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Many have been taught that God
was literally seen on earth, and they quote passages to promote the
trinity and/or deity of Jesus. These passages are quoted to prove
this belief, but all the while, they discard the Hebraic mindset.
My
friend responded to me when I approached her with the trinity
teaching and how I learned that it is false. The conversation led to
the topic of seeing God. She stated the following:
Do we believe Jesus contradicted
scripture when He said, “NO MAN HAS SEEN GOD AT ANY TIME” when
scripture clearly tells us that Israel DID see God?
She
continued to say:
If no man has ever seen God at
any time, as Jesus spoke, then who was it that everyone saw
in the Old Testament?
If Jesus says no one has seen Him, then no one has seen Him. Yet we
have dozens of testimonies of the patriarchs and the prophets who saw
God.
She
then offered verses as proof that God was seen:
And Jacob called the name of the
place Peniel: for I
have seen God face to face,
and my life is preserved. (Gen. 32:30)
And the LORD
spake unto Moses face to face,
as a man speaketh unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp:
but his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out
of the tabernacle. (Exo 33:11)
And they
saw the God of Israel:
and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire
stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness. And upon
the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also
they saw God, and did
eat and drink. (Ex. 24:10-11)
No man hath seen God at any
time; the only
begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared
him. (John 1:18)
We
seem to have a contradiction here, which many believers of the bible
have found confusing and difficult to reconcile since no one can see
God at any time and live:
You cannot see my face, for man
may not see me and live. (Ex. 33:20)
We
must investigate further and look for the bible to explain the bible.
Is there truly a contradiction? You see, we can be quick to repeat
what we are taught without investigating the scriptures for
ourselves.
What
we will find, as we continue, is that some verses may strongly imply
communication, but
they were not direct
communication.
Many
people do not realize it, but scripture proves that not even Moses
directly spoke with God when giving the Torah at Mt. Sinai. One must
carefully read the New Testament passages written by Jewish disciples
to help explain the seemingly
contradictory scriptures
that say someone saw God, while others say no one can see God.
The
answer, which can be widely understood, is that God spoke through
angels. They
are divinely
appointed emissaries.
Please note carefully how Stephen explains this implicitly in his
address to the Sanhedrin (Jewish
court system) in Acts
7:30; 35; 38; 53:
30After forty years had passed,
an angel
[this is a divinely appointed emissary] appeared to him in the desert
of Mount Sinai, in the flame of a burning bush. 35This same Moses
they had rejected, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and judge?’ God
sent as both ruler and deliverer through the hand of the
angel [divinely
appointed emissary] who appeared to him in the bush. 38 This is the
man who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel
who spoke [divinely
appointed emissary] to him at Mount Sinai, 53You received the law by
decrees given by
angels, [divinely
appointed emissaries] but you did not obey it.
If
we are going to adhere to the trinity teaching, then we must conclude
that God is an angel! Or if Jesus is God, that Jesus is an angel as
well? Furthermore, when we begin to read Exodus chapter 3, it tells
us in verse 2 that Yahweh’s
angel appeared to
Moses in
a flame of fire out of the middle of the bush.
And the angel
of the LORD appeared
to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked,
and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
Continuing
we find in Galatians 3:19:
What purpose then does the law
serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should
come to whom the promise was made; and it was appointed through
angels [divinely
appointed representatives, emissaries, or agents] by the hand of a
mediator.
Hebrews
2:2:
For if the word spoken through
angels [divinely
appointed emissaries] proved steadfast, and every transgression and
disobedience received a just reward.
As
we can see, God spoke through angels, even when the scripture seems
to say it was God himself appearing to Moses to deliver the law. It
is extremely important to grasp this concept in order to understand
how there really is no contradiction at all in the scriptures.
Did Jacob Wrestle With God?
In
Genesis chapter 32, we read how Jacob wrestled with someone. It says
he fought with God.
Did Jacob beat up God? It seems Jacob was at the point of winning
until God cheated by using his power, as God, to dislocate Jacob’s
hip. We read in 32:24-30:
So Jacob was left alone. Then
a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he
could not defeat Jacob, he struck the socket of his hip so the socket
of Jacob’s hip was dislocated while he wrestled with him. Then the
man said, “Let me go, for the dawn is breaking.” “I will not
let you go,” Jacob replied, “unless you bless me.” The man
asked him, “What is your name?” He answered, “Jacob.” ″No
longer will your name be Jacob,” the man told him, “but Israel,
because you have fought
with God and with men
and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked, “Please tell me your
name.” “Why do you ask my name?” the man replied. Then he
blessed Jacob there. So Jacob named the place Peniel, explaining,
“Certainly I have
seen God face to face
and have survived.”
Now,
staying within the belief that Jesus
is God, many would not
have a problem with this by saying that when Jacob wrestled with God,
he was actually wrestling with Jesus because Jesus is God. However,
when we get to Hos.12:4, we find out correctly with whom Jacob
fought!
Yea, he
had power over the angel,
and prevailed: he wept, and made supplication unto him: he found him
in Bethel, and there he spake with us.
When we let the bible
interpret the bible, we get a better understanding by finding out
that Jacob fought with an angel who stood in the place of God.
God
Speaks To Moses Face to Face?
If
no one can see God and live, how can God speak with Moses “face to
face?” In the following passage, Moses said to the people:
The LORD talked
with you face to face
in the mount out of the midst of the fire. (Deut 5:4)
On
first glance, this certainly sounds like Moses and God had a nice
fireside chat! But when we look into the New Testament for
explanation, we refer once again to Stephen’s sermon in Acts 7:30;
35; 38; 53 – as well as Ex. 3:2 – a mention of exactly who
appeared to Moses in the flaming bush. God did not actually appear to
Moses or anyone in person, but He spoke through one or more angels –
divinely appointed emissaries.
In
Deut. 4:12, 15, 16, we read:
And the LORD spoke to you from
the fire. You could hear him and understand what he was saying, but
you couldn't see him. -When
God spoke to you from the fire, he was invisible. So be careful not
to commit the sin of worshiping idols. Don't make idols to be
worshiped, whether they are shaped like men, woman…
One
reason God would not allow them to see any likeness of Him because He
knew they would most likely make an image of Him and worship that
image. Another reason is that anyone who would see God would die!
And
what about the passage where Moses was supposedly allowed to see
God’s back? Allow me to quote from David Burge, a pastor from New
Zealand who states:
So too, in Exodus 33:17-23, Moses
is said to have seen God’s “back.” God would not allow Moses to
see His face when He passed because “no man can see Me and live.”
Note, in verse 20, in God’s own words, “seeing God’s face”
and “seeing God” are synonymous. Seeing God’s “back” is
akin to seeing “God’s glory” (Ex. 33:18, 22), which Moses did
indeed see. As the writer to the Hebrews puts it, Moses “saw Him
who is invisible” (Heb. 11:27). How is it then that the Bible is so
clear: “No one has ever seen God”? (John 1:18; 1 John 4:12). He
“lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see”
(1 Tim. 6:16). The only explanation available to us is that none of
these worthies ever literally saw God. Rather they saw God’s
agent, His chosen representative, who spoke with the authority of the
LORD as though he were the LORD. They
saw the angel of the LORD.
In exactly the same manner Jesus said “He who has seen me has seen
my Father” (John 14:9)
So
though the passages strongly imply direct communication, there
obviously was no direct communication. God spoke through angels, who
delivered God’s messages to humans who would die if they spoke to
God directly. (We will learn more about how God works through the
“Law of Agency” later).
Now,
in the New Testament, Jesus told his disciples:
He that hath seen me hath seen
the Father. (John 14:9)
Remember,
no one has seen God. All the disciples had to do was look at and
observe Jesus, NOT as “oneness of being of the same substance as
the Father (none of them ever did that),” but to see the
character of the
Father and to know what He is like.
In
John 6:46 we read:
Not that anyone has seen the
Father, except the One who is from God; He has seen the Father.
Many
who claim Jesus is God
maintain that the verse means Jesus pre-existed and therefore
actually saw God before his birth. If Jesus is God, God saw Himself?
Also, note that Jesus says he is the one who is from
God. He did not say he is God.
This
has nothing to do with Jesus physically seeing
with his physical eyes. Rather, this see
or seen
has to do with “knowing”
the Father. The Father shows Jesus all things that He Himself does
(John 5:20), and therefore Jesus knows God, and in a sense, has seen
God. Jesus did not actually see Him with his physical eyes, but
rather because God was clearly revealing Himself to Jesus.
The
words see and
seen
means to “know, to realize” in the Hebrew and Greek. The Hebrew
word is ra’ah
and used as seeing with the eyes and knowing or perceiving something
(Gen. 16:4; Exod. 32:1; Num. 20:29).
The
Greek word horao,
translated see
(John 1:18, 6:46; 3John 1:11), can mean to see
with the eyes or to
see with the mind, to
perceive, know.
We even use our English word see
as a definition to
understand, to
perceive or know.
Example: “Do you see
what I mean?” Or “Do you see
now what I mean?” In the same way we can understand John 14:9 to
mean the same thing. Jesus made this clear to Phillip earlier in
verse 7:
If you really knew
me, you would know
my Father as well.
From now on, you do
know him and have
seen him.
Jesus
never said if one were looking at him, they were looking at the
Father because he is
the Father. Jesus is simply saying to Phillip that anyone who knows
him (Jesus) has seen the Father, which has to do with understanding
or comprehending
God, not that Phillip actually saw God, nor Jesus claiming to be God.
In
another passage we read:
And the Father who sent me has
himself testified about me. You people have
never heard his voice nor seen his form at any time.
(John 5:37)
So
though we read passages like those in Deuteronomy (4:12, 15, and 16),
that God talked with the Israelites, they were not really hearing
God’s actual voice, which John 5:37 and Acts 7:38, 53 confirms.
Neither
the disciples nor any human being physically saw God, but they did
have a mental perception of God’s character by looking at Jesus. In
this sense, to see Jesus was to see the Father, just not literally.
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