‘And now you know that which restrains, to the end that he might be revealed in his own season. For the mystery of lawlessness already works, only there is one who restrains who will be taken out of the way.'
What could restrain the man of sin and hold back the Anti-god? Revelation 20:2 depicts the idea as God's chain in the hands of an angel, restraining the one who is behind the man of sin. In other words in the final analysis the restrainer is God by whatever means He uses. This ties in also with the picture of the restraint in the Abyss of one who is probably Satan's man of his right hand (Revelation 17:8; Revelation 9:1; Revelation 9:11 compare Revelation 20:7). Thus the one behind the man of sin, the son of ‘destruction' (apoleias), may be identified with ‘the Destroyer' (Apollyon - Revelation 9:11), the king of the Abyss who is restrained there until released by the angel. These are all, of course, pictures of spiritual reality. None of these have literal bodies.
So the man of sin will be restrained, because his mentor is restrained, until his time comes, his own season, when he will be ‘revealed' (known as what he is), and the ‘ten rulers' will have their power ‘for one hour' (a short time) under ‘the Wild Beast', that is the one who lives again and behaves like a wild beast (Revelation 17:12). All will be restrained until God's time comes.
The fact that the restraint is by the chain and the angel, can include all measures of restraint used by God. The chain is not literal for it chains a spiritual being. It does not preclude other possibilities, the earthly links of the heavenly chain. Thus it may include Roman justice, which has continued as a restraining influence long after Rome had ceased, and still affects international Law today, and it may include the moral laws of the Old Testament, and ‘the ten commandments', still held in outward approval by mankind, and it may include the church which for all its faults has proved a restraining influence on sin. These are three of the restraints put in place by God. But, as Jesus Himself revealed, in the end God is the One behind all the restraint of whatever kind it is, using His various links of chain, for Satan can only do what God allows (Luke 22:31).
All claims that the Holy Spirit is uniquely intended by the restrainer, Who is then removed, must be viewed with suspicion. If he meant the Holy Spirit why did he not say so? We can understand why he might refer indirectly to mysterious angelic power, for it would increase the mystery, we can understand why he might refer indirectly to the removal of law, for that might be seen as treason. But if he meant that the Holy Spirit was to be taken out of the way, with all its consequences, it was such a revolutionary idea that it would surely have been spelt out, not leaving in the dark those who had not heard Paul's first teaching.
Indeed the idea that people of God could function without the Holy Spirit is unscriptural. The ‘coming of the Holy Spirit' was not something totally new, it was the giving to the many what had only been experienced by the few. All through history the Holy Spirit (or ‘Spirit of God') was at work, both on behalf of God's people (Isaiah 63:9-11; Isaiah 63:14; Isaiah 59:21; Haggai 2:5; Zechariah 4:6) and in their inner lives (Psalms 51:10-12; Psalms 139:7; Psalms 143:10; Ezekiel 18:31-32 with Ezekiel 36:26; Ezekiel 37:14). The Holy Spirit absent from God's people is a contradiction in terms. Without Him there would be no God's people. Any more than they could function without the grace of God. And His working is always within. While prepositions may help us to appreciate more of the work of the Spirit, we see little future in teaching which seeks to differentiate ‘with' (or any other preposition) from ‘in' as though He could be with and not in. John 14:17 means that both are true not that one can be had without the other. God works both with and within.
But note that the principle of lawlessness, once hidden but now revealed, was even then at work while Paul was writing. The restraint was being stretched by man's sin. Man's rebellion against God has continued since then, chafing against all restraints, inspired by the one who will in the end control the man of sin, but can only work surreptitiously until the release of ‘the Wild Beast' is finally permitted, to inspire the man of sin. As we have suggested the one who restrains is either the angel or God Himself.
This coming of the man of sin is the evidence that things will get worse before Christ's coming. And yet in some ways he will be but a reproduction of all who have gone before, the wild beast of Revelation 13, the Roman Empire of the divine emperors and all that followed, although more of a force for evil. Whether we will easily recognise him is another question, for he may not openly reveal his lawlessness against God. Lawless man may welcome him and he may seem to offer what man is looking for. But those with spiritual insight will know him, and will beware.
It is probable that this one who is pictured as the man of sin is a man possessed by Satan or by one of his chief minions (the Wild Beast from the Abyss), thus he will have influence over evil forces granted to him by the one who possesses him (Revelation 9:3-10), forces which are invisible but effective. The descriptions of these forces are not to be taken literally. They picture what they can achieve. Thus the end days will experience more of the evil of the occult. But they cannot touch those who are Christ's (Revelation 9:4).