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We know that there were many different factors that led people to believe or disbelieve in Him. We know, for example, that some attained to the light of faith through Christ's healing powers, and some rejected Him because of fear of His influence. But here I would like to focus on our understanding of the role of prophecy (84:3) A perspective held by many Christians of the First Coming seems to be that the Jewish people were stubborn, spiritually blind, unduly attached to false interpretations, or for any number of other reasons, unable, or unwilling in any case, to understand the prophecies referring to Him. This inability or unwillingness to understand the prophecies in some measure accounts for their denial of Christ (84:4) 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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