I am in full-blown dispensational circles these days. I generally agree with the normal dispensational theory, except to say that I am not 100% sure and I leave it open for some conjecture.
If it is the Holy Spirit that is taken away:
He can take himself out of the way. He does the will of God the Father, as Christ does. The three are one, and they are equal in power and authority, but not in function. He can be ordered out of the way by the Father, as far as I can tell, though I could be wrong about it and would be remiss to be dogmatic about it.
Secondly, His being taken out of the way does not necessarily mean his removal from the scene. As I understand it, His role of restraint is against Satan and the demonic Antichristian system. To be taken out of the way, would mean that He would no longer be restraining Satan and the Antichrist. He would let them have their way with the earth and the non-believing peoples.
My belief is that the rapture is real and soon. All believers on earth (and, I hope, all children below the age of accountability, though I don't have scripture to back that up) will be evacuated to meet the Lord in the air, and ushered on up to heaven and brought to the Judgment Seat of Christ, then to the marriage supper of the Lamb. During that time, there is the early Tribulation, followed by the Great Tribulations. During that 7 years, the 144,000 jewish witnesses (yes, genetic jews) will accept Christ as Messiah and evangelize the world-- to the Jew first, and also the gentile. Many millions will be saved by Christ during the 7 years, and the Antichrist's government will put to death as many of the believers as they can get their hands on. They will not manage to find and kill them all. Meanwhile, the judgments of God and the aggression of antichrist will grind the world's population down to a small fraction of what it was. At the end of the seven years, there is a SHORT time of an unspecified number of days past the end of the seven days. It is during this time that the armies of the earth gather at Megiddo and assemble to be slaughtered. It is at that time, as they gather and prepare to attack Israel and/or the Antichrist (unclear to me, I've heard both ways), that "no one knows the day or the hour" that Christ will appear. They could count, if they knew, how many days long the 7 years was. But in the few days or weeks after it ends, they know (if they've been informed) that Christ is on his way. They do not know the day or the hour he will come, but they could know the year, and possibly be relatively sure of the month by that time.
Then, when he comes, he destroys Antichrist, and the armies of the aggressor(s). He lands on the Mount of Olives, splitting it in two. After Armageddon is settled, Christ sorts the goats from the sheep. The goats go to the holding pen of Hell while the living believers who survived the Trib are allowed to go on living into the new Millenium, the reign of Christ. The saints who will have returned with Christ will be in their glorified bodies, and evidently that means incapable of reproduction. They will reign with Christ as under-rulers over the surviving non-glorified believers. As these Trib-remnant believers reproduce over time, their children will have the choice of accepting Christ as savior or rejecting Him. As time goes on, many will reject Him. At the end, Satan will be loosed from his prison to tempt the unbelievers and lead them in rebellion against Christ, and He will prevail against Satan and his minions once and for all.
Then the White Throne Judgment, where the unbelieving dead are given their final judgment and cast into the Lake of Fire to suffer forever.
Then, God will destroy the existing physical universe, or at least the "heavens" and the Earth (exactly how Heavens are meant in this passage is open to debate) and then will create a new Heaven and new Earth, including a New Jerusalem, which together will be the glorious environment of the Eternal State, where we the redeemed will stay forever with our wonderful God.
That is how I understand it, but I could be wrong. This is essentially the mainstream view in Greenville fundamental Baptist churches these days, to the best of my knowledge, and certainly for my church.
We do not know or understand all the details, but this is the best we understand.
I believe God chose to make these things difficult to understand so that we would have to dig for the truth, because the struggle of unearthing truths from the Scripture is part of the process of growing closer to God. We don't need a bunch of "facts" laid out for us, we need to have the facts buried in spiritual truths so we are infused with the spiritual manna as we are looking for the arbitrary facts. The Bible is like a casserole where God mixed the vegetables with the meat and potatoes so we would eat it all without complaining.
