To be certain that the brother of Jared understands who it is standing before him, Jehovah declares that he is the very God “who was prepared from the foundation of the world to redeem my people.” That is, the God who stated that the brother of Jared was redeemed from the fall was the very one, and the only one, who could make that declaration.
Verse 15 has an interesting statement that God had not shown himself to any man prior to this time. Nevertheless, Exodus 33:11 says that Moses spoke with God “face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.” In 1 Kings 11:9 we are told “And the Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart was turned from the Lord God of Israel, which had appeared unto him twice.” Even Isaiah says: “Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (Isaiah 6:5).
The difference between the brother of Jared’s experience and these experiences of other prophets is that all of them understood that they were in the presence of God, but knowing that they were in His presence did not mean that they viewed the form of God.
Moses spoke with God face to face, but so did the brother of Jared in his conversations prior to the vision of the finger. The Isaiah passage comes in a poetic description that shows the majesty of God filling a temple. It was a statement of presence, not a vision of the premortal form.
Thus, while others had similarly been in God’s presence, and had similarly conversed with God, it was the revelation of the premortal body that was unusual. However, that raises the second question. In the New Testament we find: “No man hath seen God at any time” (1 John 4:12). Joseph Smith provided the clarification that explains that seeming contradiction: “For no man has seen God at any time in the flesh, except quickened by the Spirit of God” (Doctrine and Covenants 67:11).