LCG's Douglas Winnail is out to get more money out of LCG members with Herbert Armstrong's silly money grubbing tithe of the tithe. We are getting close to Feast time in the COG's and it is vitally important that you send in a tithe of your second tithe to help fund the ministry to be able to attend their dream Feast sites. What better way to keep the Feast than to have an all expenses paid cruise. Its a shame that a chruch that takes in millions and millions of dollars a year cannot spring for funding a Feast buildings around the world. You would think that LCG and other COG's would pay for rental facilities as a Thank-you for brethren sending in their tithes all year long which keep the ministry and leaders in their luxurious homes surrounded by fine art, gold and silver. But no, its important to continue to take and take from already financially stretched thin members. Besides, it keeps them in submission by making them feel guilty when they did not send anything in.
Tithe of the Second Tithe
For those who are able to contribute a tithe of their second tithe to help defray the expenses involved in conducting the annual Holy Days, including the Feast of Tabernacles, it would be greatly appreciated if this contribution could be sent at this time (if it has not already been sent). The tithe of the second tithe is used to help brethren with limited funds attend the Feast of Tabernacles, as well as to pay for hall rentals and other administrative costs associated with the annual Holy Days. LCG Weekly Update
17 comments:
Attention for all Olde Testament Christians: There is no such thing as 2nd tithe for the feast. Moreover, there is no real support in the New Testament for keeping the physical rituals of the Feast. For one thing, there's no Temple in Jerusalem and Christians don't offer animal sacrifices.
You owe the LCG nothing.
And if you plan to go to the Feast to hear the lies of British Israelism, doomsday, false church history and false prophets, you can just forget it: God got so fed up that He said, "I hate your feasts".
And He wasn't talking about Halloween.
Fools.
So if this is so important and righteous, why is there no reference to the "tithe of the tithe" concerning Festival funds anywhere in the Bible?
How were they able to keep the Feasts in the Bible without it?
Truth of the matter is that back in the old WCG where this practice originated, that nearly all the halls were provided for by local Chamber of Commerces who ponied up the funds for halls in exchange for bringing in thousands of visitors spending 10% of their incomes.
Other perks the church received were many free hotel rooms, and other compensations. There was never a need to shake down the people for another "tithe of the tithe".
The tithe of the tithe was for the Levites to send 10% of their received tithes to and for, the priests.
Today this illegal tithe is used to pay for the ministers attending the feasts.
Yes folks, your minister gets a 10% bonus of his salary for his enjoyment at the feast.
How do you feel about that? Does it make you angry? Does it raise the hair on the back of your head?
Only Levites were authorized to accept tithes from the Israelites.
Pastors are not Levites. Christians are not Israelites.
Jews today do not tithe because there is no temple and no Levites to collect it.
What do you call someone who takes from you what he is not authorized to take? A THIEF.
Mal 3. Who is the REAL thief? Not those who do not tithe; but pastors who accept them.
A couple things merit noting. One is that the tone of Winnail's request is not characteristic of the normal authoritarian rantings of Armstrongite ministers. He appears to display a certain amount of tact, and to be requesting help as opposed to demanding that these moneys be sent to the Charlottans under penalty of the Germans or Lake of Fire. I wonder what could have caused this departure.
Also, back in the day, following the Feast, members were instructed to send in their excess second tithe, placing it under the discretion of the church. It was not "lawful" (as if anything about an illegal tithe could be lawful in the first place!) to spend the excess for normal living expenses. People who had excess sent it in.
But, alas! Tithe of tithe hit everyone, not just the fortunate few who actually had excess, and it speeded up the time cycle for HWA, so that he did not have to wait for this infusion of cash until after the feast. Yet another guilt trip tool in Herbert's formidable arsenal!
BB
If you think tithes are to be done away with, why then did Jesus say: "These ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone."
Mat 23:23 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Repeated Luke 11:42 "Tithe" occurs 14 times in the KJV...check blue letter bible. The way the Armstrongists use it, is very wrong...We are to help the poor, but they are shutting out the kingdom when they themselves are not entering in...Hypocrites.
Jesus hadn't died yet, or fulfilled the Old Covenant, anonymous. The New Covenant had not yet begun, the temple was still standing, and there still existing Levites and Priests, authorized to receive tithes. The tithes which Jesus cites in his example are also agricultural, not financial, which is in keeping with Old Covenant law.
Gal 3:17
And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect.
People have difficulty in understanding the covenant/agreement, if you read carefully the Word..check blue letter bible just by entering covenant and see what you come up with. New covenant is that God is putting His laws/ways in our hearts, but we must want it...SEEK HIM. Jesus stated he did not come to abolish the law or the Prophets, but to accomplish/fulfill. (using the not abolish with doing away with, is very contradictory). Dividing the bible between new and old, is a new thing, man made.
Leviticus 23:40-44
40 - And ye shall take you on the first day the boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook; and ye shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days
Have the ministers live In the above described Feast lodging. Might teach them humility. The administrative cost for branches and leaves would be quite low.
Dude, you may want to check the commentaries at Biblehub.com related to Gal:3:17.
There is a lot of pressure by ministers even in mainstream religion to get their flocks to tithe. Church buildings, ministers salaries, ect.. cost a lot. Never mind the fact that tithing is totally unscriptual.
This is the problem with organized religion. Why belong to any religion? Save that 10% for future needs, (retirement,childrens education ect..) If you believe in God you can have a close relationship with him without belonging to any religion and bowing down to a minister or organization.
Anon at 5:15 pm, I like your proposal that ministers attending the Feast should lodge in what fundamentalists in the Ozarks used to call brush arbors. Your comment "Might teach them humility" is an understatement. They would probably shit all over themselves.
The palm leaves used to shingle the shelters then call to mind the old line, "With fronds like these, who needs enemas?"
All ministers and evangelists in the COG's should only be allowed to lodge in Motel 6 or Super 8 motels during the Feast. If they are on a cruise they should have the inside rooms on the lower levels. There is not a single one of them that deserve star treatment or luxury accommodations. They should be servants of the poor who struggled to get to their Feasts.
Mikey's right. You owe Doug and all the others nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Tithing was part of the Mosaic law. It was on crops and animals. That's it. That's always been it. That's all it's ever been.
The notion of carrying it over to modern times and applying it to the idea of giving a tenth of your monetary income to a church is patently absurd.
The Armstrongist notion of giving 10 percent to him/them, and then saving 10 percent for the FOT (and stealing a tenth of THAT from you for his/their ministerial banquets and stipends and jet fuel), and then giving another 10 percent to him/them every third year, is TOTALLY bogus.
Once you're able to see the idiocy and greed of that system for what it is, you can move on to living a more fulfilling, comfortable life and providing for you and yours -- something with which they will certainly never concern themselves.
Yahweh in the NT never established an organization with men given various ranks who were given the sheep to lord over.
A careful read of Eph.4:11 plainly shows that what He gave was GIFTS and not RANKS.
Ministers today use this verse to justify ranks, but never did Yahweh or Yahshua establish ranks.
Neither did they establish a tithing system to support those that went around preaching. Those of the NT were encouraged to give as they were able. Preaching was the responsibility of everyone with the Holy Spirit. Except for the apostles that Yahshua Himself selected, others gave of themselves as the Spirit lead them.
It is time to stop feeding the Nicolaitans,and attend to your own family and those that truly need it.
Running a business, you learn very quickly what constitutes a profit (increase), and what ends up being one of the expense items consumed in producing that profit. It is not a simple matter of giving one out of ten animals born on your farm to the priests. That was then, this is now.
The Armstrong method of tithing three tithes on gross would absolutely bankrupt probably about 99% of all companies, although in the business world, we apply the phrase "gross sales receipts" to the annual fiscal picture, not gross income.
There are expenses required just to ante up and exist and work each day, such as all of the taxes, licenses, insurance premiums, clothing, food, auto expenses, education, shelter, etc. The moneys consumed in keeping up with such things just so that you can subsist are in no way increase. Increase is what would tend to produce growth or the amassing of resources, not just your bare survival items.
Each family unit, or individual, is in reality John Doe, Inc, and all of us have our own unique profit and loss situations. In the Armstrong financial model, members were not only tithing on their profits, they were actually tithing while incurring a loss! Frankly, even the IRS is fairer than the ACOGs. Mainstream churches that teach tithing end up doing the same thing, however, they only teach one tithe, and they don't monitor for compliance or punish for noncompliance.
It's not only their voodoo tithing math that's the problem, either. The especially greedy ACOGs want your 401K, your family inheritance, they expect members to tithe on poverty level Social Security benefits, and they don't allow members to retire or become disabled. They even encourage members to run up their credit cards "knowing" (wink, wink) that the church will flee before they are required to pay them off.
Looking for a word to describe their activities, even the "F" word somehow seems woefully inadequate. These teachers are canibalistic pirhanas!
BB
Historically COG's have asked for the Tithe-o-Tithe in the spring, when Feast registration opened.
If he's making an appeal for that around Labor Day, does that say something about LCG members? Maybe about their tithe accounts - or their obedience levels?
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