His troops do his dirty work but once in awhile . . .

Only a few times in Scripture do you read about Satan’s direct assault on a person. In the crucifixion of Christ, Satan got personally involved by “entering” Judas. 

In the Book of Job, Satan asks God for permission to attack Job. 

In the Book of Acts, Satan assaults the Little Flock and by the book’s end he attacks Paul directly.

Satan was personally involved in getting his human thugs to go to Thessalonica and stop Paul’s preaching just as the Apostle to the Gentiles was seeing “a great multitude” of pagans turn from their idols to worship God.

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As Luke reports on the wild scene that unfolded around a Jewish synagogue, “And some of them believed, and consorted with Paul and Silas; and of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few.
[5] But the Jews which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people.”

Jordan explains, “When it talks about ‘lewd fellows of the baser sort,’ there was a criminal underworld. ‘Lewd’ is their character, and ‘baser sort’ is their reputation.

"When it says they had ‘taken security’ against Paul, that means they took out a kind of peace bond. When people are fighting and someone’s being threatened, you go to court and get a bond on that person, where if they come within 100 yards of you or whatever, and that’s why Paul says, ‘Wherefore we would have come unto you, even I Paul, once and again; but Satan hindered us.’

“The way Satan hindered him is he got the unbelievers to get the authorities involved and there was a court injunction then against Paul as the government turned against him.

“So Satan literally used the powers of the government at Thessalonica (actually the Roman government because he’s talking about accusing him of things against Caesar—an appeal to a higher authority) to stop Paul from coming back. Paul understood what was going on and he understood who was behind it. It was the Adversary.”