A rainbow has beautiful colors and displays a perfect picture. People praise the rainbow with the word “Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, who is dancing in the air with the rainbow?” And there are another two words about it that give hope to those in darkness: “After rain there is always a rainbow.” “When a rainbow appears in the sky, it is a sign that the rain is over and the sun is out.” There are also many songs praising the rainbow, which make us admire the rainbow very much. But today I understand that the rainbow is the covenant God established with man, which contains God’s grief and God’s mercy and expectation for man….

Let’s read the words of Jehovah God recorded in the Bible, “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” (Gen 9：11-13).

We all know that in the Bible there is the record of the rainbow, and that it relates to the stories “God destroys the world with a flood” and “Noah makes an ark.” From the Bible, we can only know that because people at that time were corrupt, evil, depraved, and committed all sins, which incurred God’s loathing, God destroyed the world with a flood and then established a covenant with man with a rainbow as its token. But, do we know the true meaning of God putting the rainbow in the sky?

Today Almighty God’s words reveal this mystery, “Originally, God created a humanity that in His eyes was very good and close to Him, but they were destroyed by flood after rebelling against Him. Did it hurt God that such a humanity just instantly vanished like that? Of course it hurt! So what was His expression of this pain? How was it recorded in the Bible? It was recorded in the Bible in these words: ‘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.’ This simple sentence reveals God’s thoughts. This destruction of the world pained Him very much. In man’s words, He was very sad. We can imagine: How did the earth that was once full of life look like after being destroyed by the flood? What did the earth, that was once full of human beings, look like at that time? No human habitation, no living creatures, water everywhere and utter devastation on the surface of the water. Was such a scene God’s original intention when He created the world? Of course not! God’s original intention was to see life all across the land, to see the human beings He created worshiping Him, not just for Noah to be the only one worshiping Him or the only one who could answer His call to complete what was entrusted to him. When humanity disappeared, God saw not what He had originally intended but the complete opposite. How could His heart not be in pain? So when He was revealing His disposition and expressing His emotions, God made a decision. What kind of a decision did He make? To make a bow in the cloud (that is, the rainbows that we see) as a covenant with man, a promise that God would not destroy mankind with a flood again. At the same time, it was also to tell people that God had destroyed the world with a flood, so that mankind would forever remember why God would do such a thing.

“Was the destruction of the world at that time something God wanted? It was definitely not what God wanted. We might be able to imagine a small part of the pitiful sight of the earth after the destruction of the world, but we cannot come close to imagining what the scene was like at the time in God’s eyes. We can say that, whether it is the people of now or then, nobody is able to imagine or appreciate what God was feeling when He saw that scene, that image of the world following its destruction by flood. God was forced to do this by man’s disobedience, but the pain suffered by God’s heart from this destruction of the world by flood is a reality no one can fathom or appreciate. That is why God made a covenant with mankind, through which He aimed to tell people to remember that God once did something like this, and to swear to them that God would never destroy the world in such a way again. In this covenant we see God’s heart—we see that God’s heart was in pain when He destroyed this humanity. In the language of man, when God destroyed mankind and saw mankind disappearing, His heart was weeping and bleeding. Is that not the best way to describe it? These words are used by humans to illustrate human emotions, but since man’s language is too lacking, using them to describe God’s feelings and emotions does not seem too bad to Me, and nor are they too excessive. At least it gives you a very vivid, very apt understanding of what God’s mood was like at the time. What will you think of now when you see a rainbow again? At least you will remember how God was once in sorrow over destroying the world by flood. You will remember how, even though God hated this world and despised this humanity, when He destroyed the human beings He created with His own hands, His heart was hurting, struggling to let go, feeling reluctant, and finding it hard to bear. His only comfort was in Noah’s family of eight. It was Noah’s cooperation that made His painstaking efforts of creating all things not be in vain. At a time when God was suffering, this was the only thing that could make up for His pain. From that point, God placed all of His expectations of humanity on Noah’s family, hoping they could live under His blessings and not His curse, hoping that they would never see God destroy the world with a flood again, and also hoping that they would not be destroyed” (“God’s Work, God’s Disposition, and God Himself I” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

After reading Almighty God’s words, we know that we didn’t try to know the Creator from all things, nor did we understand that the rainbow is a symbol of God’s sorrow. Instead, we thought that God destroyed mankind just because at that time they were evil and licentious, committed all sins, so much so that God couldn’t bear them anymore. We never thought of how God felt at that time. Now I understand that it was not God’s desire to destroy the world with a flood, that He did it against His will and with sorrow. This is like the way parents treat their children. No matter how many mistakes the children make, parents always hold concern for and worry about their children and always hope that their children will immediately rein in and turn back. Only when the children persist in walking on the wrong way and never turn back will parents give them up reluctantly. After the world was destroyed by a flood, God used the rainbow as a token to remind man not to resist God anymore and to tell Himself that He had destroyed the world with a flood and would never do it with a flood again in future. Hidden behind the rainbow is God’s grief, sorrow, and reluctance. In all things created by God, there is God’s will, and behind the rainbow we always compliment, there are so many stories. But if it were not for the expression of Almighty God, how could we know it? After understanding this, whenever I see a rainbow, I will think of God’s love and concern for man. The rainbow also makes me know that God not only has lovingkindness and mercy but also is grieved for the fall of man. This is what I couldn’t realize when I believed in Jesus before.

Now, Almighty God has returned to flesh and expressed millions of words and revealed the mysteries of God’s six-thousand-year management of saving man. Thus, man has the opportunity to understand God’s will for him and know God’s substance. God’s work is always progressing forward. God’s concern behind the rainbow has lasted till today. God hopes that man can wake up, repent and confess sins to God, and leave the evil way. Only in this way can man have the opportunity to be saved and brought into the next age by God.