Tithes and Offerings Belong to God

God commands that we pay tithes and give offerings. To withhold either of these is stealing from God. Carefully read Malachi 3:8-12: “Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me. But you say, Wherein have we robbed You? In tithes and offerings. You are cursed with a curse: for you have robbed Me, even this whole nation. Bring you all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in Mine house, and prove Me now herewith, says 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. And I will rebuke the devourer [this means crop-destroying insects] for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, says the LORD of hosts. And all nations shall call you blessed: for you shall be a delightsome land, says the LORD of hosts.”

The penalty for withholding the tithes that belong to God is an automatic curse upon the whole nation. (Read our thorough booklet End All Your Financial Worries.)

God inspired Malachi to write of the blessings that occur upon paying God’s tithes. In the statement, “and all nations shall call you blessed,” God is saying, in effect, “Stop stealing from Me and see if I will not bless you with great abundance.” This is an offer that no individual or nation should pass up.

From the Book of Proverbs

The proverbs below pertain to honesty and integrity, and deceit, theft, robbery and casting lots:

“He that by usury and unjust gain increases his substance, he shall gather it for him that will pity the poor” (Prov 28:8).

“A wicked man takes a gift out of the bosom to pervert the ways of judgment” (Prov 17:23).

“Rob not the poor, because he is poor: neither oppress the afflicted in the gate” (Prov 22:22).

“Whoso is partner with a thief hates his own soul: he hears cursing, and betrays it not” (Prov 29:24).

“The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD” (Prov 16:33).

Also read Proverbs 6:30; 11:1; 16:11; 18:18; 20:10, 23; 21:7; 22:28; 23:10-11; 29:4.

An Unrecognized Form of Robbery

The following is an insightful and fascinating statement from Herbert W. Armstrong’s article “Does God Exist?,” which was printed in The Plain Truth Magazine, in June 1972:

“But now let’s COMPARE the wisdom and intelligence of man with that of GOD who brought these marvels into being, and keeps them functioning.

“The grain of wheat GOD causes to grow out of the ground is a perfect food. But, like other perfect gifts from God, man fails to value the priceless perfection of the all-wise God, and, undertaking to improve on God’s handiwork, perverts, pollutes, and defiles it! Every bit of God’s perfection man’s hand has ever touched, it would seem, he has besmirched, spoiled and polluted!

“And the poor, defenceless grain of wheat is no exception! Into flour mills of human devising go the millions of bushels of healthful wheat. And there the supposedly intelligent human takes it apart, removes the alkaline-reacting mineral elements, and turns out for human consumption sacks of white flour composed largely of the acid-reacting carbohydrate elements—with poison bleach added!

“Out of this, the human population makes health less bread, biscuits, doughnuts, pastries, puddings, macaroni, spaghetti, gravies, etc., etc., often mixing flour with ‘refined’ sugar and greases or fats—a combination guaranteed to wreck any organism in time! Yes, the sugar refiners do the same thing to sugar; and nearly all foods on the market for human consumption today have gone through man’s factories and suffered from man’s processes until they have been devitalized, depleted of their health-giving nutrients, and turned from foods into slow-acting poisons! And these foodless foods with which man has tampered in lust for profits have produced in human bodies a whole series of diseases of which our forefathers of a few generations ago had never heard! There is a reason why the history of degenerative diseases has paralleled the rise of modern technology!

“Today human beings drop dead before their time with heart failure; others die with cancer; the population suffers rheumatism, arthritis, diabetes, kidney diseases, anemia, colds, fevers, pneumonia, and thousands of other diseases. We respond to the toothbrush and toothpaste ads and frantically brush our teeth, but our teeth keep decaying, and we lose them beginning at an early age because of a lack of calcium and other elements in our diet. “It would seem man is not very intelligent after all!

“Then, too, the God who created this earth and all vegetation told us to let our land lie idle every seventh year. But man is too greedy to do that. And so our land is worn out and depleted, and natural good foods such as carrots, beets, and turnips are lacking in the necessary mineral elements and vitamins! And drug companies get rich selling vitamin pills!

“Whose intelligence is higher—that of the GOD who provided every perfect need for every living thing or that of greedy, gullible, God-rejecting humans who in the interest of bigger profits and more luxuries for themselves have ROBBED the very foods which God created and gave us, of their health- and body-building values?”

What If…?

Yet again, we consider the big picture: If the entire world kept the Eighth Commandment, many dramatic changes would result. Most locks would no longer be needed. The remaining locks would be used to signal privacy or to detain prisoners convicted of other crimes. Armoured cars would be obsolete. So would security guards. Theft-related homicides would no longer exist. There would be no need for burglar alarms or steering wheel locks.

Prices in department and discount stores would drop significantly due to the removal of the built-in cushions to cover the cost of shoplifting (called “shrinkage”). Home, car, and business insurance would also drop significantly. Businesses would be more equitable to workers and they would be diligent to honestly work for their pay. Labour unions would not be needed, since workers and employers would be cooperating in a spirit of equity. The elderly would no longer have to be on guard against scam artists that specialize in wiping out their life savings. Bribery, extortion and “white collar” crimes would no longer exist. The world would be a much better place without stealing and robbery. In such a world, instead of the way of get, the benefit-rich way of give would predominate.