Exodus 24.9-11 • John 1.18 • 1 John 4.12-13.
Most of the reason we Christians are pretty sure John bar Zavdi wrote both the gospel with his name on it, and the letters with his name on them, is ’cause the same ideas and themes (and wording, and vocabulary) come up in them. Including today’s bible difficulty, the idea nobody’s ever seen God. John wrote it in both his gospel and his first letter.
John 1.18 KWL - Nobody’s ever seen God.
- The only Son, God who’s in the Father’s womb, he explains God.
1 John 4.12-13 KWL - 12 No one’s ever seen God, yet when we love one another, God’s with us.
- His love’s been expressed in us, 13 so this is how we get to know we’re with him and he’s with us.
- He’s given us his Spirit.
The reason it’s a difficulty? Because people have seen God. In Exodus 24, we have this interesting little story:
Exodus 24.9-11 KWL - 9 Moses, Aaron, Nadáv, Avíhu, and 70 of Israel’s elders,
- went up 10 and saw Israel’s God:
- Under his feet was something like a manufactured sapphire pavement,
- pure as the skies themselves.
- 11 As for the Israeli nobles, God didn’t strike them down:
- They saw God, and they ate and drank.
Wait, what?
Yeah, nobody bothers to read their Old Testament, so it stands to reason they’d utterly miss this one. Or any of the other God-appearances in the scriptures.
In the OT, on a regular basis, humans freak out when there’s a chance they might see God.
Yeah, it was a rumor. And sometimes rumors are true. The L
Exodus 33.20 KWL - God said, “You aren’t able to see my face.
- For a human cannot see me and live.”
And yet we have this story in the middle of Exodus, where apparently 74 people saw God, had lunch with him, and lived to tell of it.
And it’s not the only instance! Abraham had lunch with God too.
Whenever I point out this rather vast discrepancy, Christians flinch, then usually respond one of two ways. Either they dismiss the passages where people got to see God, or they dismiss the passages where seeing God would get you struck down. The authors of the bible must not really have meant what the text clearly says.