For decades the church looked for ways to get more money from the membership and the tithe of the tithe was one of those con games. The mother church, the Worldwide Church of God was bringing in sometimes a million dollars a day in tithes and offerings from members who struggled to make ends meet. That money went to pay for lavish homes, gold, silver, fine art, concert series, and building three campuses. One would think that the church should carry on with that process and pay for Feast site locations through those tithes or with offerings taken up on the two holy days of the Feast. Not content with raking in that money, they wanted more and the tithe of the second tithe was instituted as the 4th tithe church members had to pay.
UCG found a subtle way of taking the word tithe out of the equation in order to make people think they were giving an offering instead. Today in 2023 some are looking to bring back the tithe of the tithe. and the Council now is looking into it again.
The next time COG leaders try and guilt you into paying a tithe on your second tithe take that money and instead take your family out to dinner inviting some widows/elderly, singles, and those you know that are struggling financially or better yet, give THEM the money. The church does not need it and God certainly does not!
Chairman Martin then turned the floor over to Brain Shaw to lead a discussion on the possibility of a policy statement concerning the subject of the Tithe of the Tithe.
Mr. Shaw began by explaining why he wanted to have this discussion. He mentioned that he has been approached by members who have asked if the Church still requires the members to give a tithe of the second tithe in order to pay for facilities at the Feast of Tabernacles. He commented that we used to have a statement on it in the Feast brochure, however, it seems that the policy has been inconsistent. Is it optional? Is it not optional?
Mr. Shaw said that it’s clear that it’s not a biblical command, but a policy that was put into place years ago in order to help pay for festival cost. Mr. Shaw added that, as a pastor, he would like to see us have a policy or clarify our stance on this matter. He then opened the floor for discussion.
During the discussion it was mentioned that the term “Tithe of the Tithe” is not used anymore and has been replaced with the term, “Festival Fund.” Chris Rowland reminded the Council that a resolution concerning the Tithe of the Tithe was passed by the Council on February 12, 1997.
Chairman Martin made a motion for consent without resolution to remand this to the Education Committee for the purpose of examination of the 1997 Resolution and report back to the Council in the August meetings with their suggestion. Eleven Council members supported the motion, one abstained.
24 comments:
Robbers, Thieves manipulating & weaponizing words/scripture to continue to steal.
Even the late James Malm condemned the tithe of a second tithe. The first feast site I attended in the late 1970s demanded a "registration fee." I forget the exact amount, but it struck me as being large.
The Herbert Armstrong splits teach the tithing law reverted back to a law that existed "in the beginning" before Moses after the change in the Levitical priesthood, and the proof such a law existed was that Jacob and Abraham tithed.
Jacob also did this: And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chesnut tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods. And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink.
Is it a law then to set rods before the flocks? No. Where is the law that I can read that commanded tithing before Moses? Can't read. There isn't any.
This tithe of tithe drove me nuts as it was clearly not commanded in the Bible. But being the dutiful member, I did it anyway. There were a lot of unbiblical offerings and tithing practices already, this was just one more. One thing I NEVER did was surrender the remainder of my Second Tithe after a Feast. I just left it in the account to roll into the next year. I could fly First Class or get a better hotel room. No where in the Bible did it say you had to surrender the remainder back to Headquarters. Nor does the command in the Bible say you have to spend it all.
Much like taxes, once a money-making process is in place, they do not like to remove it. RCG is the worst offender due to Common on top of all of this. But one thing ALL COGs do wrong is to collect an offering on Atonement and Trumpets. Not in the Bible. Not at all.
Every time the Offertory guy would read Deuteronomy 16:16 on Atonement and Trumpets, it would irk me. Thrice a year. Yet, the day we were to pass in the green envelope was not one of those three. And who came up with the STUPID idea to take up two offerings during Unleavened Bread and the Feast of Tabernacles? I did what EVERYONE had to. Take your offering and cut it in half. That always struck me as dumb and must have been an HWA tradition that is also NOT biblical.
At least with UCG calling the fee what it is informs the uninformed it is not a commanded tithe.
Churches are wrong to collect any tithes. Especially if they then abuse that money. Malachi 3 is written to the priests of the time in Judah, who were abusing the tithes they received, to spend it on their own pleasures. They were robbing God.
In the same way, if you apply it to the Church, those who do not pay tithes are not robbing God. Those who receive tithes and are abusing them, are robbing God. But there is no command in the Bible to Christians to tithe on anything, and no one ever was told to tithe on money.
Churches in the past received way too much money from tithes, after deceiving members into believing that they better pay tithes of God will cut them off and they would lose their salvation for robbing God.
Yet it was those who received the tithes who robbed God, especially as tithing is not commanded on money or of Christians.
IIRC, the "tithe of the tithe" was the Levites tithing on their income. I have seen some churches try to use that to justify tithing on second tithe, but that is twisting scripture.
I never bought into the tithe of the tithe thing, and have never given it, nor have I given any left over second tithe to the church, which also is not biblical.
If a group agrees amongst itself to do such things, that is fine. To present it as a biblical command is a grave error.
Why don't these church leaders show faith and repudiate these obviously questionable doctrines especially like 3rd tithe, tithe of a tithe and so on. Sometimes if you do the right thing, good results will follow. It just seems too many times they required us to do things they were unwilling to do themselves.
LCG does a tithe of the tithe as well. I remember they brought it up a number of times clumsily trying to insinuate you are stealing from God by not giving them tithe of tithe. Funny thing is, I would probably be paying regular my tithes to them if they didn’t arrogantly overstep in almost everything they do.
What I find interesting is that stealing tithes and offerings and then trying to fleece the brethren for more is despicable. The worst one is the 7 times a year or holy day offerings. In any bible I have ever read it says 3 times a year. Are they afraid they will miss an extra buck that might get away from their greedy little clutches Then they have the con game bring in all your extra change so they can also suck that one up. Then there's the youth camp fund and the African building fund. I find that they never give a clear accounting of what goes where. Never given ministers salaries, cost break down of all expenses and cogwa brags about all they take in and never any detailed accounting, it just shows how corrupt they are with God's money.
When you set yourself up as God's only true church, and claim for yourself the primacy of Peter, and when people accept that and buy into it in order to be baptized, you can for the most part get away with anything for which you cobble together supporting scriptures (even poorly, abusively, or in some cases sidelining scriptures to the contrary).
There is no church which has 100% truth. Armstrongism is just another church, a church with different set of error from those which they condemn. Had they been that special one, exclusive arbiters of all truth, we'd be more than halfway through the first century of the Millennium at this point in time. We did not have tithe of tithe while I was a member, so I never really never had to deal with it, not even as we were reevaluating all the doctrines during the leaving process, and discovering that as one studied, and began to grow beyond the approved "proof-texting" process, most of the doctrines could not be proven at all, because there were scriptures and counter-examples which equally presented viable alternative interpretations. Basically, HWA generally chose the more conservative and restrictive interpretations, and then applied his authoritarian managerial style, thundering them to us with his "born for radio" voice, and threatened us with the Lake of Fire and the Germans, until we complied. Fear of someone who was supposed to be our spiritual "guide" was a new and rare concept in Christianity at that time. Once the soul is broken, what is left but blind compliance?
Back in the day, I was a simple working man, and my wife was a stay at home Mom. We generally had to budget our second tithe so that we could make it through the Feast before second tithe ran out. We weren't madly running around trying to find creative ways to spend every last dollar. I remember one feast when I had filled our gas tank with the last of our second tithe in Bakersfield, had a blown out spare tire, and were praying that we would make it home. I knew many church members who were in the same boat. With my mechanical skills, several asked me to work on their cars to prepare them for the trip. I suspect that there are many "brethren" who are still in that same predicament today, although with the proliferation of credit cards, there is more of a safety net. It is cruel enough to insist that such people pay into "God's Poor Fund" (third tithe). Hitting on them for a tenth of their second tithe defeats one of the taught purposes for the Feast, because it means they must live hand to mouth through the Feast just like they do in daily life the rest of the year. We speak of the graying of the membership. What are seniors on Social Security to do? Splurge and buy a better brand of cat food to eat during the Feast? Is that the best way to portray the Millennium and Kingdom???????
The thing that really irked me was they would ask for the excess second tithe on the opening night of the feast, before you had a chance to even spend it. So much for living like kings for a week, as was promised!
"Mr. Shaw said that it’s clear that it’s not a biblical command, but a policy that was put into place years ago in order to help pay for festival cost. "
Back in the day, local Chamber of Commerce's would make offers of providing free halls, and even a large number of free hotel rooms for the ministers as well. There were few if any "Festival Costs". The tithe of the tithe issue was thus a con. As was 3rd tithe, on top of a Social Security tax , which each year is about 14% !
Herbert use 3rd tithe to purchase his jet, which caused Al Portune to quit. This is all documented in the old Ambassador Reports.
Well if UCG bring back the Tithe of the tithe, and push it on the UCG membership, all that will achieve is a potential mass exodus to COGWA and a complete church disaster.
Especially given the economic climate when many financial experts are warning about a world economic great depression 2.
Why don't they just give up the Old Covenant holy days and get with Christmas and Easter? I like the plan better! You spend your money on friends and family, and get to eat all manner of good food. I don't know if this is truth or just a rumor, but I've heard that the Catholics and Protestants don't make you give them 1/10 of what you are planning to spend on presents. These are holidays which celebrate family and relationships, and you don't have to go on a secret retreat to keep them! Again, just a rumor, but someone told me they talk a lot about Jesus during these two sessons!
COGWA doesn't seem to even mention a "Festival Fund" or Tithe of 2T these days.
But do you think a "registration fee" will be required to attend a millennial Feast in Jerusalem?
I don't see that in Scripture. You simply take your title money (or animals or veggies) and go.
Instead, I see a "fine" or penalty for not attending - as in no rain (Zechariah 14).
This is the result of building a multimillion dollar tv studio in an attempt to draw in new converts with zero being produced. You then have to start digging in the pockets elsewhere with clever twisting of scripture in order to cover costs of failed or barely floating ventures. When you do everything backwards to begin with, you will always be chasing your tail.
Catholics and Protestants do not make you give 1/10. You give what you want. In fact, they are embarrassed to talk about money. They give a break down of building expenses, incomes of the pastor and hired positions. During the year they talk about the many opportunities to sign up to serve in their community and what is going on worldwide they are connected to.
As far as Christmas and Easter, it is not about the exact dates. It is about reading the scriptures surrounding the 2 most important events in the history of the world and acknowledging them because they are grateful to Jesus for agreeing to do this before the foundation of the world Amazing songs are sung that stir the soul like "The Hallelujah Chorus, Joy to the World, What Child is This, O Holy Night.". A Christmas tree is not an idol. If you prayed to the tree asking it to protect you pretending it could see, hear, talk, eat, walk, then the tree would be like an idol. It Is nice to have greenery inside the house for a month of the winter season. My family and relatives brought assigned delicious food to our gatherings. At Thanksgiving we drew 1 name for Christmas coming up in December. We agreed to spend $25 - $30 on one person. Lots of relatives came. They were amazing memories I will always treasure. There was a lot of singing, eating, playing with cousins. We were invited over to friends homes. There was a lot of connecting with family and friends. It strengthened families.
The homes were beautifully decorated.
It was nice for one month bringing the north woods inside, a Norman Rockwell feeling.
I see the fake jesuit Catholics are out in full force. Catholics wouldn't even want you.
I brought it up, and I'm not Catholic. I did attend some Catholic services while married to my second wife. It was an opportunity to check it out in my continuing effort to "prove all things" following the failure of Armstrongism in 1975. But, Catholicism was all a bit too ritualistic for me. Later, I purchased a Catholic study Bible, "The New American Bible", St. Joseph Edition, and read it cover to cover, including all of the footnotes and the Deuterocanonicals (Apocrypha). I also read all of the writings of the Antenicene Fathers, which I could find in English.
So, your Armstrong boiler plate response is highly inaccurate, 4:25. I am not in any way a Jesuit, a Catholic, or a fake Jesuit Catholic. I am an investigator who now takes advantage of things once forbidden to us as members of Armstrongism, in that I have a voracious appetite for reading materials generated by people from outside of the WCG. By the way, I have also read the complete works of Josephus, have visited a Chabad, and occasionally study Jewish materials. That does not make me a Jew, but I do identify more, culturally, with Jews than with Catholics. As for Christmas? Its something I have only done for chicks (wives and girlfriends). Perhaps that last statement will help you with a firmer basis for additional critiques.
9:55 wrote "I am not in any way a Jesuit, a Catholic, or a fake Jesuit Catholic. "
You need to understand where this "Jesuit" name-calling is coming from. It started in Pasadena decades ago by some men (not ordained) who were wrapped up in conspiracy theories. Many were enthralled by Gary North and other uber-conservative people wrapped up in the Christian Reconstionist movement who have long made their goal of turning the United States into a Levitical law-keeping state.
These reconstructionist ideas resonated with uber-conservative WCG members and employees who were pseudo-appalled by the "liberalism" they thought was creeping into the church. They got the Jesusit nonsense from reconstructionists and other anti-catholic literature that circulated through the church underground and even quoted John Adams and his letter to Thomas Jefferson that they deserved “eternal Perdition on Earth and in Hell.”
This kind of stuff feeds the conspiracy theorists in the church big time. Most have no idea what a Jesusit is and can only parrot anti-catholic material and things they read on conspiracy sites.
These same anti-Jesusits were also enthralled by the anti-Jewish book, Protocols of Zion. That too, was widely circulated on the Pasadena underground network.
Another book that floated around for a while was The Three Secrets of Fatima book, though at that time only the first and second visions were available. The third was up to speculation and the conspiracy-laden church members thought it was about the antichrist to come that would work miracles. That vision was released by the Catholic Church in 2000. This one was spread around by a woman who worked in the kitchen. Bob Thiel would wet his pants over this one.
Who you fooling ? Seriously ? Only yourself. Liars who think others believe rubbish lies. Sad. Very sad. But the reality of this blog. Neither one thing nor another.
I ask again, who do you think is fooled by this farce ?
Let's play with the word "tithe" a bit, keeping in mind that there was no punctuation in the original languages of the Bible.
Tithe, backwards, is ehtit. I can't see anything we could do creatively with that, except maybe if we took liberties like King James's committee did and added caps and punctuation, it could become Eh? Tit? Dunno, sounds like a Canadian dude expressing appreciation for a breast after a couple Molsons?
What I've found to be true is that black and white thinkers (aka binary thinkers), tend to have a need to categorize people and to put them into nice, neat little boxes. Once you are in a box, you are a part of one of their straw men. They no longer listen to anything you have to say as an individual, and simplify matters by attacking this straw man for the rest of the discussion. In this case, I simply refused to be their Jesuit for them. It would have been a lie!
NO2HWA From my understanding the name calling of people as “Jesuits” or “temporal coadjutors” etc stems from various Protestant groups like the Baptists going back decades to Jack Chick’s “conspiracy theory” tracts and in particular his “Alberto” comic series as well as in recent times to Eric Jon Phelps and his “Vatican Assassins” book. From these Baptist individuals and groups it would have spread to other Protestants I believe like Adventists and as you say Christian Reconstructionists and Armstrongists, and also other “conspiracy theory” groups that were not isolated to any one Xian group.
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