God is spirit, to put it briefly (John 4:24). God cannot be seen since He is spirit and does not have a body.
Moses “saw” God
Still, a few individuals in the Old Testament claimed to have seen God at different times. Moses asks God in Exodus 33:18, “Show me your glory.” “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence,” the LORD said. I shall exercise mercy toward anyone I choose, and I shall exercise compassion toward whomever I choose. However, you are unable to glimpse my face since no one can see me and survive (Exodus 33:19–20). Then, according to Exodus 33:21–23, the LORD covered Moses with His hand and positioned him in a cleft in the rock so that all Moses could see was the LORD’s back. According to Exodus 34:5-7, the
Then the LORD descended into the cloud, joined him, and called out his name, the LORD. “The LORD, the LORD, the gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin,” he declared as he passed in front of Moses. He punishes the children and their children for the fathers’ sins until the third and fourth generation, although he does not spare the guilty.
Thus, Moses “saw” the LORD, or more accurately, he perceived the cloud, which stood in for God in all of his holiness, grandeur, and majesty, and he heard the LORD reveal his nature to Moses.
Isaiah also “saw” God
In Isaiah 6, Isaiah had a similar experience:
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.” Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”
Moses’ experience and Isaiah’s are strikingly comparable. Though all that Isaiah actually saw was “the train of his robe,” which filled the sanctuary, he beheld the LORD (Isaiah 6:1).
God is holy
Since “no-one may see [the LORD] and live” (Exodus 33:20), neither Moses nor Isaiah were able to truly see the LORD in all of his glory in any of these situations. Isaiah was terrified because of this and said, “Woe to me! I am completely destroyed! Isaiah 6:5 states, “For I am a man of unclean lips… and my eyes have seen the LORD.”
Nothing impure can approach or come into the presence of the holy, righteous, and just LORD (Leviticus 19:2; Psalm 11:7; Revelation 15:3) (Leviticus 10:1-3; 1 Samuel 6:19–20; 2 Samuel 6:6-7). Consequently, since God is holy and we are not, everyone who sees the LORD will be executed.
New Testament
On the other hand, you might have seen God if you had been a resident of Israel some 2000 years ago! According to what the New Testament says (John 1:1–2). According to John 1:14, God the Son was born and resided on earth after taking on human form. According to John, “We proclaim concerning the Word of life that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at, and which our hands have touched” (1 John 1:1). John, the apostles, and numerous others observed, heard, and even touched Jesus during their time with him! But aside from the transfiguration, Jesus’ glory was hidden while he was on earth (Matthew 17:1–13; Mark 9:2-13).
God the Father was still invisible to humans, but through Jesus’ revelation of Him to us, we are able to “know” Him. And we are aware that the Son of God has shown himself to us and bestowed upon us knowledge, enabling us to recognize the truth, and that truth is who we are in—in his Son, Jesus Christ. He is eternal life and the real God (1 John 5:20). “No one has ever seen God; he who is at the right hand of the Father has revealed him to us” (John 1:18).
We will all see God
All of God’s people will finally meet God face-to-face when he ends this current world and builds the new heavens and earth (Revelation 21:1); as the scripture states, “they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads” (Revelation 22:4). We shall be holy and pure when that time comes, and we shall be able to look on God. God’s new creation will never accept those who are not (Revelation 21:27).
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