I was on a program with a particularly gifted speaker who had a great deal to say and who said it extremely well. The audience was "with him all the way." About two-thirds of the way into his talk he skillfully introduced his views on transcendental meditation, and then he asked the audience if anybody was familiar with it. A number of hands went up.

"What do you think about it?" he asked.

One lady shouted from the audience that it had changed her life and received a round of applause. I sat there in disbelief and wondered what to do to combat this effective presentation of an Eastern religion.

"Lord, what are we going to do?" I prayed. "I cannot let this go unanswered when I speak. And yet if I'm not careful, I will offend some people. This man is a charmer and the crowd is with him."

The speaker was making some promises of better health, longer life, and relieving tension, with peace of mind as the prime objective. So I prayed for words to use. Almost immediately-as a matter of fact, before the speaker finished-the Lord had instructed me what to say. My talk that day was on sales training. One segment dealt with teaching sales people how to ask questions. A salesman's questions should uncover the prospect's need for the goods or services being offered, leading to a decision. I gave several examples of how to ask questions.

Then I said to the audience, "Many of you undoubtedly wonder where you can get further instructions on how to ask questions, and I'm delighted to tell you there is now a manual available that gives you a very solid foundation for learning how to ask questions. It is called the Holy Bible.

"I would like to stress this has nothing to do with your religious beliefs, whether you have them or do not have them. The best manual ever written on how to ask questions is the Bible. Any fair-minded individual will agree that its author Jesus Christ was the greatest salesman who ever lived. He was also the greatest sales trainer who ever lived. He took twelve men-and one of them was a loser-and spread the Gospel in short order throughout the civilized world.

"If you will secure a red-letter edition of the Bible, meaning the words of Christ are in red, you will discover whenever Christ was asked a question He always answered it with a question or a parable. So, if you want to know how to ask questions, read your Bible." Then I paused and smiled at the audience as I said, "And as long as you're reading the question, you might as well go ahead and read the answer because one of these days He is going to ask you a question. And if you get it right, you get to stay!" As the audience laughed, I looked straight at the other speaker and said, "Not only will it give you peace of mind now, but to tell you the truth, it will keep the heat off you later!"

The audience roared, and I silently thanked the Lord.