I (personally) find Pastor Sunday Adelaja’s teaching on tithing to be bold and biblical. John MacArthur is another person I find biblically honest with the biblical position on tithing. Thank God that many other teachers are doing the right thing.
Unfortunately, many pastors are teaching Christians that they are compelled to tithe. Some even teach that Christians can be cursed by God when they don’t tithe, citing Malachi. As John MacArthur notes, tithes were part of the law designed to fund the national government of the theocracy of Israel. We are not under such law today. We pay taxes to our governments today for that same purpose. Paul in the New Testament impels us to pay such taxes to governments. In part, I cite these two megachurch pastors to show that God’s people can generously give when they are taught to give biblically, out of love, cheerfully, not under compulsion. I believe many pastors keep this burden hanging on their members because they think that will cause them to give, even though statistics show that only a small percentage of people actually tithe.
My guess is that preaching this false requirement of tithing actually hurts these pastors’ financial goals. I say this not because I think pastors should have their hand on the pulse of money as they interpret and preach scripture. Unfortunately, some do regardless of what anyone else says. If someone isn’t able to give 10% as required but may have given 5% cheerfully and sometimes more than 10% cheerfully, they would feel guilty that they just can’t ever measure up to “God’s” standard of tithing and just don’t even give 5% at all, at least not without much guilt-tripping.
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