“And God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all future generations: I have placed my bow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I form clouds over the earth and the bow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all the living creatures; water will never again become a flood to destroy every creature. The bow will be in the clouds, and I will look at it and remember the permanent covenant between God and all the living creatures on earth.’ God said to Noah, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and every creature on earth.’ – Genesis 9:12-17
We all love seeing a rainbow in the sky during or after a storm. They seem to be fleeting, but they remind us that God has kept His covenant with us. There are, of course, floods that occur in various places; however, God’s covenant was that He would never flood the earth to destroy it again.
As a child I always wondered if there really were a rainbow of gold at one end of the rainbow, but I could never seem to quite see the end. It seemed to fade into the earth as a true reminder of the covenant between God and His creation. But there are two ends of a rainbow, which begs the question if God began the rainbow with the promise to never destroy the earth with a flood again, what does the other end mean?
Revelation answers that question. “Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head.” – Revelation 10:1 While one end of the rainbow won’t be seen again, the other will full of wrath and destruction. The signs of the times seem to lead to the opinion we are swiftly sliding down the wrathful side of the rainbow. But we have the hope of God who promises life by acknowledging His Son as the only way to heaven, not the rainbow.