God’s Remembrance Through The Rainbow
Written by Elinor Montgomery – em*********@****co.ca
February 23, 2003
The minute that man sinned, God closed off the way back to the tree of life. In other words, sin had separated man from God, and there was no way back for him. Yet, there was a pattern established in Adam’s family that showed the pattern of Israel to come, with the crossover blessing taking place at the cross and going to the second company or third son – the one after Jesus, Who was the perfect sacrifice. It was not until Seth became fruitful did men begin to call on the name of the Lord. Who is the Lord? He is Jesus Christ, the Lord of lords, and the calling upon His name speaks of the church and believers who at a future time will call upon His name, for their salvation.
Seth’s line led to Enoch, a man who walked with God, and he was not, for God took him up. This foretells the bride who will be taken up to the throne of God. From Enoch we see Methuselah is born, being the oldest man that ever lived. This speaks of the last stages in the history of man, just before the tribulation period, when the bride, the true church, will visibly come out of the systems church, as wheat being separated from the tares. Noah and his family present a picture of the bride, being set apart and protected from the judgment, as those who will see Jesus coming in the cloud as the glory of God coming to man. She is deemed to be righteous through faith and obedience to her Lord. She is wrapped in the mantle of Jesus, the coat of many colors, the light that is broken for you and me, the light of the rainbow.
From the time of Adam to Noah, sin multiplied until the wickedness of man was great on earth, and the thoughts of his heart were on sin continually. God came to a point where He was sorry He had made man, and decided to destroy all life on earth. Destruction will come again when God’s wrath will build up to the point of judgment of the tribulation period, at which time He will remove His bride from this judgment, and save the nations of believers. She will be deemed righteous, as was Noah, for she will walk with God, keeping His law and the testimony of the prophecy of the Word. God gives a full picture of Israel and the bride in these first brief chapters of Genesis, beginning with the first man Adam and ending with Noah. It is the picture of His portion of the people of this world who will be deemed righteous through His Son Jesus, the second Adam, for whom God will birth of the Spirit a bride to be given to His Son, as was Eve presented to Adam. The promised land of Israel is the in-between step on the way back to the garden paradise reserved for God’s portion and guarded by the cherubim that will ultimately become the Kingdom for spiritual Israel. Only through Jesus, the perfect sacrifice, will God’s portion of His people receive the blessings spoken by their father, Jacob, upon them. The tribes, or the nations, will become the nations of those who are saved (Revelation 21:24), but only by putting their trust in Jesus for salvation.
God established the sacrificial system first with Adam and his sons, and again with Noah and his sons. He declared that man was made in His image, and then admonished him to be fruitful and multiply for the purpose of bringing forth abundantly on the earth. Was God suggesting the multiplication of evil children born of evil men? I believe He was pointing to the fruit of righteousness, that can only come through repentance and the sacrifice of Jesus in our place that we might birth, once again of the Spirit, new creations in the Lord. Now, God shows how He will do this. It begins with a covenant relationship between God and man, where God is supreme again over a people, whom He will call to Himself to be fruitful, obedient and worship only Him. God said that He was establishing this covenant with Noah and his sons. Man fell in the garden by following, or submitting to, the sin of the woman, the first harlot. He was then cursed with thorns and the sweat of labor.
The Way of the covenant, or restoration of man to eternal life was closed off to the east, or to religion. In the covenant with Noah, the rainbow is the symbol or sign of the covenant with God, which He establishes with all the future generations of Noah on the earth. It is not for one nation at this point, but rather for all the world. The rainbow is the broken light, the very person of Jesus seen in the cloud. It foretells of His being seen coming in the cloud again as He was seen by the church, after His resurrection, ascending into the heavens. God says it will serve as a reminder to Him of His covenant, that never again shall all flesh be cut off, and never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth. This speaks of the earth preserved as a kingdom, and an everlasting covenant with man remembered by God because of His looking upon the rainbow. God knows all things, and has total recall. Why would He need the rainbow to remember? If we go to Hebrews 8:12, He tells us. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more. God, in fact, is saying, “I will only remember about man what My Son brings to My remembrance as He comes before Me on man’s behalf. As I look upon My Son, I will remember and save those whom He brings before Me in repentance, and who have called on His name for salvation.”
The first covenant with the nation through the law and obedience and animal sacrifice, was but a shadow of the substance of what Jesus, the perfect sacrifice, would do for man. The government of God had been forsaken in the garden for the government of Satan, in rebellion. Liberty in God’s law was rejected and man became captive to the governments of the world under liberalism. Man alone could not change this. It would rest on the shoulder of Jesus (the rainbow) to restore the government of liberty, freedom from captivity, and peace from the sword. This is the reminder to God for man’s sake. Noah’s sign of the covenant is the sign of the crossover point from old to new covenant pictured for us from the beginning. Cain and Seth portrayed the two companies of Israel, the nation in sin and the spiritual nation in victory, with Abel portraying the perfect sacrifice of Jesus that would bring forth the salvation of Israel. As did Abel, God’s Son would die at the hand of his brother, but unlike Abel, he would bear the crown of thorns, or the curse on His head, instead of on the rightful head of the sinner where it belonged.
As God called Israel to obedience, she continually disobeyed him and it would have been easy to forget her and His covenant. He suggested to Moses more than once that He would completely destroy her, were it not for Moses’ intercession on her behalf. The prayers of the saints bring remembrance to God, along with a faith in Jesus. Action had to be taken by Moses and Joshua, warriors for the law and obedience to the Word of God. Both intercession and action were required before entering the land. A voice must be heard in Israel for righteousness in order to fulfill the covenant. Action must be taken, and hearts must carry the circumcision of repentance – the better way, which becomes the substance of the heart, replacing the shadow of it found in the flesh. Jesus will appear in the cloud, this time not as a suffering servant for mankind, but rather as the conquering lion of Judah, coming in judgment. This time, He will be a mighty warrior riding in victory for man’s salvation, and the establishment of His kingdom here on earth (see Hebrews 9:28).
(Hebrews 10:7) Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come – In the volume of the book it is written of Me – to do your will O God.’ The book is speaking of the Old Testament, for the new was not yet written. It is saying that the volume of it is prophetically speaking of Jesus, not partly, but completely. The covenant of the Old Testament is the shadow of the New Covenant spoken of in Hebrews. As in the beginning, the rainbow is the sign of the establishment of the covenant with all men. Jesus’ return in the cloud is the fulfillment of that promise. He will come for His own portion, which is Israel, but she must pass through the cross to get to the other side on dry land and to her tribal dwelling place, according to the spiritual blessings of the father, Jacob, upon his own, the believers. The children of Eve rise up as a woman, a harlot, in her gentile fullness before His coming. The children birthing of the Spirit, as did Mary birth Jesus, shall rise up also as a bride for Jesus to immerge in His covering of purity, without spot or wrinkle. For they are covered in the mantle of the rainbow, the coat of many colors, and they have the cup of the blood of salvation in their sack, as did Benjamin. Her blessing as full brother is much greater than that of the brothers of the nations, who with their blessings of the tribes, will dwell around the city of Jerusalem as they dwelled around the tabernacle.
The promise of the rainbow covenant and the taking out of Noah and his sons depict the same grace and mercy of the Lord that was over the Ark of the Covenant covered in the perfect gold of worship, which is only in spirit and in truth. The gold covering Solomon’s temple was nothing but fools’ gold of the world, depicting the religious practices of man, who thinks he can build temples to God, that end up being only houses of religion, not places of true worship. The Antichrist may sit in the temple built by man, but the Lord Jesus will sit at the right hand of God where God and the lamb are the temple that is built by them and not by man. The sign of the rainbow is the sign of the victory of Jesus complete, when He comes in the cloud to remove His bride of the covenant from the sin of the world. At the time when the gentiles are about to go down with the harlot in a burning fire of judgment, the bride of Israel will ascend to her eternal rest.