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We hope these studies have helped the reader to a clearer
conception of the newly created `New Man' of Ephesians 2:13-
16, which is stated to be a secret (Mystery) up to this point,
hidden from previous ages of time and generations of people
(Eph. 3:8,9; Col. 1:25,26), but now made known through Paul's
prison ministry.
Yet in Acts 26, Paul wrote that he had kept nothing back but
had revealed all that was known to him at that time, and one
searches in vain in his Acts period letters for the word `mystery'
or secret in connection with the church of that period. Nor do
we find it in the written ministry of the other writers of the New
Testament. We do find blessing of the Gentile believer with the
saved Jew, but this was never a secret, but clearly revealed
throughout the Old Testament, and the apostle declared that his
ministry up to that point was in harmony with this fact. If we do
not accept this, we make God's Word contradict itself, which is a
serious thing indeed.
Stuart Allen