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Patriarchs and Prophets
“The Lord smelled a sweet savor; and the Lord said in His heart, I will
not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake.... While the earth
remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and
winter, and day and night shall not cease.” Here was a lesson for all
succeeding generations. Noah had come forth upon a desolate earth,
but before preparing a house for himself he built an altar to God. His
stock of cattle was small, and had been preserved at great expense;
yet he cheerfully gave a part to the Lord as an acknowledgment that
all was His. In like manner it should be our first care to render our
freewill offerings to God. Every manifestation of His mercy and love
toward us should be gratefully acknowledged, both by acts of devotion
and by gifts to His cause.
Lest the gathering clouds and falling rain should fill men with
constant terror, from fear of another flood, the Lord encouraged the
family of Noah by a promise: “I will establish My covenant with you;
... neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.... 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 shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over
the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.... And I will look
upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God
and every living creature.”
How great the condescension of God and His compassion for His
erring creatures in thus placing the beautiful rainbow in the clouds as a
token of His covenant with men! The Lord declares that when He looks
upon the bow, He will remember His covenant. This does not imply
that He would ever forget; but He speaks to us in our own language,
that we may better understand Him. It was God’s purpose that as the
children of after generations should ask the meaning of the glorious
arch which spans the heavens, their parents should repeat the story of
the Flood, and tell them that the Most High had bended the bow and
placed it in the clouds as an assurance that the waters should never
again overflow the earth. Thus from generation to generation it would
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testify of divine love to man and would strengthen his confidence in
God.
In heaven the semblance of a rainbow encircles the throne and
overarches the head of Christ. The prophet says, “As the appearance of
the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of
the brightness round about [the throne]. This was the appearance of the