Can anyone see God the Father?

John 1:18 says no one has seen God at any time, and John 6:46 sharpens the point: no one has seen the Father except the one who is from God. That is a real challenge to claims of a mortal vision of the Father.

You grant the force of the texts, especially John 6:46, instead of reducing them to a vague statement about human weakness.

John only means people cannot understand God, so these verses have nothing to do with seeing.

That may be one dimension of “seeing,” but John 6:46 explicitly speaks of seeing the Father and distinguishes Jesus as the exception. You need to address that wording.

Exodus 24 says Moses, Aaron, and the elders saw the God of Israel. Exodus 33 later says Moses could not see God’s face and live, then describes God shielding him and showing his back. The passages distinguish kinds or degrees of encounter, though the text does not spell out a complete theory.

You hold both passages together and avoid pretending that Exodus itself explains every detail.

Exodus 24 is symbolic, so it does not count as anyone seeing God.

The text reports that they saw God and ate and drank. A symbolic reading is possible, but it needs argument rather than dismissal.

John 14:7–10 says that seeing Jesus is seeing the Father, and explains this through their unity and the Father’s works in Jesus. Acts 7:55–56 describes Stephen seeing God’s glory and Jesus beside God; LDS manuals identify this as a vision of the Father and the Son. These passages support a revelatory reading, but neither cancels John 6:46’s wording.

You use John 14 and Acts 7 as relevant context while preserving the unresolved force of John 6:46.

Acts 7 explicitly says Stephen saw the Father’s face, so John 6:46 cannot mean what it says.

Acts reports that Stephen saw God’s glory and Jesus at God’s right hand; it does not explicitly say he saw the Father’s face. Keep the claim within the text.

The Joseph Smith Translation changes John 1:18 into “No man hath seen God … except he hath borne record of the Son,” and D&C 67:11 says mortals see God when quickened by the Spirit. That explains the LDS scriptural framework, but a reader who does not accept the JST or Joseph Smith’s revelations will still need independent reasons to accept it.

You state the LDS interpretation plainly and distinguish an internal scriptural reconciliation from evidence that would persuade someone outside that framework.

The JST settles the matter for every Christian because it changes the verse.

The JST is authoritative within Latter-day Saint belief. Its authority is part of the disagreement, so presenting it as universally binding skips the central question.