Rabbi Kirt Schneider says he isn’t naïve to believe that the LGBTQ community will ever stop using the rainbow as the symbol for their cultural movement.
In fact, Schneider told Eric Metaxas recently on Metaxas’ radio show, he believes the American culture is already “lost.” And while he agrees that God may have another Great Awakening in store for us, he doesn’t believe the church will ever be able to turn the current culture around. It’s simply too far gone.
That type of thinking, however, hasn’t prevented Schneider from launching his own kingdom crusade called “Taking Back the Rainbow,” an initiative which Schneider challenges the church—through love—to help individuals stand for biblical values.
In recent years, the LGBTQ movement has hijacked the rainbow as its symbol of solidarity and significance in the American culture. But Schneider says the rainbow has always been a symbol of God’s love and that this movement is designed to help individuals come out of the LGBTQ lifestyle.
“To me, the rainbow is about God’s glory and beauty,” said Schneider, a Messianic Rabbi who founded the ministry Discovering the Jewish Jesus. “This LGBTQ movement has just so brought defilement in our culture that something just rose up inside of me.
“It was sudden, it was unexpected, and I just said, ‘I’m going to rise up against this thing and we’re going to take the rainbow back.”
Britannica cites that the gay community’s use of the rainbow flag began in 1978 when “Artist Gilbert Baker, an openly gay man and a drag queen, designed the first rainbow flag. … Baker saw the rainbow as a natural flag from the sky, so he adopted eight colors for the stripes, each color with its own meaning,” including hot pink for sex.
But, as the source cites, “Because of production issues, the pink and turquoise stripes were removed and indigo was replaced by basic blue, which resulted in the contemporary six-striped flag (red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet).
The rainbow that appears in the sky, which God made, has seven colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. The true meaning of the rainbow comes from the Bible as a covenant between God and His people after the flood.
Genesis 9:12-15 reads, “Then God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations. I have set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth. When I bring a cloud over the earth, the rainbow will be seen in the cloud; then I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh, and the waters will never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.'”
In 1981, only three years after he had gotten saved after growing up as an Orthodox Jew, Schneider says he was going through a season of repentance and that God was clearing many of the old, secular habits out of his life. One day, while sitting in his living room drinking a cup of tea—to calm his nerves from trying to quit his smoking habit—Schneider says “the Spirit of the Living God” literally manifested Himself above Schneider’s head as “a living spirit of color.”
“I’ve had some supernatural experiences, but [this] was perhaps the most powerful,” Schneider says. “This spiritual experience was swirling above my head. All of the colors of the rainbow then came through my head and this Spirit spoke to my soul that I was to be a servant.
“This experience was just as the one the apostle John saw in Revelation 4:3, a rainbow above God’s throne; and just as the prophet Ezekiel saw in Ezekiel 1:28 where he saw the Son of God, a fire within him going up and down and then a radiance like a rainbow around him.”
The inspiration for Taking Back the Rainbow, however, didn’t happen until a couple of months ago in March, when Schneider was driving down the road with his wife.
“Suddenly, from deep within, it just violently rose up in me,” Schneider told Metaxas. “I have to speak against what is speeding across the Western world with the pro-LGBT agenda, which has come upon the earth like a tidal wave of destruction. So, Taking Back the Rainbow is a movement to unify the body of Christ to stand up and not only oppose the LGBTQ movement, but unrighteousness, period. We need to raise our voice.”
Schneider says he doesn’t believe that the LGBTQ community will ever cease using the rainbow to further its cause. But he also believes that initiatives like Take Back the Rainbow will affect many and help them to come out of their lifestyle and into a lifestyle that will glorify Jesus.
“We’re not going back to the 1950s. We’re not going back to times of modest sexual morals,” Schneider says. “We are in the end times, the headwinds of darkness, and this thing is going become more violent, deeper and more sinister.
“What I am trying to do is to unify the body of Christ to come together to stand up against unrighteousness. I don’t believe that we can change America, but I believe we can save some.” {eoa}
Shawn A. Akers is the online editor at Charisma Media.
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