A rainbow is an artistic circular color spectrum appearing in the sky, predicted by the Bible as a sign from God after the Great Flood. As explained in Genesis 9:13, God told Noah that the rainbow would remind God and Mankind of God's promise never to flood the Earth again: "I am setting My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall serve as a banner of a binding agreement between Me and the earth."
Physicists describe rainbows based on the refraction and multiple reflections of sunlight in droplets of water. Though appearing semicircular from the ground, rainbows are actually circular. Rainbows appear when water droplets are lit by direct sunlight, a condition that rarely occurs during a storm, because the clouds block the sun. Rainbows are frequently seen after a storm, when the falling rain has moved into the distance and the sun is roughly behind the observer when the observer is facing the patch of rain.
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
Complete circular rainbows can be seen under the right conditions; in particular, when viewing the mists over Niagara Falls early or late in the day. Circular rainbows can sometimes be seen from an airplane when it flies over clouds, the rainbow actually encircling the airplane's shadow on the clouds. One way to think about the rainbow is that the mist or rain is like a projection screen, and the rainbow can only be seen where the projection screen is. When the projection screen is large enough, you see the entire circular rainbow.
The rainbow is often depicted inaccurately in pictures. For example, it may be depicted as a three-dimensional object, with perspective, real rainbows never have this appearance. Real rainbows show an extremely subtle blending of color. It is hard to pick out separate colors in a rainbow, but of course to the extent that one can, they appear in the "Roy G. Biv" order, red outermost, then orange, yellow, green, and a range of bluish shades which, in a real rainbow, are hard to distinguish and name. (RoyGBiv stands for "Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet".)
It is extremely difficult to reproduce the subtle, faint pastel colors of a rainbow on a printed page, or even in a color photograph, partly because a rainbow contains colors that are not within the range that can be produced by mixing three primaries, and partly because rainbows are faint; printed depictions of them almost invariably have been enhanced to make them look brighter and more intensely colored than they really are.
Historically, the white banner emblazoned with a rainbow was used by the 16th century German heretical movement of revolutionary Thomas Münzer who preferred the illuminism of an interior revelation to the written Revelation and combined a streak of madness and considerable pride with real knowledge. When East Germany was still Communist, Münzer was perceived by Marxist history as a hero, kind of secular saint who led the poor to class revolution and was a martyr to the cause of the working classes on their longer move towards the eventual proletarian state. In his 1926 essay “The Next Heresy”, Gilbert Keith Chesterton expressed his opinion that the "madness of tomorrow" will have to do with an attack on sexual morality.
Over the last few decades, a rainbow has also been used as a symbol of homosexuality, specifically the display of a "rainbow flag" showing several color bands. It is a prime example of the corrupting influence of homosexuality on language. The policy of LGBTI gleichschaltung attacking the genuine Christian faith included also an effort to rewrite the Bible in the gnostic spirit that has resulted in the so-called Queen James Bible, which is emblazoned with a large rainbow cross on the front cover. Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams argue in their book The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in Nazi Party that the homosexual movement changed their symbol to the rainbow flag from the pink triangle when they tried to invest in a campaign to equate homosexuals with Jews as Nazi victims in order to exploit the Holocaust for their political advantage but were challenged with research suggesting that the Nazi Party was conceived, organized and controlled throughout its short history by masculine-oriented male homosexuals who hid their sexual proclivities from the public. After this disclosure of Nazi history, homosexual community stopped talking about the Nazis almost entirely. The homo-fascist organization Equality Forum attributes the design of rainbow flag as a symbol of so called "gay liberation movement" to Gilbert Baker.
The term "rainbow" has also been used by left-wing political pressure groups to refer to their agenda of multiculturalism, specifically the groups led by Jesse Jackson (the "Rainbow Coalition"), and Lenora Fulani (the "Rainbow Lobby").
In both of the above contexts, the "rainbow" is mis-used by liberals as an alleged symbol of "diversity". Christian authors refuse the rainbow as symbol of pride, remind that it is a promise of God, and call for redeeming the rainbow.
- William Wordsworth, "My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold (1802)
- Leprechaun A typical, but utterly unrealistic depiction of a rainbow. This picture also shows the rainbow as if it had separated, sharp-edged bands of color, in the order yellow, orange, red, green, blue.
- Émile G. Léonard (1965). A History of Protestantism: I.The Reformation. Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd., 100, 101.
- Paul Boyer. Who was Thomas Muentzer?. http://www.pbs.org.+Retrieved on February 27, 2015. “Muentzer's flag had a rainbow on it, harkening back to the rainbow that Noah was given, the covenant with God.”
- Chesterton and Friends (FEBRUARY 22, 2007). Retrieved on 2012-10-20. “For the next great heresy is going to be simply an attack on morality; and especially on sexual morality. And it is coming, not from a few Socialists surviving from the Fabian Society, but from the living exultant energy of the rich resolved to enjoy themselves at last, with neither Popery nor Puritanism nor Socialism to hold them back … The madness of tomorrow is not in Moscow, but much more in Manhattan.”
- Meredith Bennett-Smith (12/18/2012). Queen James Bible Claims To Be First-Ever 'Gay Bible,' But Some Say It Rewrites Scripture. msnNOW.com. Retrieved on 24/02/2013.
- Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams. The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in Nazi Party, The 5th Edition for Internet. “If The Pink Swastika were the "pack of lies" the homosexual movement claims it is, the book would not have influenced their "Gay Holocaust" strategy in the smallest degree. It would have been easy to discredit and disregard. Instead, how did the "gay" leaders respond to its challenge? They stopped talking about the Nazis almost entirely and changed their symbol from the pink triangle to the rainbow flag.”
- 2018 Icons: Gilbert Baker. Equality forum. Retrieved on 4 Nov 2018. “Gilbert Baker designed the iconic rainbow flag representing the lgbt community. "I love going to cities around the world and seeing the rainbow flag." Gilbert Baker”
- clairethinker (November 20, 2012). The Strange Death of Robert Eric Wone. Retrieved on February 27, 2015. “The Rainbow: a promise of God ... NOT a symbol of pride”
- Scott Lively. Redeeming the Rainbow: A Christian Response to the "Gay" Agenda.