A Restrainer That Can't Be Both Removed and Still Working

The majority dispensationalist identification of the restrainer in 2 Thessalonians 2:6–7 is under real strain on its own terms: if the Holy Spirit is removed with the church, the tribulation is hard to square with the way Revelation says it looks. The majority answer is the Holy Spirit, specifically as he indwells the church, so the rapture's removal of the church explains the restrainer's removal. Civil government and the archangel Michael are minority proposals inside the tradition, and the mainstream holds its answer with real consensus.⁵⁸ The test is whether that answer is complete.

Two problems follow. The first is scope. If what is removed is the Spirit's restraining presence in the church, his wider restraining work in the world (common grace, conscience, the restraint of evil in rulers described in Romans 13:1, "there is no authority except by God's appointment, and the authorities that exist have been instituted by God") should lapse with it, since the text names one restrainer, not two. But Revelation's tribulation narrative has governments, economies, and organized society functioning throughout, not the total collapse of restraint a fully withdrawn Spirit would predict.

The second is the converts. Revelation 7:14 describes a multitude: "These are the ones who have come out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb!" The new birth is by the Spirit: "unless a person is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God" (John 3:5). The standard answer is that the Spirit stays present in the tribulation as he was in the Old Testament, working without indwelling the church. That answer concedes the Spirit himself is not removed, and says what leaves is his church-indwelling ministry. That is a coherent reply. It still has to say why the text's one restrainer is that ministry and not the Spirit's work in the world generally, and why the restraint of rulers and societies described above does not lapse with it. This essay leaves those questions open, not refuted, and holds the argument at that strength.