Jailer

The jailer of Philippi is the unnamed official in charge of the prison where Paul and Silas were held after being beaten and imprisoned for casting a spirit of divination out of a slave girl (Acts 16:23–34). At midnight, while Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns, a great earthquake opened the prison doors and loosed all the prisoners' chains. The jailer, waking and assuming all had escaped, was about to kill himself when Paul called out to stop him. The jailer came trembling, fell before Paul and Silas, and asked the central question: "What must I do to be saved?" — to which Paul answered, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house." That night the jailer washed their wounds, and he and his entire household were baptized, "rejoicing" in their new faith. The episode is one of the most vivid conversion accounts in Acts.