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At Christ's First Coming, belief or non-belief in Him was left to the individual's choice. It was not easy to recognize Him. If it had been easy, if God, in whatever way He chose, made all people recognize Jesus as the Christ, how would Christ have fulfilled His mission of Teaching people of their own free will to accept and practice His message of Salvation? Were all the people of Christ's time deserving of the great honor of recognizing and following Him without any exertion of will or effort on their part? This does not seem likely, just, or even possible given that God has endowed us with a free will to choose. However, neither was it impossible at the time of Christ to recognize Him. If God had placed insurmountable obstacles between Christ and the people of His time, how could the sincere soul have fulfilled its purpose and destiny? (64:4) For the seeker of Christ, there was a divine balance between these two extremes. For every compelling sign pointing the way to the Christ, there were things to cause doubt: "When Christ cometh, will he do more miracles than these which this man hath done?" .. but .. "when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils" . And for every promise of eternal happiness and joy at accepting the Christ, there was also the threat of pain and suffering: "Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven" .. but .. "Then shall they deliver you up, to be afflicted, and shall kill you" (64:5) To believe in Christ was a question of faith, which one had to resolve for oneself. There was no simple formula that one could have followed. Each individual had their own tests of faith that they had to overcome in order to accept Him. For some, their test may have been His suffering and seeming helplessness, for others His call to self-sacrifice, and for still others, fear of persecution. You could not simply have opened up the Scriptures to see if Jesus were the Christ. The answers were there, of course, but were not understood
(64:6)
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