Acts 16:32

(32) And they spake unto him the word of the Lord.—It is clear that belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, unless it were to be a mere formula, repeated as a charm, required an explanation. The very title of Christ; the acts and words that showed that Jesus was the Christ; His life, and death, and resurrection; the truths of forgiveness of sins and communion with Him, and the outward signs which He had appointed as witnesses of those truths; all this must have been included in “the word of the Lord,” which was preached to that congregation so strangely assembled, between the hours of midnight and of dawn. Even the Philippian gaoler had to be a catechumen before he was baptised.