Tithing is an interesting paradigm that has been redefined and expounded upon into oblivion. The plethora of teachings about the tithe has become so butchered and ground up into an unrecognizable, bloody mess that it no longer has any distinguishable form.
The law of God that defined and governed the tithe stipulated these things (this is not an exhaustive dissertation):
* The tithe was only a tenth from the flocks, herds, orchards, vineyards and fields.
* The tithe never had anything to do with monetary wages, such as the wages earned by the men hired to harvest the crops, orchards and vineyards.
* The tithe was never a tenth of processed products such as every tenth chair or table made by a carpenter (hint, hint), or every tenth pair of shoes from the cobbler, or every tenth yard of woven material from clothiers and weavers, etc.
* The tithe was a part of the written law of God, and therefore inseparable from the rest of the written law.
The tithe does not predate the law to the time of Abraham because:
* Abraham gave a tenth of the spoils of war he is never said to have ever repeated, and never had it in his mind to keep what he knew was originally not his own property since we know that he intentionally brought it all back to the original owners who may very well have died without its return.
* The nation of Israel never, throughout her whole history, mimicked what Abraham did with the spoils of war.
* Abraham's tithe is not a principle the Lord demanded or even hinted that the rest of humanity should follow, especially given that his personal wealth was still located in northern Canaan at the time he met up with Melchizedek (nobody in their right mind took along all their wealth on a mission of war), so Melchizedek received not one red cent of Abraham's personal wealth so far as we know.
Giving is the only principle established by Paul to the Church, based upon no preconceived threshold of a percentage or anything else false teachers demand from their pulpits. Paul never taught that the primary portion of one's giving was to be rightfully utilized for the support of dead buildings, programs, materials, carpeting, parking lots, chandeliers, stained glass windows, et al.
The primary portion demonstrated in scriptures all went for the meeting of needs first and foremost, but modern, western practices have the primary portion funneled into the facility and staffing before anything is used for the meeting of needs and missions (according to a Christianity Today article from the 1990's).
Now, I'm not saying that a group of professing believers don't have the right to possess communal property where they can meet together in the luxuries of comforts, but when they elevate that ownership to the level of requirement and an alleged measure by which they assume is God's prescribed model for what a real local church should look like, that's where I draw the line. The Church is people, whether they are a part of some grouping with a communal building with or without religious exercises.
The day is fast approaching in these last days that possession of communal property for religious exercise will come to a close for those that refuse to tout the worldly ways and values.
Besides, I never could master the art of fellowshipping with the backs of other people's heads...
MM
The law of God that defined and governed the tithe stipulated these things (this is not an exhaustive dissertation):
* The tithe was only a tenth from the flocks, herds, orchards, vineyards and fields.
* The tithe never had anything to do with monetary wages, such as the wages earned by the men hired to harvest the crops, orchards and vineyards.
* The tithe was never a tenth of processed products such as every tenth chair or table made by a carpenter (hint, hint), or every tenth pair of shoes from the cobbler, or every tenth yard of woven material from clothiers and weavers, etc.
* The tithe was a part of the written law of God, and therefore inseparable from the rest of the written law.
The tithe does not predate the law to the time of Abraham because:
* Abraham gave a tenth of the spoils of war he is never said to have ever repeated, and never had it in his mind to keep what he knew was originally not his own property since we know that he intentionally brought it all back to the original owners who may very well have died without its return.
* The nation of Israel never, throughout her whole history, mimicked what Abraham did with the spoils of war.
* Abraham's tithe is not a principle the Lord demanded or even hinted that the rest of humanity should follow, especially given that his personal wealth was still located in northern Canaan at the time he met up with Melchizedek (nobody in their right mind took along all their wealth on a mission of war), so Melchizedek received not one red cent of Abraham's personal wealth so far as we know.
Giving is the only principle established by Paul to the Church, based upon no preconceived threshold of a percentage or anything else false teachers demand from their pulpits. Paul never taught that the primary portion of one's giving was to be rightfully utilized for the support of dead buildings, programs, materials, carpeting, parking lots, chandeliers, stained glass windows, et al.
The primary portion demonstrated in scriptures all went for the meeting of needs first and foremost, but modern, western practices have the primary portion funneled into the facility and staffing before anything is used for the meeting of needs and missions (according to a Christianity Today article from the 1990's).
Now, I'm not saying that a group of professing believers don't have the right to possess communal property where they can meet together in the luxuries of comforts, but when they elevate that ownership to the level of requirement and an alleged measure by which they assume is God's prescribed model for what a real local church should look like, that's where I draw the line. The Church is people, whether they are a part of some grouping with a communal building with or without religious exercises.
The day is fast approaching in these last days that possession of communal property for religious exercise will come to a close for those that refuse to tout the worldly ways and values.
Besides, I never could master the art of fellowshipping with the backs of other people's heads...
MM