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Has anyone seen God?
QUESTION: Has anyone
ever seen God face to face? The Old Testament states Jacob, Moses and others
did. On the other hand, Jesus said no one has seen him.
ANSWER: The surprising answer to your question about anyone seeing
God is both "no" and "yes!"
No,
no one has ever seen the Father face to face except Christ. That said, many
people have heard, seen and even interacted with God, the Son.
The
apparent contradiction comes from a grave misunderstanding of the Godhead.
The
easiest way to understanding this sometimes difficult subject is to review the
first verse in the book of John.
In
the opening of his gospel he states something profound but straightforward
about what we would call the Godhead.
He says, "In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"
(John 1:1).
As
the context shows, John is speaking of Jesus who was eternally with the Father
as the "Word" and was,
himself, also God.
His
statement clearly shows that the Godhead is composed (at least at the present
time) of two divine Beings.
This,
of course, begs the question that if no one has ever seen or spoke to the
Father then who, in the Old Testament, interacted with the patriarchs, ancient
Israel and so on.
When
Moses was being commissioned to save the Israelites from Egyptian slavery he
asked who it was who was sending him. The answer to his request was the
following.
And God said to Moses, 'I
AM THAT I AM.' And He said, "Thus you shall say to the children of
Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you'" (Exodus 3:14, HBFV).
Many
years later, when Jesus was on this earth living as a man, He admitted that He
was the "I AM" or God who
spoke to Moses!
When he was speaking to the religious leaders of Israel who
thought highly of themselves because they had Abraham as their father he
told them that "before Abraham was
born, I AM!" (John 8:58).
The above example was not the only time
Christ admitted to be the great "I
AM" or God who interacted with mankind.
John
18 contains the record of Jesus being arrested in Gethsemane by a group of
religious leaders and armed guards.
Upon
their arrival they are asked whom they are looking for (verse 4).
They
respond they are looking for Jesus. Christ's answer is both dramatic and
revealing.
Jesus
said to them, "I AM" . . .
But when He said to them, "I AM," they went backward and fell to the ground (John 18:5-6, HBFV).
In the KJV and other Bibles, the word "he" is added to the phrase "I AM" in John 18:5 in an
attempt to make the passage more understandable.
It
does, however, just the opposite! Such an addition obscures the fact that when
Jesus said "I AM" He was admitting that He was God in the flesh!
Such
a declaration was so powerful that it knocked armed soldiers to the ground!
The Bible declares that no one has ever
seen the Being in the Godhead known as God the Father (Exodus 33:19-20, 1 Timothy 6:15-16, etc.).
Several
people, however, did see and interact with a pre-incarnate Jesus Christ such
as
- Jacob
(Genesis 32:30),
- Moses
(Exodus 33:11, Deuteronomy 5:4, 34:10) and
- Job
(Job 42:1, 5).
Still
more people, in the New Testament, saw Jesus or God the Son during His ministry
on earth (1 John 4:14).
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