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Once there was a Christian minister preaching among coal miners. The missionary began a fire and brimstone speech by telling the miners that a sinful person would have to go hell and could only be saved if he surrendered to Jesus Christ. On hearing the name of Jesus Christ, one of the miners asked, "What is his number?" Since everyone in the mining company was assigned a number, the miners could not imagine Jesus Christ being anyone other than a mine worker. The missionary tried again by describing the misery of hell. "Hell," he said, "is very dark and damp." The miners looked back at the missionary without concern. His description of hell sounded just like the mine which they already knew. Then the missionary understood that he was preaching to people with a very limited conception of reality, and so he would have to address their actual experience. "And in hell," he said, "There are no newspapers!" "Oh horrible! Very frightening!" The miners exclaimed. MORAL: We have to preach according to kala-desha-patra; time, place and circumstance.
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