Tithe and Be Happy
Is it wrong to challenge God? To test Him? It cannot be wrong for He has told us to do so and I have proved Him for twenty-five years, with great blessing. “Prove Me now herewith.” He says through His Prophet Malachi “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.”
Well, I have taken God at His Word and proved Him, by giving Him my tithe as faithfully as I could this last twenty-five years and I am able to witness before all men that He has more than kept His Promise.
When my wife and I first began to tithe, we were quite heavily in debt, we owed a large hospital bill, besides others of considerable amounts for the purchase of our land and home.
One day in the local store, I picked up a small pamphlet on tithing; it had been packed in with a case of fruit jars, and gave the writer’s experience of tithing. I read it over on the way home, and showed it to my wife. That evening we began to tithe. Now, after twenty-five years, it has become the first essential. The first thought when any money comes into the house is, … How much tithe will there be – and what can we do with it.
God has blessed us every moment of those twenty-five years and guided us in many more ways than with the tithe, so that now we depend upon Him entirely for all that we do.
Being a government official with a regular monthly cheque coming in, it has been an easy matter to reckon upon a tenth of our income in cash. We also kept a cow and a few chickens, and had a small garden and tithed everything we produced; gave either a tenth of the vegetables, eggs and milk away to someone in need, or else tithed any money we might receive if we sold any surplus.
We did not give all our money to the Church, because we realized that in olden days when the tithe was originated, one tenth went to the Temple Treasury and the other nine-tenths to the rest of the Tribe of Levi for the upkeep of schools, national administration, etc. Today a similar arrangement would be to pay one tenth to the Church, and nine tenths to the State.
Nowadays, however, because of our sins, the State taxes us far more than it should; but that, we decided was part of our national punishment for neglect of God’s Laws, and not to be taken into account as part of God’s tithe. If we honoured God, we believed, by paying His tithe He would honour us by making it possible for us to pay our taxes with little or no trouble and so it has turned out all through the years.
It was not very long before all our debts were paid off and we soon found that we could add to the ten per cent as a free will offering. We have always had enough, and more than enough; always able to meet any demand for some deserving object we felt impelled to help. God has invariably shown us how to use our tithe and what worthy objects or persons we should help, besides enabling us to print and circulate thousands of free pamphlets, and to purchase all the books we needed for further study of His Word.
Apart from financial blessing, which has always been enough, although not wealth in the same sense some people count it, we have had those far greater blessings, peace of mind, health, happiness, a good home, and a joy of life which is absolutely priceless. God has been wonderful to us, far above anything we could ever have imagined, and all because we have taken Him at His Word and PROVED Him as He said.
Now, we would not give up tithing for anything in the world in fact we could not, it has become a part of our lives. Every day we thank God for teaching us His laws, and helping us to keep them, and we feel that it is our duty and privilege to pass on our experiences wherever we can.
Read about tithing in Malachi III. God’s Promise is good for everyone who believes it and will act upon it.
