After again praising the brother of Jared’s great faith, Yahweh declares: “Ye are created after mine own image.” The reference to creation alludes to the Genesis story: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Gen. 1:27).
The earlier part of verse 15 has generated considerable discussion. Kent P. Jackson, professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University, defines the “problem”:
Ether 3:15a contains a statement from the Lord that sets the brother of Jared apart from everyone who had lived on earth up to his time: “Never have I showed myself unto man whom I have created, for never has man believed in me as thou hast.” The uniqueness of Mahonri Moriancumer’s faith justified the uniqueness of the Lord’s revelation to him. Never, the Lord told him, had anyone experienced such a manifestation—a statement made even more remarkable when we consider that such great individuals as Adam, Eve, Enoch, and Noah had preceded the brother of Jared, and each of these, according to the scriptures, had conversed with God.…
Whatever the first clause of verse 15 means, it is clear that there was something extraordinary about this appearance of the Lord to the brother of Jared. Yet we know from the scriptures that others had in fact seen God. Adam and Eve conversed with the Lord in “the presence of the Lord God” while in the Garden of Eden (Moses 4:14–27). Adam and many others saw him in a great meeting not long before Adam’s death (D&C 107:53–54). Enoch “saw the Lord” and spoke with him “even as a man talketh one with another, face to face” (Moses 7:4), and Noah and his sons “walked with God” (Moses 8:27). Our problem, then, is to determine the meaning of the Lord’s statement to the brother of Jared in light of what we know of these other pre-Jaredite theophanies.
Jackson quotes Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie’s solution that the brother of Jared’s full vision of God’s person differed from the experience of other prophets and also references Sidney B. Sperry’s suggestion that “man” might be interpreted as “unbelieving man.” Daniel H. Ludlow emphasized the extent of the brother of Jared’s faith; “he could not be kept from within the veil”—suggesting that others had been kept outside.
None of these explanations seems to fully fit the details as we have them. Most scholars place the Exodus around 1250 B.C., and I am using 1100 B.C. as the date for the Jaredite exodus. Thus, not only does Adam’s experience of walking with God in the garden precede the brother of Jared’s vision, but so did Moses’s vision. As Jackson notes, this verse cannot mean that no one earlier had seen God, since such views appear in the scriptural record. I believe that the answer lies in the very phrase that causes the concern. Yahweh explains himself: “And never have I showed myself unto man whom I have created, for never has man believed in me as thou hast.” Yahweh’s statement about showing himself is directly related to the brother of Jared’s faith. In the context of this story, when Yahweh remarks on and approves that faith, it leads to a particular revelation, not of person, but of mission. There are two aspects of the brother of Jared’s vision that differ from other recorded descriptions of the vision of God. The first is that there is an emphasis on the appearance of humanness (“as the finger of man”) and on the meaning of that humanness: “I show myself unto you. Behold, I am he who was prepared from the foundation of the world to redeem my people. Behold, I am [Messiah]” (vv. 14–15).
What faith revealed was not the presence or the form. Other prophets had received both of those revelations before. It was the clear indication of God’s condescension, which would achieve its fullest measure with Yahweh’s incarnation as the Atoning Messiah. It is that explicit revelation of God’s literal condescension that had not been clearly revealed before this time. In this reading, I agree with Jackson:
The uniqueness of this situation lies in the fact that Jehovah appeared to Mahonri Moriancumer in his role as Jesus Christ—rather than as the Father. Never before, as far as we can tell from the scriptures, had Jesus Christ shown himself unto man (and, interestingly, nowhere else in the scriptures do we have a clear example of Jehovah appearing as Jesus until his coming in the flesh). As Moroni reported, “Having this perfect knowledge of God, he could not be kept from within the veil; therefore he saw Jesus” (Ether 3:20). To the brother of Jared, Christ revealed his complete nature: God who would become Man—Jehovah, the Father, who would become Jesus, the Son.
Perhaps the unprecedented nature of this appearance is a reason why the Lord commanded that the account not be made known in the world until after his mortal ministry (Ether 3:21).
This experience should not be read as a difference between appearances of God the Father (identified as Elohim in LDS literature) and Yahweh. It is not that Yahweh appeared where other manifestations were Elohim. Yahweh was the God of Israel and the one with whom they interacted. This revelation was, again, not of form, but of mission. The new element in this experience was the explicit revelation of Yahweh’s coming incarnation as the mortal Messiah—hence, the emphasis on his body.