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Spiritual Gifts, Volume 3
and his family. Here a lesson is taught all who should live upon the
earth, that for every manifestation of God’s mercy and love toward
them, the first act of all others should be to render to him grateful
thanks and humble worship.
And lest man should be terrified with gathering clouds, and falling
rains, and should be in continual dread fearing another flood, God
graciously encourages the family of Noah by a promise. “And I will
establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any
more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood
to destroy the earth. And God said, this is the token of the covenant
which I make between me and you and every living creature that is
with you, for perpetual generations. I do set my bow in the cloud, and
it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it
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shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow
shall be seen in the cloud. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will
look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between
God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.”
What a condescension on the part of God. What compassion for
erring man, to place the beautiful, variegated rainbow in the clouds,
a token of the covenant of the great God with man! This rainbow
was to evidence the fact to all generations that God destroyed the
inhabitants of the earth by a flood, because of their great wickedness.
It was his design that as the children of after generations should see the
bow in the cloud, and should inquire the reason of this glorious circle
that compasseth the earth, that their parents could explain to them
the destruction of the old world by a flood, because the people gave
themselves up to all manner of wickedness, and that the hands of the
Most High had bended the bow, and placed it in the clouds, as a token
that he would never bring again a flood of waters on the earth. This
symbol in the clouds was to confirm the belief of all, and establish their
confidence in God, for it was a token of divine mercy and goodness to
man. That although God had been provoked to destroy the earth by
the flood, yet his mercy still encompasseth the earth. God says, when
he looketh upon the bow in the cloud he will remember. He would not
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have us understand that he would ever forget; but he speaks to man in
his own language, that man may better understand him.
A rainbow is represented in Heaven round about the throne, also
above the head of Christ, as a symbol of God’s mercy encompassing