We implore Allah to protect all of us from Satan and his helpers. `Ali bin Al-Husayn reported: Safiya, the wife of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) told me that she went to Allah’s Messenger to visit him in the Mosque while he was in i`tikaf or seclusion in the last ten days of Ramadan. She had a talk with him for a while, then she got up in order to return home. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) accompanied her. When they reached the gate of the Mosque opposite the door of Um-Salama, two Ansari men were passing by, and they greeted Allah’s Messenger. He told them not to run away, and he said, “She is (my wife) Safiya bint Huyai.” Both of them said, “Subhan Allah, (How dare we think of any evil) O Allah’s Messenger!” And they felt it. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said (to them), “Satan reaches everywhere in the human body as blood reaches in it, (everywhere in one’s body). I was afraid lest Satan might insert an evil thought in your minds.” (Reported by Al-Bukhari)
It is not only Iblis who whispers to those huge numbers you mentioned. Rather, Iblis has many aides and hosts from among the devils who help him accomplish his tasks of tempting the believers. This fact is stressed in the Qur’an.
Dr. Rif`at Fawzi, former professor of Shari`ah at Cairo University, states the following: “Indeed, there is only one Iblis or Satan that is known in the Qur’an. Also, in the Qur’an the word Iblis refers to al-Shaytan (with the definite article “al”). This Iblis has many aides from among the devils and assistants (shayateen, the plural of shaytan) who help tempt and derail the believers from the right track to disobey Allah and sin. Those aides act according to Iblis’s orders in the same way the entourage of a king, for example, behave as per his orders.
The fact that Iblis has different aides and hosts is stressed in the Qur’an in more than one verse. For example, Allah Almighty says: “O Children of Adam! Let not Satan seduce you as he caused your (first) parents to go forth from the Garden and tore off from them their robe (of innocence) that be might manifest their shame to them. Lo! He seeth you, he and his tribe, from whence ye see him not. Lo! We have made the devils protecting friends for those who believe not.” (Al-A`raf: 27)
Allah Almighty also says: “Then they will be hurled therein, they and the seducers. And the hosts of Iblis, together. And they will say, when they are quarrelling therein: By Allah, of a truth we were in error manifest.” (Ash-Shu`araa: 94-97)
In conclusion, I would like to stress that we as mortals do not know how Iblis and his hosts seduce people to sin, as this is beyond human perception. Even the number of Iblis’s hosts and aides, how they seduce people, and the mechanism they apply is part of the Unseen that is known to Allah alone. It is really wrong to compare our might and very limited power as mortals to that of Iblis and his helpers.”