What role does the Holy Spirit play in the end times?

Question 10053.

The Holy Spirit is deeply and actively at work all through the end times, restraining evil, drawing sinners to Christ, and empowering bold witness right up to the return of the King. People often imagine that Bible prophecy is really all about the Antichrist and the beast and the various judgements, and so they forget to ask the far better question of what the Holy Spirit Himself is doing while all these things unfold. Yet the whole end-time drama simply cannot be understood at all without Him, because it is the Spirit who holds back the very worst, who saves the great multitudes, and who sustains the faithful through even the darkest of hours.

I want to trace the work of the Spirit across the entire prophetic timeline, before the coming tribulation, all the way through it, and on into the kingdom that follows after it. What steadily emerges from that survey is a picture of a Spirit who never once withdraws His care from the world, even in the midst of judgement. The Holy Spirit is no mere bystander in the end times but one of the chief actors in the whole account, and seeing that clearly both corrects our fears and greatly deepens our worship of Him.

The Holy Spirit as the restrainer

One of the most important of all the end-time works of the Spirit is His steady restraining of evil in the world. In 2 Thessalonians 2 Paul explains that the man of lawlessness simply cannot be revealed until what now restrains him is finally taken out of the way. I understand that restrainer to be the Holy Spirit Himself, working powerfully through the Church, holding back the full and terrible flood of human wickedness so that the Antichrist cannot yet appear before his appointed time. As long as the Spirit-filled Church remains here on the earth, evil is kept firmly within bounds, and the beast is held back off the stage of history.

This means that the removal of the restrainer is closely tied to the rapture, when the Church is caught up and the particular restraining ministry of the Spirit through her is at last withdrawn, as I explain in my study of what the rapture is. I do not for a moment take this to mean that the Holy Spirit leaves the earth altogether, for He is fully God and therefore everywhere present at all times. Rather, His particular restraining work through the Church is lifted away, and the lawlessness that had long been held back is finally let loose upon the world in the tribulation that follows.

The Holy Spirit and salvation in the tribulation

Some wrongly conclude from all this that the Holy Spirit is somehow entirely absent during the tribulation, but that simply cannot be right, since no one anywhere is ever saved apart from His gracious work. All the way through the tribulation the Spirit continues to convict sinners of their sin, to regenerate dead hearts, and to bring men and women to living faith in the Lamb, exactly as He faithfully does in our own day. The vast, uncountable multitude saved out of the tribulation in Revelation 7 is entirely His harvest, gathered in by the same Spirit, the pneuma, who draws sinners to Christ in every age. I explore that great harvest in my study of tribulation salvation.

All of this fits the ancient prophetic pattern perfectly. Joel long ago prophesied that God would one day pour out His Spirit upon all flesh, with sons and daughters prophesying, in the great and coming day of the LORD, and while that promise was truly inaugurated at Pentecost it reaches its very fullest scope only in the end. The Holy Spirit does not abandon even a rebellious world to its judgement without a witness. Even as the bowls of wrath are being poured out, He Himself is poured out too, sealing the 144,000 servants and empowering their bold and fearless testimony to the watching nations.

The Holy Spirit and the witness of the tribulation

The end-time witnesses do all their costly work in the power of the Holy Spirit, and never in their own frail strength. The 144,000 sealed servants of God, the two witnesses prophesying in Jerusalem, and the countless converts drawn from every nation all bear their testimony under fierce and murderous persecution, and such astonishing courage is plainly the fruit of the Spirit at work in them, and not of mere human nerve or bravado. Jesus Himself promised that the Spirit would convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgement, as John 16:8 records for us, and that convicting ministry does not cease at all in the tribulation but only intensifies as the end draws near.

I find this truth genuinely and deeply reassuring whenever I dwell upon it. The gospel will most certainly not fall silent when the Church is gone from the earth, because the Holy Spirit will raise up whole new companies of voices and give them holy boldness even in the very face of the beast himself. The same Spirit who filled the trembling apostles at Pentecost will fill the martyrs of the tribulation, so that they overcome the enemy by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, loving not their own lives even unto death. The Holy Spirit Himself guarantees that the light of truth keeps shining brightly in the darkest of all nights.

The Holy Spirit and the return of Christ

The Holy Spirit also actively stirs up within the church the deep longing for the return of Christ. In Revelation 22:17 it is the Spirit and the Bride together who cry out, come, voicing the very deepest longing of the whole church for her Lord’s appearing in glory. That aching yearning we feel for the coming kingdom is not simply our own private emotion bubbling up, but is genuinely His own work within us, gently aligning our restless hearts with the settled purposes of God Himself. He patiently teaches us to pray, in effect, for the very end that He Himself is even now steadily bringing to pass in the world.

And when the King at last returns and establishes His long-promised kingdom, the work of the Spirit reaches an altogether new fullness and glory. The prophets foresaw a coming age when the Spirit would be poured out abundantly upon a restored and believing Israel, when a new heart and a new spirit would be freely given to the nation, and when the knowledge of God would cover the whole earth. The end-time work of the Holy Spirit does not stop short at judgement but flows on gloriously into the deep blessing of the millennium, so that the whole coming kingdom is saturated through and through with the presence of God.

The Holy Spirit and the believer now

All of this profoundly shapes the way I actually live in the present, waiting patiently for these great things to come. The very same Spirit who will one day sustain the tribulation saints already indwells me right now, today, and He is my seal and my guarantee, the down payment of the whole inheritance yet to come. If He is fully able to hold those martyrs firm and unshaken before the beast, then He is surely more than able to hold me firm before the far smaller pressures and temptations of my own comfortable day. The end-time ministry of the Spirit is a living pledge to me of His present all-sufficiency in my life.

So I most certainly do not face the unknown future as a helpless orphan left all alone. The very Holy Spirit who restrains evil, saves lost sinners, empowers bold witness, and stirs up the longing for Christ is the very same Spirit who is living within me at this moment. That single truth turns the whole study of prophecy from a source of nagging dread into a deep well of settled confidence. Whatever finally comes upon the world, I am never once left to face it in my own strength, for the Comforter whom Jesus promised is truly with me and has sworn that He will never leave me nor forsake me.

So, now what?

If it really is the Spirit who alone draws sinners to Christ, then your very ability to respond to the gospel at all today is itself entirely His gracious work already going on inside you. So do not resist Him or push Him away. The very same Spirit who will one day strive with a rebellious world all through the tribulation is patiently striving with your own heart right now, gently and persistently, urging you to come to the Saviour before that far harder day ever arrives upon the earth.

And if you already belong to Jesus, then live full to the brim of the Spirit who lives in you, letting Him fill you again and again for fresh witness and for daily holiness. The end-time church ought to be the most Spirit-dependent church of all the ages, watching eagerly for her Lord and pleading tenderly with a lost world to be reconciled to God while there is still time. Are you truly keeping in step with the Spirit this morning as you wait for the coming King?

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth.

John 14:16-17 (ESV)