REQUEST TO SEE THE LORD (VERSE NO. 143)

      This is another important verse that can teach us important lessons, and serve to increase our knowledge about God.

      Some of the ignorant Israelites told Moses that they would not believe in God unless they see him with their eyes! ``So when you go up on the mountain for supplication,'' they said: ``Convey our request to your Lord!''

      Although Moses was sure enough that he could never see Allah with his sense of sight, what did he think then? We don't know; but he did convey the Message of his ignorant people to his Lord, saying:

      ``My Lord! Show me that I may look upon you.''

      He said: ``You shall never see Me; but look at the mountain! Then if it stayed firm in its place, soon may you see Me. But when his Lord manifested to the mountain, He crushed it to dust, and Moses fell into a swoon.''

      When Allah manifested a little of His Glorious Power to the huge mountain, it trembled and the stony top of it turned to dust and soil, and Moses (AS) fell down into a swoon. The ignorant Isralelites who wanted to see God with their eyes, were on watch at the foot of the mountain. When they heard the thunder and the trumpet blast, and saw the lightning and the smoking mountain, they trembled with fear and stood a long way off. (EXODUS 20: 18)

      This incident proved that even the reflected Glory of God is too great for the strongest and stoutest of the material objects to withstand in our world!

CAN WE EVER SEE GOD?

      Unfortunately the answer is; `NO'. No one can ever see God with a physical eye or a material sense of seeing. Observing an object involves having a material body in order to reflect rays of light to the eye, and there must be some physical medium between the seen and seeing. We know that God is far from all such material and physical phenomena, and therefore he can never be seen physically.

      Someone asked Hazrat Imam Ali (AS):

      ``Have you ever seen your Lord God!'' In answer to him Hazrat Ali said:

      ``I never worship a God that I may not see Him! Of course I see Him not with my material eyes and sense of sight; but I see him through the facts of FAITH''

      On this basis, men of God, do see their Lord, but not with their senses or eyes.

WHAT IS MEANT BY GOD'S MANIFESTATION?

      God did not manifest his very substance or Essence to the mountain; but He put in show a fraction of His Glorious and infinite power there. The mountain that was a bulk rigid, and therefore its stony peak on which the ray shone turned to powder, and Moses lost all his bodily senses and fell into a swoon. He was blinded by the shining splendour of God's Glory, and the Israelites beneath his foot escaped a long way off, for fear!