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word used in the original is sigał, and occurs nine times in the
New Testament. One of these occurrences is in Luke 9, where
the disciples had heard the voice speaking out of the cloud
saying: `This is My beloved Son; hear Him'. Immediately after
this we read:
`And when the voice was past, Jesus was found alone. And they kept it
close, and told no man in those days any of those things which they had
seen' (Luke 9:36).
Again, in Luke 20, after the Lord had answered the question
put to Him regarding the lawfulness of giving tribute to Caesar,
we read:
`And they could not take hold of His words before the people: and they
marvelled at His answer, and held their peace' (Luke 20:26).
The remaining occurrences are Acts 12:17; 15:12,13; Romans
16:25; 1 Corinthians 14:28,30 and 34. There is no suggestion in
any of these passages of `keeping a secret', but rather the
consistent idea of keeping something quiet.
Returning to Romans 16, we observe that this act of `silencing'
is said to have taken place `in aionion times', whereas the
mystery of Ephesians is related to a period `before the overthrow
of the world' (Eph. 1:4), or `before aionion times' (2 Tim. 1:9).
The mystery of Romans 16 cannot, therefore, be the mystery of
Ephesians 3 or Colossians 1. Moreover, this mystery, which
was silenced in age times, was made manifest by the apostle
Paul and `by the Scriptures of the prophets'. It has been
suggested that these `Scriptures of the prophets' are not the Old
Testament prophecies, but the `prophetic writings' of the New
Testament, either the epistles of Paul himself, or the writings of
those who had the gift of prophecy in the early church. So far as