because he is also flesh; nevertheless his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of mankind, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown,”
God saw the moral corruption of human nature. So God brought a flood upon the earth, because the people continued to sin. Up to this point the people never even saw rain, and now they were having a flood. The sky burst open, the ground burst open and torrential rain came forth, not for a day or two but forty days it rained upon the earth. But God did not destroy everyone. Noah was a righteous man and God told Noah how to build an ark big enough for two of every kind of animal and bird and everything that crawled on the ground along with Noah’s family. Genesis 8:1-5 tells us what took place after the rain stopped. “But God remembered Noah and all the animals and all the livestock that were with him in the ark; and God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the water subsided. Also the fountains of the deep and the floodgates of the sky were closed, and the rain from the sky was restrained; and the water receded steadily from the earth, and at the end of 150 days the water decreased. Then in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat. And the water decreased steadily until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains became visible.”
Did you know that the ark is still sitting on Mount Ararat today? God promised Noah that He would never again destroy the earth with a flood and the sign of that promise was the rainbow. Genesis 9: 12-16 tells us, “This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations; I have set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall serve as a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth. It shall come about, when I make a cloud appear over the earth, that the rainbow will be seen in the cloud, and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the rainbow is in the cloud, then I will look at it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” And God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between Me and all flesh that is on the earth.”
God made a promise and He gave man a sign, the rainbow that He had put down his bow and that He would never again destroy the earth or mankind with such a flood again. God was putting down His bow, like a warrior who lays down his weapons of warfare and He said that He would never destroy the earth again by flood. That is why it is called a rainbow. You see no matter how long it rains, or how much it rains, God will bring the rain to an end, because of His promise, and when the rain does end, the rainbow appears, that upside down bow, is still a sign to us that God after all these thousands of years is still keeping His promise. But God will not strive with man forever. Our sin is still before Him, and one day God will bring Judgment to us for our sins as 2 Peter 3:10 tells us, “The day of the Lord will come as a robber comes. The heavens will pass away with a loud noise. The sun and moon and stars will burn up. The earth and all that is in it will be burned up.”
There will be a final destruction of God’s creation and mankind. Matthew 24: 36-39 says this, “But about that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be.”
Noah warned the people for one hundred years that the flood was coming and that they needed to change their lives. But they did not listen to him and when the rain began coming down, remember they never saw rain, they began screaming and pounding on the ark, but it was too late, because God had shut the door. Today God stands at the door as Revelation 3:19-21 tells us, “Those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me. The one who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat with My Father on His throne.”
But we do have signs today that we are close to His coming back, here are a few.
2 Timothy 3:1-5 says, “But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness although they have denied its power; avoid such people as these”
Isaiah writes in chapter 5:20-21, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight!”
2 Peter 3 :3-4, “Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ He promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.”
1 Timothy 4:1, “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.”
2 Corinthians 4:4, “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Messiah, who is the image of God.”
Matthew 24: 10-12, “And at that time many will fall away, and they will betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will rise up and mislead many people. And because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will become cold.”
The rainbow has nothing to do with any of those sayings, or songs, or even flags, mentioned in the beginning of this article. The rainbow is a sign of peace, peace from the wrath of God, but the day is drawing near when God will say enough is enough, and He will pour out His wrath upon the earth once again.