Author Last Name	North	Keywords	economics
Book Title	Tithing and the Church	Pages	204
Subtitle		Hard/Soft Bound Versions	0930464702

Subject (Series)	Tithe	View Cover	Book Cover
Year of Publication	1994	PDF Filesize in Bytes	10.1 MB
Price of Paper Format	$9.95	Print friendly version	This Book in PDF
Edition	1st

Long Description	Are You A Thief? Probably. Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee In tithes and offering. ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. (Malachi 3:8-10) Your are a thief if you do not give ten percent of your net income to your local church. If you give any portion of this required ten percent to any organization except your local church, you are also a thief, unless your church's elders have authorized you to send a portion of your tithe elsewhere. Who believes this today? Hardly anyone, including the elders of most churches. No Trinitarian denomination anywhere on earth receives ten percent of its members' net income. I know of no denomination that mandates the tithe as a condition of voting membership. Yet as ordained agents of God, the ministers of every congregation should preach the tithe, enforce the tithe, and impose penalties on church members who refuse to pay the tithe - as surely as they should report known thieves to the police. They are God's agents, yet they remain silent. They are watchmen on the watchtower who are afraid to call out a warning. The people in the pews like it this way. They want their religion, but they want it cheap. But aren't Christians under grace? Yes, but this does not mean that every financially strapped Christian has been authorized by God to become a professional thief - to steal for a living. Yet Christians have almost universally become amateur thieves, robbing God. This has been true from the beginning. Christians wonder why God does not pour out His promised economic blessings on Christians in a visibly unique way. They have adopted theologies that proclaim God's refusal to bless Christians on earth. They have chosen to ignore Malachi's warning: they lack much because they have stolen from God. The Victim has imposed His negative sanctions on them. They are under grace; they are also under a curse. In Tithing and the Church, Gary North explains the theological basis for the local church's authority in this regard. The results are grim: churches that beg, parachurch ministries that beg, and a supernatural kingdom that has become stagnant when it has not actually retreated. This will not end until Christians honor their legal obligation to tithe. They will remain in the back of humanism's bus.
Inside Flap
Catalog Description	Men owe God ten percent of any net increase of their income. But which institution lawfully collects the tithe in God's name? The answer today is what it was when Abraham paid his tithe to Melchizedek the priest (Gen. 14:20): the institutional Church. Melchizedek served Abraham bread and wine (v. 18) and blessed Abraham in God's name (v.19). The Church has lawful monopoly claim on the tithe because it has lawful monopoly jurisdiction over the administration of the sacraments. Today, there are parachurch ministries that falsely claim a portion of the tithe. This book presents a theology of the tithe in terms of a theology of the institutional Church. It refutes the arguments that tithing and dominion go together apart from tithing to the institutional Church.