2 Thessalonians 2:6

And now ye know After this allusion: "now that yon call to mind what I used to say about the final struggle with the powers of evil, that will precede Christ's coming."

(ye know) what withholdeth Better, that which restraineth rendered "letteth" in 2 Thessalonians 2:7; only it is masculine there, denoting personal agency; here neuter, indicating a principle or power. The Thessalonians not only knew whatthe restraining influence was, they were acquainted with it; it lay within, the range of their experience. We have not therefore to look far a-field for this "restraint." A hint was sufficient, verbum sapientibus; more than a hint would have been dangerous.

that he might be revealed in his time The R. V. is more exact: to the end that he may be revealed in his own season. The unnamed subject is the dread personality whose form looms through this paragraph in ever-growing proportions.

With this ver. comp. 1 Timothy 6:14-15; where we read of "the appearing of the Lord Jesus, which in its own timesHe shall show, Who is the blessed and only Potentate" (comp. Acts 1:7). As Christ's advent has its proper season reserved for it, so has that of Antichrist. To this end the restraining power operates, holding back and setting bounds to human lawlessness, until the set time has come for its final outbreak and revelation.

This order of things belongs to God's purposes. If He allows moral evil to exist in His creatures (and its possibility seems to be inseparable from moral freedom), yet He knows how to control its activity, till the time shall come when its full manifestation will best subserve its overthrow and judgement. This "season" of the Man of Lawlessness, in whom the bad element in human nature gets at length full play, will be the last and worst of many such crises; chiefest of which was that of Luke 22:53: "This is your hour," said Jesus to His enemies, "and the power of darkness."