To Encourage You

2 Thessalonians 2:7 “The mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way.”

In the verse above, Paul is talking to the Thessalonian church about the coming Day of the Lord.  This “Day” is one of the ways that the Bible refers to the second coming of Jesus.  Unlike His first coming, Jesus won’t come into the world as a helpless little baby the next time. He won’t come as One Who is “despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3).  No, this time, “the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God” (1 Thessalonians 4:16).  This time “the Lord Jesus (will be) revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might” (2 Thessalonians 1:7-9).  Indeed, it will be a terrifying time for those who don’t know Him. 

However, prior to the time He comes, Jesus has told us that there would be a time of “great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matthew 24:21).  It is during this time that someone that the Bible calls by such names as “the beast” (Revelation 13:1), “the son of destruction” (2 Thessalonians 2:3), and “the antichrist” (1 John 2:22) will come into power as the ruler of the world.  Another name he is called is “the man of lawlessness” and the time of his coming is referred to as the “mystery of lawlessness” in the verse above. 

A “mystery” in the Bible refers to something that is hidden and known only to God. It therefore must be revealed to us by God for us to understand it.  God has told us much about the “man of lawlessness” in His Word but He hasn’t told us exactly when He would arrive on the scene. In other words, the timing of his arrival, like the timing of Jesus’ second coming, is a mystery.  You see, although this man will be empowered by Satan and totally opposed to God in every way, God is still in total control of when that person comes into the world as the world’s ruler.  When he comes, he will declare himself to be God and any person who refuses to worship him as God will be beheaded (Revelation 20:4). It will be a terrifying time for the unbeliever, a literal hell on earth.  It will be a time when Satan, who will indwell the antichrist, will do all he can to bring death and destruction on the world that the God Whom he hates has created.  This destruction, this “mystery of lawlessness, is already at work in the world today,” as the verse above from 2 Thessalonians 2 says, but it will not be unveiled in its full terrifying and destructive force until “he who restrains it” takes that restraint away. 

So, Who is this One Who restrains the coming of the antichrist and the lawless and destructive time of tribulation that will come upon the world when he appears?  Obviously, it has to be someone Who is more powerful than Satan. Who could that be other than God himself, and most likely the third person of the trinity, the Holy Spirit?  Just as God restrained Satan in his testing of Job, God restrains the enemy of our souls today.  And why would He do this? Why not let this world which largely rejects God and His rule and thereby would will to rush pell-mell into its own destruction if allowed to fully go that way, do just that?  It can only be the great mercy of God that restrains the time of the end.  While people mock the Bible’s prophesies about the second coming and pay no mind to God’s warnings about the coming antichrist, God is longsuffering and He patiently waiting for His enemies to repent, turn from their sin to the One Who died to pay the penalty for that sin, and thus be saved.  But that mercy won’t last forever.  Just as we are told that “God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water” (1 Peter 3:20), so in our day “the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:14). 

So, what about you? Are you one who presumes on God’s mercy while the One Who restrains the man of lawlessness gives you time to repent?  If so, please know that such presumption is very unwise.  For as the Lord has told us in another place “Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). Yes, the time to repent is now, while there is still time, while the mystery of lawlessness, though already at work, is restrained from the appearing of its full-fledged horror in the end.