2 Thessalonians 2:7
2 Thessalonians 2:77For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, but the one who now restrains it will continue until he is taken out of the way.
The Watchtower reads ("the mystery of this lawlessness is already at work") alongside ("even now there have come to be many antichrists") to build a present-only, plural-only view of antichrist. There is no future singular figure; the "lawless one" is a pattern already being fulfilled in "Christendom" — the great apostasy that corrupted the church after the apostles died.
Read the passage whole. Verse 7 says the mystery of lawlessness is already at work — present tense, continuous. Verse 8 then says "then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will do away with by the spirit of his mouth and bring to nothing by the manifestation of his presence" — future tense, singular, destroyed by Christ's bodily return. Paul holds both/and: present plural/general lawlessness AND a future singular climactic figure. This is exactly the both/and John holds in : "antichrist is coming, even now there have come to be many antichrists."
Irenaeus (Against Heresies 5.25, c. AD 180) and Hippolytus (On Christ and Antichrist, c. AD 200) both read the apostolic witness this way — within living memory of John's disciples. Every historic Protestant scheme — amillennial, postmillennial, historic premillennial — holds the both/and. The Watchtower's "plural only" reading flattens what Paul and John actually wrote, and it does so to avoid having to explain how the "lawless one" is destroyed by Christ's visible bodily return (verse 8) — which contradicts the 1914 invisible- parousia doctrine.