The Answerer

TheAnswerer is re-writing this question in 2019. Why?  Well I am older now and I want to better explain my answer to you.

We all like very much to get our favourite sports stars autograph, to see and hear our favourite song and singer and so on. We humans like to be able to see and feel our favourite toys, food, bikes and cars. It gives us comfort and pleasure. So it is not wrong in any way for a child to ask this question.

The disciples asked Jesus this question too and Jesus said: “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.”  They were seeing Jesus – without Him having the very presence of God in visible form with him. (That is too powerful for ordinary people to look upon.) 

His looks: Just a few great artists have painted their sense of how God looked in several of the greatest paintings we have in the world. They must have sensed God being around as they painted. Not many try such tasks but Leonardo Da Vinci did well in his efforts. Have a look on the www.

On one occasion Jesus took Peter, James and John up onto a mountain (escaping great crowds I expect) and while they were there Jesus was ‘Transfigured’ (shone with brilliant light). Then God’s voice said from the sky; “This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him.” (Matthew 17:1-9 and also in Luke 9:2-10) Moses and Elijah were there with Jesus too (they had been dead for hundreds of years) and the disciples were very frightened.  Later, coming down the mountain Jesus said to Peter, James and John: “Tell nobody of this until I have risen from the dead.” That must have been hard to understand!  Whenever God’s voice is heard in the Bible it is frightening (scary) and people tremble and are frightened

In one place the Bible says: “Nobody can see God and live.” So we are not meant to really see him because: “God is spirit.” Angels are sometimes briefly seen. 

Moses actually sat and talked with God…the only person in the bible to do so.  Moses was a special person to God – and was given THE TEN COMMANDMENTS by God on tablets of stone. So we really have no need to see his face. The Bible tells us so much about God. The Bible is full of information about God.

Some people do see God’s face – or his angel – but mostly in extreme circumstances. I have been ‘spoken to’ four times in my life – but I saw nothing at the time. 

A dear friend – already a serious Christian – received one day some truly horrible news about her family. She was very much distressed, and as she was driving along she told me that God’s face briefly appeared and gave her a few comforting words – then was gone. That brief look and assuring knowledge of God’s care for her helped her immensely.

This friend does not speak a lot but what she says is good and true. She told me the brief details: it was truly horrible but she got through the trauma and now her life is serving others as a true and serious Christian…more confident in her knowledge of God.

If we were permitted to see His face it would soon be on many breakfast cereal boxes and drink bottles. Think on that. Many other religions have many icons, images and shrines to their gods- often in the home. In many newsagents today there is a plastic image of the Buddha. It is thought that if you rub your lotto ticket over Buddha’s belly it could bring you a lucky win!

Finally, ‘You will see Him.’ Yes indeed. In maybe hundreds of places in the Bible there are references to ‘Judgement Day’. Jesus spoke of it as a final judgement day when He will come to earth to judge the nations and people and reward them accordingly.

But my favourite piece is about seeing God – as Job said he would. Try to get a Bible and read about Job in the Book of Job.  In this story Satan has a big say in persecuting Job – hoping that Job would curse God for his awful experiences but Job did not curse God. Job was the richest man in all the land. But in one day he lost all his ten children to a wild storm, all his thousands of sheep, cattle, camels, his crops and servants were killed or burnt. He did not blame God.

All this is in Job chapters one and two. Three friends journeyed together to try to comfort Job. They tried (for 30 chapters) to convince Job to confess his sins to God and all would be fixed. Not so!! Job had not sinned. But in Job chapter 19 Job says (and I love it and have no idea how he could know it) “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end He will stand upon the earth; And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see Him with my own eyes-I and not another. How my heart yearns within me.”  (Job 19:25-27 NIV) (‘Redeem’ means to buy back what is yours, like a pawn shop when you buy back what was once your property but you needed money so you pawned it.)  

In a book I have on Job the writer writes well. (In Job’s day there was almost no written Bible or any books.) The writer suggests that God gave this message to Job to comfort him in the middle of much loss, some very poor friends and he had also become a social outcast. There is a most beautiful song with the title: “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth.” It’s a soprano solo in Handel’s THE MESSIAH.

The end: God rewarded Job with another family – and double of everything he had lost because of Satan! And his three daughters: ”Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters…After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. And so he died, old and full of years.” (Job 42:15-16. NIV).