Two simple questions had the most profound impact on my life that I know almost to the minute when they were asked and by whom. You may have heard them yourself. If you haven't , you might want to ask yourself - how come?
Do you have to get permission to ask questions? Back in my BC days (before Christ) I was kind of a ‘know it all' (at least I thought I knew it all) so I loved questions. One evening after Sandy put the boys to bed she came into the living room where I had already started to relax for the evening with a little ‘social drinking', and ‘social pot smoking'. I guess as long as you think it's ‘social' you're not really addicted to it. I was already well on my way to an altered state of consciousness. Sandy came in and sat down and said, "can I ask you a couple of questions?" "Of course", I responded "what would you like to know?". I sat up a little bit as I was already on the floor. She started with the first question... "If you died right now, would you go to Heaven?"
Wow, what a question. I reasoned that if there were a Heaven and a Hell, Heaven would be the place for me so I said, "Yes!" Sandy continued, "Ok, let's say you did die and you were standing before God and He said, "Herb, why should I let you into my Heaven?" Wow, another good question. I started to reason again in my head and actually thought not only do I have to impress my wife but God too! I boldly responded, "because I haven't wronged my fellow man!"
Sandy made a sweeping motion with her right hand as if pulling a lever to a trap door dropping me through the floor and shouted down into the hole, "WRONG!" I felt myself falling into the blackness of that hole not even knowing up from down... panic had started to set in when a single word surfaced from within me, Jesus! "Jesus is the answer!" Immediately I was back up on the living room floor albeit a little shaken. Sandy started to share with me about the book she had been reading by Susan Adkins, called "Child of Satan, Child of God". We decided together to check this thing out.
This was something new for me as I didn't have all the answers. When I went to the office the next day I decided to go from cubical to cubical and ask those two questions to see who knew the answers. It was an engineering area where most of the work was entry level training so we were all used to questioning each other every day. I didn't know anything about evangelism; I just wanted to know out of the 16 or so guys I was working around, who was going to Heaven and who was going to Hell. It was a fact finding mission for me. Several of the young men simply replied, Hell, to the first question and I left it at that. Those who made it to the second question and missed it, I simply said, "You're going to Hell!" and moved on.
And then there was Mike... I asked him like the others if I could ask him a couple of questions. "Sure", he said. Well, I asked him the first question and he looked like I had shot him with a gun. "Yes", he said a little stunned. When I finished the second question he responded, "Because I've been washed in the Blood of the Lamb!" "Jesus died for me that I might have eternal life." "Yes" I responded, "you're the only one in this whole office that got both answers right. Mike knew that something had happened to me and that I wasn't playing ‘the prank of the day'! He looked me in the eyes and said, "Herb, I've been praying for you for two years!"
Mike gave me a little brown bible right then and there plus a scripture memorization course as it turns out he was a Gideon. He became a close friend throughout our time there. He was just what I needed and I was an answer to prayer. That's just how amazing God actually is!
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: Ecclesiastes 3:1