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Stories told by Śrīla Prabhupāda
<< 3 The missionary and the coalminers >>
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| Now this is a very often quoted story, the next one is called “The missionary and the coalminers”. This is a story Srila Prabhupada told many times, but I think that many of you have not heard this story before, am I right? The missionary and the coalminers, have you heard it? Ramananda Ray, you’ve heard it. Yes. All right. So because so many have not heard it, I will read it. Once there was a Christian minister who is preaching to the coalminers. You know, man who dig for coal in the mountainside. The missionary began a very fired up lecture telling the miners that a sinful person will have to go to hell and he can only be saved if he surrenders to Jesus Christ. On hearing the name of Jesus Christ one of the miners asked: “What is his number?” Because all of the coalminers, they have a number. So these miners were so ignorant, they’ve never heard of Jesus before, so the minister was saying: “Only Jesus can save you.” One man said: “What is his number?”
| | So then the missionary he tried again, he thought: ”Well, I have to preach to them from the different direction.” So then he began to describe the misery of hell. He said: “Hell, this is a very dark hole, it goes deep under the earth and it’s very dirty down there.” So the miners they looked at each other and they looked at the minister. “What’s wrong with hell, we’re working there every day.” So then this minister he could understand that he was preaching to people whose conception of reality was very very narrow. He couldn’t give the examples he was giving, they couldn’t understand. So then he thought a little more and then he said: “Ah.” He said: “In hell there are no newspapers.” And the miners said: ”Oh, no!” They were very afraid: “We don’t want to go to hell. Tell us more about Jesus.”
| | The moral is that we have to preach according to kala, desa, patra, that means according to time, place and circumstances. We have to find out what level of consciousness the people we’re speaking to are on and try to make Krishna conscious relevant to that level. If it is too high or also too low, they’ll not be attracted.
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