"Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews:

             "And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures,

             "Opening and alleging, that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ."

Paul would take the Old Testament and reason with the Jews and the Gentiles in their synagogues "out of the scriptures" and show them the promises that pertained unto them at that time.  So it was that later when Paul went into the synagogue of the Jews at Berea the Bible says the following.

             "These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so" (Acts 17:11).

Certainly, the scriptures that the Bereans searched daily back then to see if Paul was telling them the truth were the Old Testament scriptures, which they then had at their disclosure.     

But there is more!  Just as the gospel of Christ itself was a mystery hid back in the Old Testament prophets' writings there was also a mystery associated with that mystery.  It was not a mystery hid in the scriptures of the prophets but it was a mystery "hid in God" (Eph. 3:9), which the Bible calls the "mystery OF the gospel" (Eph. 6:19).  No Old Testament saint or prophet would've ever even thought of dreaming about it.  It was no where to be found in the "scriptures of the prophets" to be searched out later!  On the next page of this publication, we shall examine what Paul calls "the mystery of the gospel."