2 Thessalonians 2:6 “And you know what restrains him now, so that in his time he may be revealed. 7For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. 8And then that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end, by the appearance of His coming”.
There are a lot of different thoughts on who the “restrainer” is. For me, the bottom line is that whoever he is, God controls him, God controls the restraining. We can see examples of this in the Bible.
In the case of Job, God restrained the devil by putting a hedge of protection around Job. When God and the devil discussed Job, God told the devil that you may touch all that he has, but you cannot touch Job, again God restrained the devil. The next discussion they had, God told the devil you can touch his body, but he had to “spare his life”. Again, restraint.
In the case of Jesus, there was a time when the crowd was going to throw Jesus off a cliff, but he miraculously passed thru the crowd, it was not his time yet. God restrained the evil. Yet when he was standing before Pontius Pilate, Pilate told him, ““Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?” Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above”. As in the case of Job, God restrained the evil crowd but did not restrain the evil of Pilate. God is in control of all things. He “sets the boundaries for the seas”.
In Romans 1, God them over to a depraved mind, and they became filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful. They invent new forms of evil; they disobey their parents. They are senseless, faithless, heartless, merciless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things are worthy of death, they not only continue to do these things, but also approve of those who practice them. The restraining hand of God was removed, and God gave them over to a depraved mind.
I see this happening in our nation, God’s hand of restraint is being removed in all areas of our society. All you have to do is read the news, whether a newspaper or the internet. The morals in our nation are fading fast. The church itself is becoming powerless and becoming more conformed to this world. May we seek God for guidance, that we may be able to stand in these evil days, and be separate from this world, holy unto Him. Lord help us, we ask for Your mercy.
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