Satan Wants You To Tithe!

Article and artwork by Patricia Backora WHY? What’s in it for him? Plenty! Old Scratch just LOVES church tithing, just like he loves every other money-making racket in Religionland. That same devil who haunts Las Vegas casinos parts his hair in the middle on Sundays and wears a pinstripe suit and tie to look respectable enough to con you out of your last widow’s mite with bombastic promises of earthly wealth in exchange for “your sacrificial gift.” So long as the preacher wears Old Spice, shaves his mustache and clips his hair way above the ears and shines his shoes, he CAN’T be a crook, so everything he preaches must be true. Wonder how much he paid for his suit! Wily preachers COUNT on your ignorance of the Word of God as they convince you you’re way too dumb to argue with them, since THEY’RE the ones who went to cemetery… I mean seminary, to earn their divinity degree so they can give you the third degree about how much (they think) you earned at the salt mine, and whether you’re paying THEM the grossest percentage of your paycheck. Forget tithing on the net. Nets are for fishermen, not fleecers of the flock selling you a smelly fish story! God’s ideal would be a church similar to the one in the first chapters of Acts, where everybody was just one big happy family of brothers and sisters and there were no mile-high pulpits with crabby preachers screaming their authority down at a building full of benched team players sitting out the game and paying rent on their padded pews. Let’s begin at the very BEGINNING of the Church age, long before the Catholic Church legislated monetary tithing for Christendom in the early Middle Ages, long after the death of the apostles. You just can’t keep a bad old doctrine down, so tithing eventually infected mainline Protestant and Charismatic churches. Since most traditional Protestant pastors claim to be sticklers for the Written Word of God, let’s take a peek at the very FIRST church council and determine whether it authorizes today’s monetary tithing doctrine.

Peter, James and John were seeing a huge influx of Gentiles come into what had formerly been an almost exclusively Jewish Church. Apparently, God was so eager to save these people and fill them with the Holy Ghost that He didn’t even wait for them to join Judaism first. True, God took the initiative in imparting His good gifts to these Gentile converts. But surely, some argued, at some point they would need to also come under all the requirements of Jewish Law including the ouchy op men must go through. Can’t you imagine a whole herd of scared men stampeding out the front vestibule if the preacher taught circumcision the same way they teach tithing?

Preachers point out that tithing predated the Law of Moses (two isolated cases are mentioned in Genesis chapters 14 and 28) but neither of these tithes involved monetary wages. Abraham VOLUNTARILY gave Melchisedek, not ten per cent of his own property or income, but ten per cent of OTHER PEOPLE’S property after he rescued them from kidnappers. Preacher say God can’t give to you unless you FIRST give to Him. Wanna bet? Who’s gonna go up to God and tell Him His hands are tied unless the preacher’s palm is greased with a little money? Jacob made a CONDITIONAL promise to tithe to God LATER and only IF God would FIRST supply his needs, keep him safe in his journeyings and bring him back in safety to his home in Canaan. Jacob’s tithing vow (if he ever paid it at all) would not be payable for at least twenty years, when he finally came home to Canaan from Mesopotamia. Preachers who appeal to Abraham and Jacob’s tithing examples don’t expect you to literally FOLLOW those examples in the same way. They don’t expect you to bring them ten per cent of SOMEONE ELSE’S recovered stolen booty or to bargain with God over what YOU’LL get out of it before you pay ”God” (the preacher) a solitary cent.

Why don’t preachers ever mention that circumcision also predated the Law of Moses? Unless your friendly paycheck chopper gets his cut from referring males to some doctor performing this procedure, there just ain’t much money to be gained from an even-handed enforcement of this OTHER ordinance which predated Moses. Instead of circumcising males, preachers SUPERSIZE money tithes and offerings. Peter, James and John sought the Lord over the question of whether or not Gentiles were required to become Jewish proselytes and keep the Law of Moses in order to remain Christians, or to become Christians in the first place, if God hadn’t ALREADY saved their souls. Their conclusion: “Let’s not dump the burden of keeping the 613-ordinance Law of Moses onto those poor Gentiles. If we, being good Jews, weren’t able to keep it and found it a hassle, then surely these converted heathens wouldn’t be able to hack it either (Acts 15: 10). The apostles, led by the Holy Ghost, came to this conclusion: restrictions would be placed on the liberty of the Gentile converts:

Only four (4)

1. Don’t eat blood (that would include that creepy “black pudding” (pig blood sausage) served in British “fry-up” breakfasts. 2. Don’t eat animals killed by strangulation. 3. Don’t eat foods sacrificed to idols. 4. Don’t sleep around outside of marriage. The apostles declared that if just those four things were observed, the new converts would do well (Acts 15:29). NOT ONE WORD about binding tithing on Gentile converts who probably NEVER had paid tithes to their former gods (Jupiter, Venus, Mars, Diana, etc.). Being a Heinz-57 Gentile myself, I’d guess that the vast majority of people are also Gentiles who would be hard pressed to find a single drop of Jewish blood in their lineage. Now if James, reputedly the most legalistic of the early apostles, agreed with his fellow apostles that no other requirements were to be placed on Gentile believers, then who are modern preachers to say those apostles forgot to throw tithing into the mix? What they’re really saying is the Holy Ghost also missed the perfect opportunity to order Gentile converts to start tithing. But the Holy Ghost agreed with the

apostles that NO GREATER BURDEN must be placed on the liberty of Christian believers than those four necessary things (Acts 15:28). Preachers, don’t contradict the Holy Ghost by appealing to “the Lord showed me” to justify laying extra burdens on God’s children. That softsoap religious sentiment won’t cut it with God. Paying some MAN in the pulpit ten percent of your gross (before taxes) income IS a much greater (grosser) burden than avoiding Hare Krishna cuisine, humanely slaughtering your salami, staying out of cathouses or hiding that yucky blood pudding under your BOT (beans on toast) just so your British hosts won’t think you’re too much of a wimp to eat it!

Preachers are always hollering about how everyone must submit to THEM and pay up or they’ll get nuked in hell for all eternity. But it’s PREACHERS who refuse to submit to the apostles’ godly council of Acts 15. I suspect if St. Peter could pop down from heaven at offering time, he’d whack Old Preach on the noggin with a perch and rebuke him for stealing the wages of hard-working saints who need to buy school shoes for their kids. Think of it, folks. How many senior pastors of “megachurches” (beg-a-churches) shop for school clothes at the Salvash? When was the last time some megachurch minister had HIS wife clipping coupons or cleaning motel rooms? When donkeys fly! Truth is very costly. Telling the truth and sharing ALL the counsel of God as Paul did (Acts 20:27) can cost preachers not only money but CONTROL over people’s lives and the gratification it brings to their supersized egos. No wonder I never heard Acts Chapter 15 preached on by any preacher! They’re too busy milking three isolated verses in Malachi Chapter 3 to preach on the SPIRITUAL riches of the New Covenant! So while satan has half the church stranded in the Old Testament paying the WRONG kind of tithe (money instead of farm produce) to the WRONG species of preacher (Only sons of Levi (priestly ISRAELITES) qualified to collect tithes, see Heb.7:5), the other half of the church is dimly aware that The New Covenant just MIGHT be an improvement on the Old, but they’re afraid of walking out of their stuffy religious prison cell into the liberty of the Spirit because the preacher tells them he’s their spiritual daddy and knows what’s best for them so they’d better not take their freedom in Christ too seriously. Satan laughs because instead of being able to hear the Voice of the Good Shepherd for

themselves (John 10:27) Christians would rather listen to some pretty boy preacher who usurps the place of God the Father in their lives. These Count Dracula leeches bleed Christians dry in ways God never authorized!

Satan just can’t stand the fact salvation is a FREE gift nobody can earn through self-effort (Eph.2:8-9). He hates the way God has redeemed us from the curse of the Law (Gal.3:13; 5:18). Tithing is the last ordinance covered in the Book of Leviticus, the Book of Mosaic Law (Lev.27:31-34). This passage mentions only herd and flock being tithed, never money! And this ordinance was specifically given BY MOSES TO THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL (verse 34). Moses did not give this body of Law (which cited numerous picky ordinances spelling out exactly how God wanted tithing to be done) to the children of the Cherokees, the Mongolians, the Eskimos or the African Hottentots. Besides the tithing of edible livestock,

other passages mentioned the tithing of fruits and grain (Lev.27:30; Deut.14:23). NOT ONE verse in either testament authorizes pulpit preachers to tax ten per cent of a poor man’s wages! Instead of taking tithes FROM THE POOR, tithes were collected FOR THE POOR so they could eat (Deut.14:29; 26:12). Not like today’s reverse-Robin Hood ripoff where the poor are robbed to “bless” the rich! BTW, God promises deeper poverty, not a blessing, for giving to rich bega-preachers (see Prov.22:16). Bet ya’ll NEVER hear money-hungry TV preachers mention that verse. Satan just howls with laughter to watch all the chicanery and robbery going on in his den of thieves masquerading as the true house of God!

Besides robbing God’s people of their blood-bought freedom from the Law, what OTHER victories does satan win through tithing on monetary wages, which is NOWHERE taught in all of scripture? (I go into exhaustive detail to disprove this disruptive doctrine in my book: Fasting & Tithing: Blessing-Bringers or Burdens? which you can freely read on http://www.pdfcoke.com/doc/4617708/FastingTithing-Blessing-Bringers-or-Burdens Tithing is justified as being the ONLY way to finance Big Religion. By convincing Christians that God demands that they “sacrifice” grocery money to feed this overbearing harlot religious system , Satan robs God’s people of their identity of BEING the House of God. Instead, that honor is bestowed on some multimillion-dollar cathedral funded by TITHES AND OFFERINGS (freewill offerings are fine when necessary to meet REAL needs like feeding the poor and for missions, etc). Satan would far rather get Christians obsessed with remodeling the “sanctuary” (an Old Testament term) to the point where they neglect the care of poor Christians (God’s TRUE house). Admittedly, Christians must meet SOMEWHERE, and it might not be workable for the saints to assemble in private homes as they did in the First Century. But the local sheep shed must never be a white elephant on the backs of God’s people who are called to liberty. All this ruckus about Christians needing to bring all the tithes into the House of God! The REAL truth is the BODIES of God’s people ARE the real House of God (see I Cor.6:19). So how on earth can you bring all the tithe money into God’s true house a la Malachi 3:10, unless you’re some paper-eating geek? YUCK!

Don’t even dream of tasting a ten-dollar bill. Who knows how many germy hands handled it before it reached your preacher’s offering plate? Today’s tithing doctrine is an indigestible invention of carnal greedy religious wolves. Tithing creates resentment and jealousy in the Body of Christ. Tithing turns smiley preachers into religious tax collectors who get so hacked off at you for welshing on your obligation to “god” that they threaten (promise?) to take away your membership in THEIR church. But they’ve got no right to excommunicate you from GOD’S church! GOD put us into His true church (the universal body of all true believers in Him) as it says in I Cor.12:28. When preachers kick people out for committing the non-sin of non-tithing, they’re playing God, because HE puts people in His church and it’s prerogative to throw them out of His Household of Faith if He so chooses, not man’s. How would you like it if just any Tom, Dick or Harry barged into YOUR home and threw out any furniture they didn’t like, or some beloved pet they didn’t think belonged there? You’d get mighty steamed about it, I bet. Don’t you think the good Lord has feelings too, and preachers oughta treat His property with respect? If you’re going to give in to preachers’ demands to tithe cash wages, this UNSCRIPTURAL practice should NOT be viewed as a devotion to God. Since God doesn’t like people tampering with His written Word or adding their own commandments to it, it’s very likely God views church tithing as a DOCTRINE OF DEVILS and isn’t inclined to endorse it by showering the tither with hundreddollar bills from the sky. Instead, tithe-paying, if done at all, should be done for the same secular reason you’d pay your membership dues at the Garden Club. The rich preachers who actually OWN the church property are the ones in authority there, same as homeowners have authority over their own land. Tithecollectors make it plain that the PRICE for being part of THEIR fellowship is ten per cent of your monetary income FOR LIFE. No exceptions are made for the elderly, for illness, hardship or unemployment. This amounts to a lifetime of DEBT to preachers, contrary to Paul’s commandment to OWE NO MAN ANYTHING BUT LOVE (Rom.13:8). And don’t go crying that it’s really a debt to God. God doesn’t tax His own children (Matt.17:26). And when was the last time you saw an angel fly down from heaven, take the church collection from the preacher and fly it up to heaven so God could buy a new sports car with it? Preachers never mention the fiftieth year of Jubilee when all debts are forgiven (even if tithing WERE a debt, which it isn’t). Lev.25:10-11 says that in that year no sowing and reaping are to be done, so obviously the farmer would have no crops to tithe FROM that year. Preachers swear that your burger-flipping job is analogous to the harvest field the Israelites took their tithe from. But try asking Preach to give you a whole year off from tithing every half century so you can live off the land and get some rest. Not only that, every seventh year was a Sabbath year when the land (and the farmer) were to rest and couldn’t tithe off nonexistent crops (Lev.25:20). Why don’t preachers encourage wage slaves in their congregation to take every seventh year off and stop tithing? When snowballs fly in a furnace! All preachers do about the Year of Jubilee is spiritualize it and say it means spiritual rest ONLY because that’s the only kind of rest a Christian needs. There’s a lot of hyperbole about how you should tithe to acknowledge that God owns everything. More religious rhetoric to camouflage the real truth! Paul did NOT teach tithing of any kind in the New Testament, so the Name of God is being misused to give credence to a lie of the devil. You present your BODIES a living sacrifice to God for His service (Rom.12:1), and you should realize that since He paid a terrible price to redeem you, He ALREADY owns you and everything you

have. But no, “honoring god” isn’t the REAL reason preachers are trying to get at your money. Monetary tithing CANNOT honor the REAL God because it’s not scriptural, anymore than roasting a pig on the church altar would make Him happy. Really and truly, tithing is an acknowledgment that the PREACHER (or his organization) owns the church property and you have no right to park yourself in his pew unless you pay what he says. Tithing is implicit submission to another human being who owns the space you occupy a couple hours a week. You wouldn’t live in a fancy apartment without paying the rent on it that you and the landlord have agreed on. So pay the preacher whatever he demands for the privilege of sitting under (getting crushed by) his ministry in that fancy building, just because he (or his organization) OWNS the place. They act like they own the souls in it too! Instead of running the risk of being “named and shamed” for not tithing, far better to go someplace cheaper to worship! If you can’t dine at the Ritz, go eat at McDonald’s! Through the Great Tithing Lie, satan has created a class system of cliques in what originally was a church knit together in the love of Christ, sharing and caring one for another AS EQUALS (Acts 4:34-37; 2 Cor.8:13-14). Those ancient Christians actually shared their possessions with one another. I can just hear some pious preacher yelling that today that means only SPIRITUAL possessions, and hands off HIS Ferrari coupe! In the infant church of the first century, NOBODY lacked for life’s basic necessities (Acts 4:34). That’s how much Christians shared with one another. When you consider just how dirt poor some of the first century Christians must have been, that’s a glaring rebuke to today’s money-obsessed, materialistic, self-obsessed churchianity. When you’re about to be thrown out onto the street for lack of rent money, you just try to get one of those tithe-collecting tycoons to share with you the way the first century Christians did with those in need. Yeah, right, he’ll “PRAY” for you, that is, if you can get past his entourage of ushers. But you just try saying, “Brother so-and-so, could you please make me an emergency loan to meet my need?” Superpreach will just tell you to go get a job, or if you have one, you must have committed some sin to land in the fix you’re in. And he’ll remind you that you’re to look unto God, not men (preachers will even appeal to Scripture to protect their money). But they’ve got no compunctions about asking YOU for YOUR money week in and week out! The devil just loves this division of haves and have-nots in the institutional church, the way Tithe Collectors live high on the hog while “pew Christians” struggle to keep a roof over their heads. All this evil springs from a few miseducated men lording it over the many, contrary to I Peter 5:3. Though there ARE many differing ministries in God’s Church (I Cor.12:5) Jesus FORBADE hierarchy (bottom-to-top pecking order) in His Body. He said in Matthew 23:8: But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and ALL YE ARE BRETHREN. Wonder why modern preachers don’t preach much on THIS passage? It could be very costly to let go of their control! Early Christians gained a reputation among non-believers for loving one another and being charitable toward the poor in their midst. But these days the privileged few “in ministry” fatten themselves at the expense of the struggling wage slaves out in the pews. Instead of being tenderly cared for by so-called shepherds, poor “pew Christians” get threatened that God’s gonna sick satan on them for failure to pay the preacher his cut before buying groceries and paying the rent.

Satan loves to see kids go hungry while poor Christian parents pay tithes “by faith”, sacrificing the thin sliver of income left after rent, transportation and utilities are taken care of. I believe Jesus had something to say about “corban” donations given “to God”, which ought to have been used to provide for your own family (Mark 7:11-13). God is NOT pleased with such religious sacrifices. Tithing forces poor working parents to be “worse than an infidel” by making it harder for them to provide for their own families (see I Tim.5:8). Tithing causes financial hardship and loss of time together for poor families who must take extra jobs to be able to tithe and still survive. This has a ripple effect. There are only 24 hours in a day. Less time is available for child training and family devotions (Prov.22:6). Less parental supervision makes the child(ren) more vulnerable to bad influences from the world, as the children’s peer group rushes in to fill the vacuum left by parents who work most of their waking hours. Instead of pursuing after God and His will, poor people must chase after the dollar to be able to pay bills and still tithe. They are forced to forget Christ’s instruction to “take no thought” for the needs of tomorrow (Matt.6:34).

Preachers tell poor churchgoers that if they simply “live by faith” they’ll have the courage to tithe on their disability check and God will make everything come out in the wash. I know God’s got a few good men leading His flock who DO know what it’s like to live on a shoestring budget, and they do their job out of love for Jesus. But when was the last time your typical megachurch (beg-a-church) pastor had to go begging at some food bank because he could barely survive on minimum wage? When was the last time such a preacher lost a tooth because he couldn’t afford the dentist? When was the last time those fatcats had their water or electric cut off because they got too sick to work and got behind the 8-ball? Those kingpins are in no position to tell REAL people how to “live by faith”, anymore than an orangutan could teach university physics. Satan especially loves this one: The very act of tithing denies the priesthood of the tither. I Peter 2 verses 5 and 9 declares that WE are a Royal Priesthood chosen by God to offer up SPIRITUAL sacrifices (no mention of monetary sacrifice). We (everyday believers) are a chosen generation and a royal priesthood, but money-hungry preachers limit this honor only to themselves and say that we owe THEM, the so-called “spiritual Levites” tribute money. But preachers could aim higher. If they’d examine their Bibles more closely, they’d discover that the Levites were the SERVANTS of the actual priesthood. Levites did all the menial chores for the altar priests, who were descended from Aaron, patriarch of the priestly branch of the Tribe of Levi. The lower ranking members of the Tribe of Levi (the Levites) were under God’s judgment and were not permitted to approach God’s holy things (see Ezek.44;1013). Instead, they performed Outer Court ministries to the people. The Levites paid tithes to the priests (Num.18:25-30; Neh.10:38). In fact, they separated out all the choicest bits out of the tithes the people brought to them and gave these tidbits to the sons of Aaron the High Priest. The Levites ate the tithed food that was left over after giving the BEST to their superiors. The priests themselves did NOT pay tithes, even under the Old Law. If we’re part of Christ’s Royal Priesthood, why should we tithe under the New Covenant, which is a much better covenant (Heb.8:6)? Instead, the self-proclaimed spiritual Levites should be paying tithes to US, Christ’s Royal Priesthood of all believers. That’s the REAL truth preachers cover up! What victories satan can win if we aren’t even aware of our true position in Christ and think we're only tribute-paying underlings!

Tithing radically alters a believer’s relationship with God. Sons become servants who fearfully pay religious tribute, contrary to Gal.4:7 and Jesus’ own words in Matt.17:25-26 where He declares that the children are free (from religious taxation). Tithing severs us from the grace of God by substituting a performancebased relationship with God. Tithing contributes to the destruction of faith, much to satan’s delight. When blessings for tithing fail to materialize, it can shatter a believer’s faith in God’s faithfulness. Despite the fact Malachi 3:6 proves that the blessings promised for faithful tithing in Malachi 3:8-10 (along with the curses for failure to do so) were addressed to Old Testament “sons of Jacob” (JEWS), not to New Testament believers. It’s the ignorant (or deliberately deceptive) PREACHER, not God, who promises Christians blessings for tithing on money, which God never commanded in either testament. Failure to prosper after tithing makes it easier for satan to tempt the believer to doubt all God’s REAL promises! Think back to your own childhood. Did you ever feel alienated toward either of your parents if you thought they’d failed to keep their promises or let you down? It’s tragic when a Christian feels that way toward his/her own Heavenly Father, and all because satan duped them with false doctrine spun from misapplied portions of the Word of God! Scripture is to be rightly divided (cut apart) in order to use it properly (2 Tim.2:15). One classic example of the misapplication of Scripture is the unbalanced believer who thinks he must literally apply to his own life the first two verses he opens at random. First he flips his Bible open to Matt.27:5 where Judas hanged himself. Then he turns to Luke 10:37 where Jesus says: Go and do thou likewise. You don’t take strong medicine specifically prescribed for someone else or it could prove fatal. The same can be said for haphazard mixing and application of Scripture. The Law including tithing) was prescribed for Old Testament saints, not for us. Our covenant is one of grace, not works. Tithing helps corrupt ministers led astray by the lure of earthly riches. Many ARE ignorant of the real truth, but still others are learned theologians who KNOW BETTER. Their sheep-fleecing amounts to spiritual fraud because preachers are DELIBERATELY NOT sharing ALL the counsel of God and are ADDING THEIR OWN TERMS AND CONDITIONS to what God stated in the Biblical Tithing Law. God has a warning for those who tamper with His Laws, as they are plainly stipulated in Scripture. Deut. 12:32: What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: THOU SHALT NOT ADD THERETO, NOR DIMINISH FROM IT. Preachers are committing this sin by adding Tithing on Wages, NOWHERE taught even under the Old Law! Preachers latch onto the ten per cent figure because it seems like a good idea, regardless of what God thinks. But they neglect the Israelites’ third-year tithe taken to feed the poor (Deut.14:28-29). When was the last time any preacher ever told you to go buy a six-pack of Bud with some of your tithe money? Why all the fuss over one or two isolated and misapplied verses in Malachi 3? Why don’t preachers ever mention THIS tithing passage? It’s in the Bible! I didn’t put it there, so don’t blame ME! Deut. 14:22 Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy seed, that the field bringeth forth year by year. Verse 23: And thou shalt eat before the LORD thy God, in the place which he shall choose to place his name there, the tithe of thy corn, of thy wine, and of thine oil, and the firstlings of thy herds and of thy flocks; that thou mayest learn to fear the LORD thy God always.

Verse 24: And if the way be too long for thee, so that thou art not able to carry it; or if the place be too far from thee, which the LORD thy God shall choose to set his name there, when the LORD thy God hath blessed thee: Verse 25: Then shalt thou turn it into money, and bind up the money in thine hand, and shalt go unto the place which the LORD thy God shall choose: Verse 26: AND THOU SHALT BESTOW THAT MONEY FOR WHATSOEVER THY SOUL LUSTETH AFTER, FOR OXEN, OR FOR SHEEP, OR FOR WINE, OR FOR STRONG DRINK, OR FOR WHATSOEVER THY SOUL DESIRETH: and thou shalt eat there before the LORD thy God, and thou shalt rejoice, thou, and thine household Notice, tithed produce was sometimes turned into money (the ONLY context in which money is associated with tithing in Scripture), but money itself was not turned in as the tithe! Instead, the tithing farmer or rancher only bought more food with it when he got to Jerusalem, some of which he consumed himself! Tithe-collecting preachers not only ADD TO what God commanded in His Word, they DIMINISH (take away) from God’s Word by forbidding us to go out and buy Bacardi Breezers with “tithe money”. Old sluefoot is thrilled when money-hungry preachers tamper with the terms and conditions of God’s Law, because in Revelation 22:19 God promised to disinherit those who added to or subtracted from His written Word. When preachers say you can’t eat (or drink) the tithe, they’re contradicting God’s clear instructions! And as for this business of spiritualizing away that passage, you’d have to be consistent and do the same with the tithe itself. How do you make tithed farm produce spiritual by turning it into filthy lucre? Interestingly you’ll note in verse 23 that wine is one of the items God ordered tithes to be paid on! How would Preacher react if you decided to LITERALLY keep God’s instructions on what to tithe on? If you had two six-packs of wine coolers at home you’d bring at least one of them in and stick it in the Judas offering bag making its rounds in church. Can you imagine the pandemonium that would break out? YOU, my friend, would surely be the preacher’s next sermon topic! Seriously now, satan is forever trying to cut Jesus down in the eyes of His people. Tithing places some man (or woman) as an extra intermediary between the believer and God, as a mediating priest who takes God’s taxes, contrary to I Tim.2:5 which states that there is only ONE Mediator between God and man, Christ Jesus. In order for you to pay tithes, it follows that some other human being must collect them, supposedly on God’s behalf. NOWHERE does God ever authorize just any Gentile Tom, Dick or Harry to take up tithes in His Name. Tithing radically alters our relationship with God, from being His child receiving His favors solely through His grace in Christ, to some hard-nosed “prosperity partnership” whereby God only dispenses answers to prayer in exchange for cold, hard cash. Tithing teachers are stuck in the Old Testament. They emphasize that every time we “come into God’s presence we must bring an offering” (money), as in Old Testament times (see I Chron.16:29 where making offerings to God is placed BEFORE coming before Him and worshipping Him). Preachers who misapply this scripture are saying there is no real difference between the status of Old Covenant believers who were forbidden access to the Holy Place on pain of death (Numbers 3:10; 18:7) and New Covenant believers who are born-again children of God participating in Christ’s Royal Priesthood (I Pet.2:5,9) and who are ALREADY seated with Christ in heavenly places (Eph.2:6). Tithe enforcers are actually taxing JESUS! Why? I Corinthians 6:17 says we are actually one spirit with Christ! We’re ALREADY in the Presence of God because Christ lives IN us (Col.1:27).

Because we’re one spirit with Christ, what preachers do to “pew Christians” they automatically do to Jesus! Spiritual tyrants would yank us down from sitting in heavenly places with Christ. They would relegate us to being tribute-paying peons who work and slave to build THEIR religious empires. Tithe-teachers deny that God asks SPIRITUAL sacrifices only of us (see I Pet.2:5), and would demote us from being Royal priests before the Lord. Tithe takers are ticket sellers charging admission to the Saddest Show on Earth, a powerless ninety-minute “church service” which only serves money to preachers who roust tired Christians out of bed on Sunday so they can catch up on their sleep in the pews. Well, the way I see it, life’s way too short to give credibility to the cold, dead institutional church by paying tribute to it, or by warming the seats in such churches. Preachers who teach tithing as an essential part of “keeping covenant with God” deny our Covenant of Grace which is not based on our own works (Eph.2:9). By taxing God’s people and holding threats of God’s judgment over them for nontithing, they deny that Christ’s precious blood is sufficient to pay the price for our appearing before the Throne of Grace (Heb.10:19). My, how satan loves this sad show of subservience to religious overlords! Back in the Old Testament, people brought animals to be slaughtered at the Temple for sacrifices. Next time Old Preach nags you about offering sacrifices up to God, buy a spotless sheep from some farmer (Porky Pig won’t do) and tell Preach that’s the kind of offering God required from righteous Abel in Genesis Chapter 4 (no, Abel didn’t have any dollars hidden under his hay mattress to tithe from, either). If you read that chapter you’ll notice this: sinful Cain wanted to improve on God’s ideas on what to offer up, so he substituted some pretty VEGETABLES. Well, God let that prehistoric heretic know in a hurry that He’d much rather have a blood sacrifice, not a big heap of salad greens with French dressing. Modern preachers are after the lettuce in your pocket, especially the pieces with Ben Franklin’s face on it. Preachers do their worst to convince modern-day Gentile believers that we have to live by THEIR modern mutations of Israel’s ancient laws. Now Abel and Cain were both GENTILES (non-Jews) because Jews hadn’t even come on the scene yet! If preachers were consistent about continuing the Old Testament way of doing things, they’d ask people to bring in animals to grill on the offering table. Satan would laugh his head off to see such chaos in God’s Church, wouldn’t he? But this type of thing DOES go on in churches across the land. Old Testament flesh religion is constantly mingled with New Testament churchianity. Just like Cain substituted veggies for meat, preachers demand MONEY as a sacrifice to offer up to God in the unscriptural ritual of the “offertory service” (taught NOWHERE by the New Testament apostles who only asked for emergency funds only to feed the POOR, not some ongoing weekly religious giving ritual to fleece the flock. By the way, where do you ever read of Jesus passing the collection bags around at HIS services? Jesus NEVER asked for money except to feed the poor! Money, soiled by the hands of sinful man, is paid to Almighty God as a “sacrifice” to stay on His good side and keep the preacher praying (preying). That is an abomination in His sight. Only ONE Sacrifice is needed, and has ALREADY been made: the offering up of God’s only-begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ (Heb.10:12). Satan loves it when church leaders compromise the INTEGRITY of the written Word of God to achieve questionable ends. The TRUTH that the apostles NEVER taught New Covenant tithing is drowned out by this oft-repeated excuse for teaching it anyway: Tithing is (allegedly) NECESSARY to cover the enormous cost of running the church (How did Peter ever manage to run the church without collecting tithes?). Church overhead doesn’t justify tithing (robbing the saints

through deception) any more than having a high utility bill justifies robbing a bank to get the means to pay it! Preachers threaten that God will bring the Curse of Malachi 3 down on you for non-tithing. But THEY’RE the ones who defy the apostles’ church council of Acts 15 and pick and choose what they want to keep out of the Old Law, like a restaurant menu. A tithe preachers’ best-kept secret is he’ll never tell you that the curse really works the other way: Tithing brings you back under the curse of the Law and endangers your very salvation! If you’re a Christian believer, you got saved by the grace of God through faith in Christ alone. But once you cease to depend on Christ alone to be ALL your righteousness and put yourself back under the Law, you’re back at square one. You can’t keep God’s Law good enough to pass His perfect white glove inspection test, and He’ll flunk you when you get your paper graded.

Gal. 5:4: Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace. The death of Christ ushered in a new, and far better, covenant, making the Old Covenant obsolete (Col.2:20-22; Heb.8:13). Christians are not under the Law (Gal.5:18). The Law of Moses is a package deal. You can’t slice it up like a ham. If you “covenant with God” to keep tithing, or any part of the Law of Moses, you make yourself a debtor to do the whole Law (Galatians 5:3). Instead of bringing a blessing, tithing could make you fall from the grace of God, which endangers your very salvation. Falling from grace means you cease to rely solely on Christ’s Sacrifice of Himself to remain justified before a Holy God. You begin your spiritual journey by faith and you have to continue it by faith (Gal.3:3). Any religious act, regardless of how “holy” it seems, performed to earn or keep salvation, could be a one-way ticket to hell! Tithing is the stumbling stone to the modern church that circumcision was to the early church. Reliance on works of the Law is deadly to saving faith in Christ! Gal.3:10: For as many as are of the works of the law are UNDER THE CURSE: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in ALL things which are written in the book of the law to do them (This includes such ordinances as circumcision, animal sacrifices, keeping the Sabbath, the Day of Atonement fast, letting your beard grow, covering every container in your house (Numbers 19:15)! Verse 11: But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith. Verse 12: AND THE LAW IS NOT OF FAITH: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them.

Verse 13: Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: Based on the above Scripture, don’t ever fall for the preacher’s lie that you show your faith by tithing! The Law is NOT of faith. God is a Perfectionist, and your own works will NOT cut the mustard (see Isa.64:6 to see what God thinks of our best efforts to behave). If you want to know what kind of curses can fall on people who fail to keep God’s Old Law perfectly, just read Deuteronomy Chapter 28! Bereavement, sickness, deep poverty, mental distress, defeat in every area of life. Things didn’t improve for us after I gave all my pennies to the preacher. We had one run of bad luck after another and I wondered why God ignored my prayers for prosperity. Now that I’ve dumped a lot of religious baggage out of my Christian life, Jesus is more precious to me and life is a lot sweeter. It gladdens satan’s evil heart to see the profound spiritual damage done to Christians through tithing. http://kingdomage.tripod.com http://banpreachergreed.tripod.com http://boogerbucks.tripod.com