Satan Hindered Us

Paul tells the Thessalonians of his desire to be present with them but says “Satan hindered us” (1 Thess 2:18). Most commentators express uncertainty about Paul’s meaning here, but I want to make a suggestion that, if true, will help us understand God’s prophetic word: Satan was using Israel after the flesh to hinder the kingdom of God. The following paragraphs explain this proposition and explore a few of its implications.

Paul has just described Jewish opposition to the gospel. Notice how his reference to “Satan” fits into this context:

For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews: who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.… Satan hindered us. (1 Thess 2:14–16, 18)

What caused Paul to leave Thessalonica in the first place? Luke gives us the answer:

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. And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also; whom Jason hath received: and these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus. And they troubled the people and the rulers of the city, when they heard these things. And when they had taken security of Jason, and of the other, they let them go. And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night. (Acts 17:5–10)

A few commentators recognize this connection. One says, “Satan, acting by wicked men, … had already driven him out of Thessalonica.”¹ Another says Satan’s hindrances came “by those persecuting Jews”² who drove Paul out of the city. Another observes that, after leaving Thessalonica, when Paul came to “Athens, from whence also he might purpose to return thither, he was hindered by the disputes the Jews … had with him”³ (cp. Acts 17:17). Satan was using the unbelieving Jews as his agents to oppose the gospel of the kingdom. 

That Paul equated opposition from the Jews by nature (Gal 2:15) to the hindrance of Satan is not surprising; Jesus had told the Jews, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do” (John 8:44). The Lord had compared that generation of unbelieving Jews to a man possessed by demons: 

When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. Then he says, “I will return to my house from which I came.” And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it also be with this wicked generation. (Matt 12:43–45 NKJV)

Evil spirits—under Satan’s direction—exerted increasing control over Israel after the flesh during the generation between Jesus’ death and the temple’s fall (i.e., AD 30–70).

This connection between Satan and the Jews sheds light on at least two passages in Revelation, which inmillennialism⁴ says John wrote before the temple fell. First, Jesus identifies apostate Jews with Satan in The Vision of the Seven Churches⁵  when he says, “I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan” (Rev 2:9; cp. Rev 3:9). Paul tells us how to distinguish between false and true Jews:

He is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: but he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God. (Rom 2:28–29)

During the apostles’ generation, two groups claimed to be Jews. The unbelieving physical descendants of Abraham were not true Jews—they were Satanic agents, or “the synagogue of Satan.” The Jews and Gentiles who believed the gospel of the kingdom were the true Jews; they possessed the only circumcision that matters in the messianic (kingdom) age—circumcision of the heart. For this reason, Paul issued a warning to the Philippians:

Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the false circumcision; for we are the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh. (Phil 3:2–3 NASB)

The second passage in Revelation links “the false circumcision” to Satan. In John’s vision of The Seven Mystic Figures,⁶ God casts Satan “into the land (Gk. gē)” of Israel just before “the kingdom of our God” comes (Rev 12:9). Satan then makes “war with the remnant of her (i.e., Israel’s) seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ” (Rev 12:17). This persecution of Israel’s faithful remnant (i.e., the Christians) continues until, as John says, “the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth [i.e., Israel after the flesh], and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God” (Rev 14:19). This description matches what Paul tells the Thessalonians: 

The Jews … both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost. (1 Thess 2:14–16)

God’s wrath would come on the satanic Jews “in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming (Gk. parousia)” in Paul’s generation (Matt 24:21, 34; 1 Thess 2:19). So, Revelation is providing a behind-the-scenes look at what Paul means when he says, “Satan hindered us” (1 Thess 2:18).

Paul also refers to this Satan-false Jew connection in his letter to the Romans. He first emphasizes the importance of the period in which he and they were living:

Knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night [i.e., of the Mosaic age] is far spent, the day [i.e., of the messianic age] is at hand. (Rom 13:11–12 NKJV)

The temple’s fall would mark the end of the Mosaic-age shadows; it would also bring the full inauguration of the messianic-age day (e.g., Col 2:17; Heb 8:4–5). Paul leverages this perspective in an enigmatic statement at the end of his letter: “The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly” (Rom 16:20).⁷ God bruised Satan in Paul’s near future by destroying Israel after the flesh—the satanic agent who had hindered Paul’s ministry—in the “great tribulation” that preceded the temple’s fall in AD 70. At that point, the night was over and the day had arrived.

These phenomena—the hindering by Satan and God’s bruising of him—agree with what we have seen in recent posts: God predestined that the Jews by nature (Gal 2:15) fill up the full measure of their sin by persecuting the apostles. Then the wrath of God would fall on them in Jesus’ generation (1 Thess 2:16; cp. Matt 24:21, 34; Rev 7:14). God would destroy Satan’s agents and give the kingdom they had enjoyed to another nation, namely, the elect people of God who follow Christ—the Jews in the Spirit (Matt 21:41–45; 1 Pet 1:2; 2:9–10; Rom 2:29).

This bruising of Satan prepared the way for the church to “make disciples of all the nations” during the messianic (kingdom) age (Matt 28:19 NKJV; cp. Matt 16:27–28). As John said, “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever” (Rev 11:15). Hallelujah! 

Let us be up and about the Master’s business! Let us fight the spiritual warfare he has commanded us to fight, knowing that “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor 10:4–5 NKJV). God has now bound Satan so “that he should deceive the nations no more” (Rev 20:3).

Satan hindered Paul but could not destroy the kingdom of God; it continues its inevitable expansion through the power of the Holy Spirit working in the true Jews as God’s kingdom agents (cp. Dan 2:44; 7:18; Ps 110:1).

1. Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown, A Commentary, Critical, Experimental and Practical on the Old and New Testaments of A commentary, critical, experimental and practical on the old and new testaments, 3 vols. (n.d.; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 3.3.462.
2. John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, Fourth American Edition. (New York: J. Soule and T. Mason, 1818), 545.
3. John Gill, An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, 9 vols. (1809–10; repr., Paris, AR: The Baptist Standard Bearer, 1989), 9:225.
4. I document this prophetic model in my book, Inmillennialism: Redefining the Last Days, available here. For a summary, see the PDF here.
5. For an outline of Revelation, see my post, Mapping God’s Highway in Revelation.
6. For more discussion on this topic, see my post here.
7. The image in this post is Archangel Michael defeating Satan by Guido Reni  (1575–1642). This file (here) is in the public domain (PD-US).