Consider when God appears to people in dreams. It is really Him. He may look clearly like God. He says the words of God. But is God ever seen? God has a way of appearing without it being the kind of appearing He told Moses could kill someone "you cannot see my face and live". I reckon it must be a kind of avatar thing. I wonder if that is what the 'Angel of God' means. Like at Jesus' baptism - Peter said it was the Angel of God which spoke such that it sounded to many like thunder. Yet it was God speaking God's words. Clearly when you awake from seeing God in a dream like Ananias did who was sent to Saul of Tarsus (Paul), you know God exists outside the dream and the dream is an instrument like a TV broadcast to let you hear God but God does outside the dream what He says in the dream - He is real. So it IS God but not such that we could die. Maybe this can happen physically in form like a human and maybe that happened to Jacob. Jacob wrestled with a man all night and then found he had been wrestling with God. It does happen. I reckon Jesus is always involved but it is not necessarily Jesus who is seen.
