Whole Family

Location

God so often amazes us that it can be a challenge to know if we are reading a meaning into something that isn’t there. Still, I think there’s a “Hidden Mickey¹” in the city’s name that Paul, Silas, Timothy, Luke, and perhaps more entered to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This city was called Philippi.

With Paul’s expansive education, he would have known that Philippi’s original Greek name was Crenides, meaning “fountains.” Jesus spoke about “rivers of living water²” coming out of His followers, so I can picture Paul approaching the city of fountains, thanking God for the rivers of living water that would soon come.

This Philippi wasn’t the same as Caesarea Philippi, the place Jesus visited. It was actually in Macedonia, a Roman colony northeast of Greece. Philippi was a prominent city in that area.

Background

Paul, Silas, and their team of evangelists travelled throughout Philippi, spreading the Good News. As they went, a slave girl who had a demon kept following them and calling out, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.” As this continued, Paul became annoyed and cast the demon out of the girl. This got the team in trouble with Paul and Silas arrested, beaten, and thrown in prison.

Event

Despite Paul and Silas having been beaten and locked in prison, the two praised God and sang hymns late into the night. Suddenly, an earthquake shook the jail to its foundation, opening prison doors and loosing chains. In mere moments, all of the prisoners were freed.

When the jailer saw this, he prepared to commit suicide because any jailer who allowed a prisoner to escape faced a brutal execution. This is where we zoom in on this part of church history.

Acts 16:28-34

Paul, knowing the jailer would harm himself, yelled in a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” The jailer, trembling, ran to Paul and Silas, dropped to his knees, and exclaimed, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

Paul and Silas spoke the word of the Lord to the jailer and all who were in his house. All believed and were immediately baptized.

Acts 16:28-34

Several times, over the years, I’ve heard people wonder how the whole household believed. This theme of “the whole household” occurs several times in the New Testament, and we should not be surprised. Sure, when we think of our families, it may seem impossible, but we can travel back across the Bible to nearly the beginning and find examples of God saving households. Consider Genesis 7:1:

Then the LORD said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your family, because I have found you righteous in this generation.

There, near the beginning of God’s Word, we see God saving a man who trusts Him and saving his whole family. If you have family members who still have not received God’s Salvation, don’t give up; keep praying. God has a long history of saving whole families.

---

Image License – By No machine-readable author provided. Marsyas assumed (based on copyright claims). – No machine-readable source provided. Own work assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44943

Footnotes

1. Hidden Mickey – Wikipedia contributors. (2025, April 24). Hidden Mickey. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hidden_Mickey&oldid=1287113277, also discussed in my book “Finding Christ in the Pentateuch.” ↩︎
2. John 7:38 – Living Water. (n.d.). Bible Hub. Retrieved May 12, 2025, from https://biblehub.com/john/7-38.htm ↩︎