In 2 Thessalonians 2 Paul makes the following provocative statement:

The reason this statement is provocative is because Paul unequivocally states that the one restraining will be taken out of the way before the lawless one (the man of sin, also known as the antichrist) is revealed—but he doesn’t specifically identify who the restrainer is. This has led to much conjecture.

Many who believe in a pre-tribulation rapture believe that “He” is the Holy Spirit; that when He is taken out of the way He is removed from the earth; and that because He is removed, the church has to be removed too. A variation on this argument is that “He” is actually the church which is doing the restraining, and that this verse is referring to it being removed (by being raptured).

An alternative belief that is popular with those of the pre-wrath persuasion is that the restrainer is Michael the archangel. This has more to recommend it than the suggestion that the restrainer is the Holy Spirit as Michael is actually shown warring against the spiritual forces of wickedness in Daniel 10:13 and Jude 9, whereas the Holy Spirit is a lot of things—comforter, helper, etc.—but never a restrainer.

The key to understanding exactly what Paul was teaching can be found in the text itself.

We’ll firstly note some translational issues. In the above verse the words translated “He” do not derive from personal pronouns. That the translators have used “He” in the translation is perhaps more reflective of their own beliefs. Also the words “taken out of the way” are not consistent with the original text as the Greek verb does not occur in the active voice. A more literal translation of that verse would be “that which now restrains will do so until it is gone out of the way”.

Verse 6 contains the clue that will help us identify what (not who) this restrainer is:

Some translations render this as “And you know what is restraining him now” (notice they’ve changed the location of the word “now”). That doesn’t appear to be the best translation of the Greek, but it doesn’t substantially alter the meaning. Either Paul had just revealed something new to them about the identity of the restrainer, for he says “and now you know”; or he had just reminded them of something he had told them previously (which is what verse 5 could be alluding to).

What had he just told them that they didn’t know before (or had forgotten) and that would occur prior to the man of sin being revealed? The answer is found in verse 3:

By saying “the falling away comes first” Paul is telling the Thessalonians that it is the end times apostasy of the church that has to take place before the man of sin can be revealed, thus that which is restraining him from being revealed must be the faithful church on earth, fulfilling the role her master gave her.

But it is not the rapture of the church that is going to occur before the man of sin is revealed—it is the falling away! The word falling away is from the Greek apostasia and means apostasy, or departure from the truth, which is how it’s used in Acts 21:21 in its only other New Testament occurrence. In particular, it cannot be referring to the rapture because both the falling away and the revealing of the man of sin must happen before the rapture, as the first three verses of that chapter show.

Once the falling away of the faithful church has taken place the restraining influence will be gone because the church will be gone (except for a remnant) due to it having apostatised. This suggests that most of those who call themselves followers of Christ now are going to reject Him at that future time and accept the antichrist as their messiah and saviour instead. This must be so because one cannot fall away from the truth unless one first has the truth. Yeshua alluded to as much when He said “when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8).

Not everyone is going to fall away, of course. God will always have a remnant who will remain faithful to Him. In the next article in this series we will take a look at what is going to happen to the faithful remnant at that time when we examine the male child of Revelation 12.