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Of course, people cannot be forced to believe; they were, as they are today, free to reject or accept any and all proofs or explanations. But this fact did not cause the power of reason to be neglected in God's plan. After His ascension, Jesus' disciples continually and forcefully reasoned with both seekers and believers that He was indeed the Christ (77:2) Many souls were thus led to Christ and eventually responded to His Divinity through seeking to understand the meaning of scripture. The meaning, of course, had to be explained to these souls by the Christians - those who already believed in Him and had a proper understanding of the Holy Word. Many, who gained the gift of Faith through the scriptures, must have had initial misgivings about this "new faith". It seems that no one following a religion that they felt was the only true religion would take lightly someone essentially telling them: "Your Messiah has come. To understand how He has fulfilled all of the promises that you have been given, you need to believe the words of this new Book from God, for these words explain everything." (77:3) The Bible shows us that rejection is easy; so easy, in fact, that, if the Son of God Himself were to come down to earth and perform a miracle right before your eyes, you would be entirely free to reject Him. It is very easy: if you simply don't want to believe, you don't. And in the days following the ascension of Christ, when He was no longer visible to the eyes of men, how much easier still it was to reject Him! (77:4) In their labor of love, the early Christians had their work cut out for them in attempting to demonstrate through the scripture that Jesus was the Christ. Reason can attract and compel the mind to a certain extent, but only if the listener is reasonable (77:5) People at the time of Christ thought that certain particular scriptures referred to the coming Christ, and if their approach was to focus completely on their own interpretation of those scriptures, then any explanations given them by a Christian based on the New Testament might well have had no effect. For example, someone clinging to the vision that the Christ would be an earthly ruler, would have no interest in an explanation of why the Christ should suffer. Thus, in a dialogue between a Jewish person and a Christian person, if the Jewish person were to simply focus on his own knowledge, in the end he would be no closer to accepting Christ then when he started. Indifference to Christ's message, brought about by a self-centered approach to the scriptures, would seem to be quite a natural initial response. The chosen people know who they are, and feel secure regarding the meaning of their holy words. The last thing they would expect or welcome would be someone outside of their Faith claiming to have a new and divine explanation
(77:6)
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