CRITIQUE OF THE DISPENSATIONALISTS’ SCRIPTURAL RATIONALE Dispensationalists cite several passages of the New Testament in which the word “mystery” (μυστήριον, mystērion) occurs in order to support their view that the Old Testament saints knew nothing about a suffering Messiah. They maintain that the rejection of the King and his suffering and death were biblical “mysteries,” that is, facts the knowledge of which God had kept “locked up in the secret councils of God” until he revealed them to men