The Importance of Telling It Like It Is
Monday, December 8, 2025
“Call things by their right names… Glass of brandy and water! That is the current but not the appropriate name: ask for a glass of liquid fire and distilled damnation.” – Robert Hall
Robert Hall was a renowned Baptist preacher, theologian, author, and orator who was born in Arnesby, near Leicester, England in 1764 and died in Bristol in 1831. His works were collected by Olinthus Gregory and published posthumously in six volumes in 1832.
Hall was very highly regarded by his peers, including James Macintosh, who wrote the following description of him in the 1780s when Hall was serving at the Kings College in Aberdeen…
“He displayed the same acuteness and brilliancy; the same extraordinary vigor, both of understanding and imagination, which have since distinguished him, and which would have secured to him much more of the admiration of the learned and the elegant, if he had not consecrated his genius to the far nobler office of instructing and reforming the poor.”
Equally laudatory were the words of Samuel Parr, who wrote in 1800 that Hall possessed “the eloquence of an orator, the fancy of a poet, the acuteness of a schoolman, the profoundness of a philosopher, and the piety of a saint."
One of Hall’s best character traits was “telling it like it is” instead of beating around the bush. That is why he preferred to call brandy and water by the far more descriptive “liquid fire and distilled damnation”. To him, the alcoholic concoction should be known for the destruction it causes and not by some “watered-down” and far more enticing pseudonym.
Likewise, when we sin, let’s call it what it is. It isn’t a “mistake”, a “shortcoming”, an “error”, a “lack of judgment”, or some other namby-pamby terminology. It is a moral failure of the highest order, an act of disobedience and rebellion against a holy God. It is a S-I-N… and it is so serious that it cost Jesus His very life to save us from its eternal penalty.
Think about that the next time you are tempted to tell a “small fib” or a “little white lie”.
“If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that His word has no place in our hearts.” I John 1:10 (NLT)
- Rev. Dale M. Glading, President
