II Thessalonians 2:7-8 tells us something is currently restraining the Son of Apoleia and that's why the Abomination of Desolation hasn't happened yet and in turn the Parusia and Rapture can't happen till after that. The use of the word "he" in translations is misleading, it's not necessarily any person doing the restraining, but you could in my view say the "restrainer" is the Fifth Trumpet Angel if you wanted to.
Revelation 11:7 and 17:8 both tell us that at least one of the Beasts ascends out of the Bottomless Pit aka the Abyss aka the Great Deep. At the beginning of Revelation Chapter 9 the Abyss is locked but after the Fifth Trumpet is sounded it is opened and entities in that Abyss begin to leave. Revelation 20 further tells us that in the future this is where Satan will be restrained for a Thousand years.
This argument is not dependent on identifying either Beast with any specific personage in Revelation 9, the facts I just laid out should be enough to make it obvious. None the less I feel a strong argument can be made for Apollyon being the Son of Apoleia.
It annoys me that this simple answer to the Restrainer mystery is so rarely what Prophecy teachers argue for. The Early Church Writers tended to think the Restrainer was Rome for some reason, today most Pre-Tribbers say it's the Holy Spirit to try and make this obviously Pre-Trib destroying passage compatible. And the "Pre-Wrath" view of Chris White tends to say it's Michael doing what he does in Revelation 12 and Daniel 12 even though that makes no grammatical sense at all, not to mention how it makes no Chronological sense in the context of Pre-Wrath, that makes more sense as a Midway Point argument.
In his most recent Podcast while addressing Pre-Tribbers Chris White says that Matthew 24:38's description of people "eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage" makes no sense in a context where any of the Trumpets have already happened but specifically singled out the Fifth. He makes a similar argument about the "peace and safety" from I Thessalonians 5:3.
The problem with that argument is Revelation 11:10. I view that verse of Matthew 24 as that same three and a half day period, same with the "peace and safety" verse. Doesn't matter how much bad apocalyptic stuff had already happened, people think it's over now. And I still think the End Times deception will be partly based on people thinking the first half of the 7 year period is the second half.
If you think "as the days of Noah were" must mean nothing catastrophic had happened yet, I direct you to this post where I discus overlooked details of Genesis 6.
https://midseventiethweekrapture.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-flood-did-not-destroy-earth-it.html
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