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If we consider carefully, however, we see that there is a problem with this perspective, namely, that the prophecies could not be, and indeed were not understood, by anyone before fulfillment and recognition. If misinterpretation of prophecy were a cause of the rejection of Christ, then no one would have accepted Him because it appears that everyone misunderstood the prophecies before the time (1) that Christ actually fulfilled them, and (2) His followers recognized Him as the Messiah (84:5) When Christians hold to the perspective that the inability or unwillingness of Jewish people to understand the prophecies accounts in considerable measure for their denial of Christ, they are asserting the possibility, and even more strongly, the probability that prophecies could indeed have been understood before fulfillment. This, in turn, provides the added benefit, of course, that people in this day, can then be presumed to understand prophecies about the Second Coming of Christ. Thus, Christians can feel assured that their prevailing and contemporary interpretations of the Second Coming of Christ are correct. To admit that at the First Coming the prophecies could not be understood before fulfillment and recognition would lead, almost inevitably, to the unsettling realization that current interpretations of the prophecies referring to the Second Coming could also be subject to error
(84:6)
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