Page 233 - The Rapture Question by John F. Walvoord

The Rapture Question: Revised and Enlarged Edition
the Lord and its attendant tribulation cannot come until the
one who holds back or restrains sin is taken out of the way.
Posttribulationists generally are quite divided as to the
character of the one who is restraining or holding back evil.
Gundry presented a chart indicating the various views that
the restrainer is God, the Antichrist, or Satan, all views held
by posttribulationists.9 As Gundry went on to state, a popular
view is that the restrainer is the Roman Empire or government
itself.
Unlike his fellow posttribulationists, Gundry agreed that
the restrainer is the Holy Spirit, a view commonly held by
prctribulationists but incompatible with posttribulationism.
In support he offered evidence that this is an old view corrobo­
rated by the grammar and that the view is quite superior to
the alternative view that the restraint is provided by the re­
strainer himself, be it the Roman Empire, human government
today, or the Antichrist himself.
However, Gundry tried to part company with pretribu-
lationists, who generally identify the restrainer as the Holy
Spirit. He identified the Holy Spirit as in the church. This is
the point of view that is precisely held by prctribulationists
and is usually rejected by posttribulationists because it refutes
posttribulationism. Prctribulationists generally* hold that if the
Holy Spirit is removed from His present position indwelling
the church, then the church itself must also be removed, and
hence the Rapture must take place at the same time.
If this removal of the Holy Spirit in the church takes
place before the lawless one can be revealed, it points to an
event that must precede the Tribulation. In a word, it is stat­
ing that the Rapture precedes the Tribulation. It is most
strange and contradictory that Gundry continued to hold to
posttribulationism while embracing the pretribulational in­
terpretation of the removal of the Holy Spirit in the church.
In his discussion, Gundry attempted to define his posi­
tion as supporting rather than contradicting posttribu-
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