2 Thessalonians 2:6

_ _ now ye know — by my having told you. The power must have been one “known” to the Thessalonians.

_ _ what withholdeth — that which holds him back; “keeps him in check”: the power that has restrained the man of sin from his full and final development, is the moral and conservative influence of political states [Olshausen]: the fabric of human polity as a coercive power; as “he who now letteth” refers to those who rule that polity by which the great upbursting of godlessness is kept down [Alford]. The “what withholdeth” refers to the general hindrance; “he who now letteth,” to the person in whom that hindrance is summed up. Romanism, as a forerunner of Antichrist, was thus kept in check by the Roman emperor (the then representative of the coercive power) until Constantine, having removed the seat of empire to Constantinople, the Roman bishop by degrees first raised himself to precedency, then to primacy, and then to sole empire above the secular power. The historical fact from which Paul starts in his prediction was probably the emperor Claudius’ expulsion of the Jews, the representative of the anti-Christian adversary in Paul’s day, from Rome, thus “withholding” them in some degree in their attacks on Christianity; this suggested the principle holding good to the end of time, and about to find its final fulfillment in the removal of the withholding person or authority, whereupon Antichrist in his worst shape shall start up.

_ _ that he might be — Greek, “in order that”: ye know that which keeps him back, in God’s purposes, from being sooner manifested, “in order that he may be revealed in his own time” (that is, the time appointed by God to him as his proper time for being manifested), not sooner (compare Daniel 11:35). The removal of the withholding power will be when the civil polity, derived from the Roman empire, which is to be, in its last form, divided into ten kingdoms (Revelation 17:3, Revelation 17:11-13), shall, with its leading representative head for the time being (“he who now letteth,” Greek, “withholdeth,” as in 2 Thessalonians 2:6), yield to the prevalent godless “lawlessness” with “the lawless one” as its embodiment. The elect Church and the Spirit cannot well be, as Deuteronomy Burgh suggests, the withholding power meant; for both shall never be wholly “taken out of the way” (Matthew 28:20). However, the testimony of the elect Church, and the Spirit in her, are the great hindrance to the rise of the apostasy; and it is possible that, though the Lord shall have a faithful few even then, yet the full energy of the Spirit in the visible Church, counteracting the energy or “working” of “the mystery of lawlessness” by the testimony of the elect, shall have been so far “taken out of the way,” or set aside, as to admit the manifestation of “the lawless one”; and so Deuteronomy Burgh’s’s view may be right (Luke 18:8; Revelation 11:3-12). This was a power of which the Thessalonians might easily “know” through Paul’s instruction.