• He encouraged them with immediate reward—safety from punishment, the enjoyment of wealth and children, and abundant provision for whoever believed—as well as with the deferred reward of the Hereafter.
• He warned them of the opposite fate.
• Like the other messengers, he showed remarkable patience in this task.
• He spoke to them with tenderness and compassion, choosing every word that could draw hearts and achieve the desired goal.
• He produced signs and laid out clear proofs.

• Among the lessons is that the very doubts hurled by the enemies of the messengers against their mission actually serve to refute the deniers. The statements they advanced—and they had nothing else—contain no trace of knowledge or reality in the sight of any rational person:
  • Take the words of Noah’s people: “We see you only as a man like ourselves, and we see that none follow you save the lowest among us in rash judgment. We do not see that you have any superiority over us; rather, we think you are liars” (Hud 27). Consider each clause and you will find them mere ploys, revealing that they were obstinate deniers of the truth.
  – Their claim, “We see you only as a man like ourselves” (Hud 27): does the fact that the truth is conveyed by a human being cast any real doubt on its being the truth?
  – The substance of their statement implies that every utterance coming from a human source must be false. This would undermine all human knowledge acquired from one another, for people possess no learning except what some derive from others, and it varies in level. The greatest, most truthful, and most beneficial of that knowledge is what humanity has received from the messengers, whose knowledge is grounded in divine revelation.