Who Restrains the Man of Sin?
Dear Juli,
Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus and thanks for all the work you do in explaining amazing scriptural truths to us. God bless you richly. I have a question, however.
Romans 8:9 says that if anyone doesn't have the Spirit of Christ, he doesn't belong to Christ. This makes me wonder what will become of believers after the rapture for a paraphrase of 2 Thessalonians 2:6 is that the man of sin, the antichrist, is still withheld from the world. From the scripture, I think that He who restrains the activities of this man of sin is the Spirit of God. I think it is the Holy Spirit because only God is powerful enough to restrain evil from coming forth. Am I right?
If I am right in thinking that the Holy Spirit is the restrainer of this mystery, though, then it means that after He is removed from the earth, people will not be able to be saved after the rapture. It stands to reason, by that, that there won't be any hope for salvation during the Tribulation period. However, I am uncomfortable with this conclusion because I believe there will still be hope for man to turn towards God in repentance even after the church of Christ is gone.
Would you please kindly say something in clarity of this?
Thanks and regards,
Regina
Hello Regina,
Grace to you and thank you for the kind comments about the blog! (and wonderful comments you’ve left on some of the articles in the blog as well).