having condemnation, because they have rejected their first pledge.
Now I'm afraid that if the church practiced this open public rebuke of the sinners, it would create, no doubt, a fear but it might also create an empty church. You remember when the woman was brought to Jesus, taken in the act of adultery and they said, Our law says stone her, what do you say? And Jesus said, Let him who is without sin cast the first stone. And He began to write on the ground; it doesn't tell us what, but I feel certain that He was writing the names of the individuals and the sins they were guilty of. And it says they began to leave from the eldest to the youngest until there was none left. And if there was an open rebuke for sin, and we started going down naming everybody and naming the sins, it would create fear, I'm sure, within the church.When I was a young man there was a man that I admired very much. I admired his ministry, Dr. Claire Britain. He was a medical doctor as well as a minister. And at a summer camp, I listened to him one year and he was saying that he could look into a young person's eyes, and the eyes are so revealing. They tell everything that the young person is guilty of; it's all there in their eyes. Man, I was afraid to look at him. Didn't want him to see everything that was there.