Tithe Teachers Questioning Our Motives!

What is your motive and why do you research about tithing?

Tithe Teachers and their followers often get mad at us, go off on us and their accusations can be paraphrased as:

• Why do you and your ilk blow the tithing thing out of proportion?
• Why don't you spend your time in telling unbelievers about Jesus instead of wasting your time and our time in creating confusion in the body of Christ by bringing up tithing?
• Don't waste your time and our time like this, be productive in the body of Christ and don't cause division and sow discord among brethren!
• You and your ilk are obsessed by tithing, you guys don't do anything else other than bringing up tithing over and over again!
• You tithe opponents yourselves do not have all answers about tithing and disagree among yourselves, then why do you teach others about tithing in the first place?

Answers:

Evangelism & Tithing:

To respond to the accusation that we don't spend time on evangelizing:

What makes someone think that we focus ONLY on tithing and do not evangelize, it is a logical fallacy to make such assumption?

Jesus not only asked us to evangelize but also to make disciples.

The Greek work for disciple is mathétés simply means a student or a learner. We hear a lot of overtones about discipleship today and most of the discipleship trainers and teachers do not want anyone to learn the truth about tithing, oxymorons!

Ironically, all 5 founders of that diabolical shepherding and discipleship movement were strong proponents of monetary tithing and did not make their disciples to learn the truth about the tithes.

While studying about tithing, we are learning and doing a disciple's job. After evangelizing a person and that person gets born again, we need to make him/her a learner of the scriptures. Tithing is one of the many areas in various topics of the Bible, where a Christian must educate himself/herself.

mathétés: a disciple
Original Word: μαθητής, οῦ, ὁ's
Part of Speech: Noun, Masculine
Transliteration: mathétés
Phonetic Spelling: (math-ay-tes')
Short Definition: a learner, disciple, pupil
Definition: a learner, disciple, pupil.

If teaching the truth about tithing is a waste of time, then how would tithe teachers respond to Apostle Paul in Acts 20:31

who spent a lot of time in warning about wolves unceasingly instead of winning souls(?!?!)

Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears.

Also most of the tithe teachers simply ask unbelievers to utter that "sinner's prayer" and certify that they have been saved!!!! They show no concern about true change of heart. Tithe expert Dr. David Croteau (dissertation in tithing for his Ph.D) has written excellent posts in his blog about alter calls: http://slaveoftheword.blogspot.com/2006/05/argument-for-altar-calls-analyzed.html

. Tithe teachers are quick to water baptize anyone with ulterior motives, ie) just to collect money from them (by making them members and regular attendees of their churches)

Are we obsessed ONLY with tithing?

Tithe teachers assume that we are ONLY interested in the topic of tithing and accuse of over emphasizing the topic of tithing, hence going out of balance.

Specializing on a Biblical topic is not over emphasizing nor going out of balance. For example some are specialists in the topic of Christian Apologetics, some are experts in debunking the myth of evolution, some are experts in Biblical languages etc. It does not mean they are one sided. It is like telling a Cardiologist or a Dermatologist about over emphasizing in their respective specialties and not caring about other diseases/areas of the body!

Also tithing is not our ONLY interest. Russel Earl Kelly has done a lot of research about the Seventh Day Adventists, David Croteau is a professor in New Testament Greek and written about various other topics as well. Rory Moore and Eric Hill who have written books about the tithing truth cast out demons when they encounter them which is simply avoided by most of the tithe teachers. A lot of other anti-tithes in Facebook and in the internet have their own areas of expertise and a lot of other things too apart from tithing research.

Disagreement among anti-tithers:

It is true that the tithe opponents have a lot of disagreements about the nuances in the topic of tithing. Some of us have have different views about multiple tithes, how the 3 tithes were paid during the 7 year cycle, whether animal tithes went to the Levites or to the Priests, Whether Abram tithe to Melchizadek was a tax, was Melchizadek was a pagan, tithing during post exile etc.,

Having different views about various aspects of tithing by itself will no prove us wrong, in fact it proves how complex the subject of tithing is. Doing research about tithing and having an honest discussions about tithing is much better that summing up tithing in simplistic terms such as "The local church is the New Testament storehouse, therefore bring 10% from the gross amount from your paycheck to the local church".

Tithing is a complicated topic, even scholars like Russell Earl Kelly and David Croteau do not have all answers and have disagreements

among themselves.

In spite of our differences about the minute details about tithing we all agree on the following important truths about tithing and we have no questions about the following:

1. Tithes were never referred to earned income or money and it was only from the produce of the land and from the livestock

2. Only the nation of Israel was required pay tithes to the Levites ONLY while living INSIDE the promised land

3. In the New Testament Christians are not required to tithe and no one can tithe according to the Biblical prescription, even if they want to, in the New Testament period.