How to See God
A man cannot see God,” “We cannot see God,” “God is invisible,” or “Nobody has ever seen God”—these are only a few statements we sometimes hear and which I have also made myself.
All these statements are also true and can be confirmed by passages from the Bible, and yet they do not reflect the whole truth. For we read again and again of people in the Bible who tell us, “I saw the Lord,” “I stood in heaven and saw one sitting on the throne,” “I saw the Lord standing,” “I saw the form of the Lord.” I found more than 80 people who saw and looked at God in one way or another.
But how could that be possible when even the Bible says:
No one has seen God at any time (1 John 4:12).
Seeing God has to do with levels of glory. Not everyone was exposed to the same degree of glory as Enoch or Moses. Adam and Eve could see God before the Fall in a way that Jacob, for example, could not, even though he said at Penuel, “I have seen God face to face.”
The word face in Hebrew is panim. It is mainly translated as a singular word, but in Hebrew it is plural. This indicates a higher number than one; God has many faces and He cannot present each one to all people, even if He would like to.
This may sound confusing, but we humans have a similar situation. So, on the one hand I am the father of my son and many people can observe me in this role, but others will never experience the closeness and love I give to my child. On the other hand, my child, as much as I love him (and my father’s heart would like to lay the world at his feet), will never be able to experience me as a husband, for that is reserved exclusively for my wife. My son can observe what I am like as a husband, he can learn many qualities of a husband from me, but the intimacy I share with my wife in secret will never be experienced by anyone else, nor should it be.
Jacob saw God’s face, but it was not as glorious as the unity with God that Adam and Eve experienced.
Other people who saw God were:
Moses (Numbers 12:7-8)
Isaiah (Isaiah 6:1)
David (Psalm 63:1-2)
Job (Job 42:5)
Amos (Amos 9:1)
Jacob (Genesis 32:30)
Daniel (Daniel 7:9)
John (Revelation 4:2-3)
Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and the 70 Elders (Exodus 24:9-11)
Faith, and Then? Sanctification
Each of these biblical characters’ experiences differ from each other. We could also explore them more closely and explain in more detail how these encounters happened. Whatever they were like, we know this—it was a wonderful level of glory. It is more intense than merely experiencing or knowing God. This is the next step to which God wants to lead you; He is preparing you for a deep and groundbreaking encounter with Himself.
When God leads you into this realm of glory, you will look back on your past life and suddenly realize that in the light of this new glory you barely knew anything about God before. Job 42:5 is the best illustration of this experience for me—there was no one in the whole world who was like Job, righteous and upright, who feared God and avoided evil (see Job 1:8). Even God boasted to His angels about His servant Job, and He was not disappointed because even in the darkest hours that life sometimes brings, Job did not turn away from God.
He was undoubtedly a hero of faith who could not explain the dramas of his life and, at times, wavered but never doubted God. In the end, God rewarded Him with a new level of glory, whereupon Job proclaimed:
I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You (Job 42:5).
Do you believe in Jesus? Wonderful! But don’t think of it as your final state. Salvation is the goal for the lost, but it is no longer your goal, for you already belong to God’s eternal family. God still has special things for you; He wants to show you more of Himself and His glory. He will take you by the hand and guide you in His ways so that you may experience greater glory. The next path is sanctification.
And there I will meet with the children of Israel, and the tabernacle shall be sanctified by My glory (Exodus 29:43).
The prerequisite for knowing God is and remains faith; seeing God, on the other hand, is reserved for those who allow themselves to be sanctified.
In the ears of many, sanctification is a very unpleasant word. They equate it with restrictions and with the loss of fun and pleasure. It’s like having to part with everything that gives you pleasure. Does a joyful temperament have to be exchanged for a serious and lifeless expression of sanctification? Nothing could be further from the truth. God Himself sits on His throne and laughs, and in His presence there is fullness of joy (see Ps. 2:4; 16:11).
“Seeing God is reserved for those who allow themselves to be sanctified.”
Is sanctification sometimes unpleasant? Of course, it is, like so many things in life. People do sports to stay in shape and that’s not always pleasant, but it’s worth it. Many people subject themselves to cosmetic treatments so that they look better, and plucking the eyebrows is the most pleasant of them, although even that is painful. Others even go under the knife in order to get closer to their ideal of beauty, and they accept the pain involved—just to mention a few things.
But sanctification is not so much like drill in the army as it is preparation for the encounter with the person we adore. It is the preparation for our walk to the altar and the first meeting with the bridegroom. The weeks and months beforehand are not only stressful, but we have butterflies in the stomach.
A bride goes to the beautician, to the bridal gown show, and voluntarily even sheds a few pounds so as to be in the best possible condition for meeting her groom. There are weeks of abstinence and often detailed organization, and many other things are neglected because they are less important. It’s an intensive time, which is worthwhile because this special day is constantly before her eyes.
On the night before the special day, the bride cannot sleep. For days she has hardly eaten for excitement. The last hours feel like an eternity, her stomach rumbles continuously, her feelings are about to explode in all directions. Seconds feel like minutes, and hours like eternity.
Thousands of thoughts race through her head. Doubt and anticipation, powerlessness and feelings of happiness, weakness, and security—a real chaos that she probably won’t remember once she stands in front of him, the bridegroom.
And then this long walk to the altar—the moment you’ve longed for for so long. In an instant everything is forgotten; nothing else seems important anymore. All worries, hardships, and stress are gone in one fell swoop, and suddenly the past seems so distant because the glory of this encounter and the joyful expectation of the future with its radiance put everything else in the shade.
For me, sanctification is more like this scenario than the rebuke, instruction, and discipline in military training. When God takes us by the hand and sanctifies us, He still does so as a loving Father and never as an authoritarian or selfish dictator.
But to experience this level, sanctification is imperative, just as God asked Moses to sanctify the people because He wanted to show Himself to all the Israelites in a way in which they had not yet seen Him.
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their clothes. And let them be ready for the third day. For on the third day the Lord will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people” (Exodus 19:10-11).
God wants to show Himself to you so that you can say like Job, “Now my eyes have seen Him.” On the way to this glorious experience, keep Hebrews 12:14 as close to your heart as possible.
Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14).
Sanctification is essential in order to see God; without it, it is not possible.
Seventy-Four People at Banquet with God
I have been reading the Bible passage in Exodus 24:9-11 for almost 20 years now, and these three verses still fascinate me in a way that hardly any other passage in the Word of God does.
Then Moses went up, also Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and they saw the God of Israel. And there was under His feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone, and it was like the very heavens in its clarity. But on the nobles of the children of Israel He did not lay His hand. So they saw God, and they ate and drank (Exodus 24:9-11).
You have to realize what a glorious event took place here. Not only did 74 people experience the living God, they were even allowed to see Him. But not only that, at the same time they had permission to take one step further into the glory: they beheld God.
I don’t know if you’ve just understood this as a simple piece of information or if you have a certain immunity to biblical stories and can absorb certain biblical events with little emotion, but this experience of the 74 people should spark something in our hearts. Think about it—Moses and Aaron, and Aaron’s eldest sons Nadab and Abihu, as well as the 70 elders of Israel, took part in a banquet prepared by God with His angels—and they saw God!
This was no vision, or dream, or prophetic inspiration. What we read here is also not a pictorial representation that requires further interpretation. What is written here is exactly what it also means— they saw God with their physical eyes, and it was not ecstasy, rapture, or a trance. There is also no need to consider whether this was a purely emotional or spiritual experience. What these 74 individuals experienced with God was just as real as the fact that you are holding this book in your hand.
Maybe now you are asking, “But Hrvoje, why are you already classifying this level of glory here? Could anything be more glorious than that? Is not only heaven itself more glorious?” Those are exactly the thoughts I had over the years about this wonderful event. Was there anything that could be better or more desirable? Until I studied Second Corinthians 3:18 a little more carefully.
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Corinthians 3:18).
The decisive factor and measure of glory is not exclusively the event itself and how glorious it seems. The verifiable unit of measurement is transformation. How much has the level of glory changed me? And that means “into that same image.” In other words, the glory experienced is measured by how much I have become more like Jesus.
As wonderful as this experience was for the 74 people, the transformation was minimal.
Why do I think that? We just have to read on and see what happened around 20 or 30 days later among the people of Israel, and 73 of these 74 persons (everyone except Moses) were at the center of it and were responsible for it.
Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make us gods that shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” And Aaron said to them, “Break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people broke off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molded calf. Then they said, “This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!” So when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow is a feast to the Lord.” Then they rose early on the next day, offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. And the Lord said to Moses, “Go, get down! For your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves” (Exodus 32:1-7).
After the banquet God had provided, the Lord called Moses farther up the mountain to discuss the next steps with him. The remaining 73 rejoined the people and told them that Moses had continued to go higher into the presence of God. I can only imagine the enthusiasm with which the elders told of their experiences.
But perhaps 20 or 30 days later, when there was no sign of life from Moses far and wide, the people became impatient. They assembled before Aaron and requested him to make them gods.
After everything that the Israelites had experienced with God, they were set on being unfaithful to Him! They had seen how God had fed them daily in a supernatural way. They had witnessed God dividing the sea with His finger so that they could walk through it on dry land. When Egypt experienced the ten plagues, God held His protective hand over Israel so that they would not be affected, although they lived in the same region. And many other miracles. Whatever was going on inside of them, none of the glorious miracles had changed them in such a way that they now clung to their God.
And now they had this desire to worship man-made gods, who were to rule over them—that makes no sense at all! How can a created being like man form a creature that is divine and can protect him? And this proposal came from people who had experienced God’s majesty and holiness! They had seen how unapproachable and mighty God is, and yet they wished for deaf-mute idols that had ears and mouths and yet did not hear or speak.
As incomprehensible as this story seems to us, Aaron’s reaction is even more astounding. This was the high priest of Israel, who together with Moses had overseen the exodus of Israel from Egypt and had convinced the people about God; this was the brother of Moses, to whom God had granted the privilege, along with 73 others, of seeing greater glory; this was someone who had seen God and had eaten and drunk with Him—and while it seems insane, Aaron accepted the people’s proposal as if it were a matter of course.
Aaron asked the people to gather gold, everything they could find, in order to melt it in the fire and make it into an idol, a golden calf. Aaron completed his work, and I would like to believe that in the meantime he had undergone conviction regarding his deed. Perhaps he still wanted to remedy the situation and turn it around, and that was why he called the calf “Yahweh”—he gave it the wonderful name of God, possibly to set his own mind to rest. But it was too late, for he was right at the center, and the situation had got out of hand.
Verse 6 of chapter 32 sounds almost like enjoyment—the people stood up to amuse themselves. Other translations write they stood up to play, while others replace “play” with “dance.” But the scene was not at all as harmless as it seems; The Living Bible says more aptly: “afterwards they sat down to feast and drink at a wild party, followed by sexual immorality.” The various translations are based on the Hebrew word sahaq, and its meaning is undoubtedly erotic and sexual in nature. For example, sahaq is used in Genesis 26:8 when Abimelech saw Isaac and Rebekah and deduced their true relationship status from their intimate togetherness. It also describes in Genesis 39:17 the accusation of sexual harassment with which Joseph was wrongly confronted (after which he was imprisoned).
Not only did the Israelites turn away from God, they held orgies to give free rein to all their carnality and sinfulness. And right at the center—Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and the 70 elders! They did not take a stand for God against the people, although they had seen God with their own eyes; on the contrary, they were just as guilty.
How did this happen? Just 20 to 30 days before they had seen God as only a few people had. The experience was still totally present. Yes, it was, but measured by the change by which the extent of God’s glory can be assessed, there must be more glorious levels still.
Why did the Israelites fail all along the line? I’m convinced it is because of a lack of the fear of the Lord.
Thus, sanctification and the fear of the Lord are both crucial elements of an encounter with God.