The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.John 3:8
Don’t forget the shekinah glory that sat between the two angels on the ark of the covenant. I don’t deny the spirit is a part of us. The question was...what was the restrainer before the coming of the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is certainly its own entity separate from us as well as a part of us! God is a spirit and in him we live and move and have our being!
Do you see what I’m asking. Something was holding back Satan’s plans even before the coming of Christ then the Spirit after he went back to Heaven. As I’ve stated, the restrainer could very well be the Holy spirit then Christians as he became more resident in our hearts. But remember, the Holy Spirit couldn’t come until Christ went back to heaven. The Restrainer must still have been in operation from the time after Noah’s flood, perhaps from Babel when God had to go down to confuse our speech to keep us fools from quickly developing the means to destroy ourselves by provoking God to wrath! It might have been the Holy Spirit, though not in the embedded corporate Church form you are advocating Alamo Girl. I think that, because of the initial effect of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples when he came....they were noted speaking in different languages praising the great things of God. (kind of a reverse Babel effect). If God could confuse human speech, he can also act to give us a pure speech as the OT says he will again!
So is the Restrainer a special function by some spiritual entity we know nothing about, or is it the mass effect of the Spirit filled believers on the face of the Earth? We speculate but the Bible really gives no clear direct answer.
If the restrainer is something different from the mass effect of spirit filled believers on the earth, than the restrainer could be removed but the Holy Spirit would still be resident with the church to help her in her hour of trial...the mother with child being pursued by the dragon as stated in Revelation comes to mind.
Emotionally and spiritually my hope would be with the notion that the Restrainer is the corporate spirit filled body of believers that get removed when the restrainer gets removed. Reading the Matthew passages and Revelation and Thessalonians passages, I can find no direct explanation what the restrainer is. It must have been in operation from the flood or Satan would have completed his plans long before our “present times and in the times before Christ, when there was no church or spirit filled church body.
Now I do believe in the Church in the sense that I believe its effects are eternal forward and backward in time,(having believers predestinated from the founding of the world) inclusive of all believers in God living and dead(though alive with God)who ever existed, intra-dimensionally influential as the gaits of Hell should not prevail against it. In that case The restrainer would be most certainly the Holy Spirit filled church operating across time and dimension...Restraining Satan from Babel right unto the present day. Remove it and it’s Katie bar the door.
So I’m not anti Church as Restrainer. I’ll cop to cowardice, I certainly don’t want to have to go thru any of the stuff Revelation talks about. Yet, in my integrity I admit to having problems with the doctrine of pre trib and Church as restrainer as the Bible doesn’t fully explain what the Restrainer is. We certainly know what it does!
So don’t hate me Alamo Girl, I respect you a lot! (And MHG too!)