The message of Jesus Christ which was in short “the gospel of the kingdom of God”, has been compromised and been used to create the institutionalize religion we call Christianity that is seen in the USA today.
Another way the gospel message has been compromised is when you hear institutionalized religious leaders in Jesus name telling follower of Jesus that God wants them to tithe under the New Covenant.
If you survey the New testament you will not find a request or command for the body of Christ to tithe. You will find requests for the body of Christ to give however this giving was for limited and specific purposes. It was to meet the needs of fellow believers and support those who were given the task of using their gift of shepherding a local body of believers. Specially to defray the cost of their living needs. That was it. Today however because of the institutionalization of Christianity churches have become business. Religious leaders receive salaries and benefits greater then their parishioners. There is this pastor that waits in line for the next model of the iPhone while parishioners in the body he's shepherding are waiting in line for food stamps. Then on Sunday morning this pastor tells these same parishioners that they need to tithe because it is God's will for them. This so that he can maintain his upper middle class to six figure income and benefits. This pattern is seen in most churches across America. It inevitably leads to the selling of Jesus for profit through books, sermons, music, products and the like. The institutionalization of Christianity into a religion now ignores Jesus' words "Freely you have received, freely give....for the worker is worth his keep."
I'm aware of all the scriptures that are used to justify tithing. I use to use them. The most used one is this:
Malachi 3:10 (NIV)
[10] Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.
This scripture is for a specific people under the Old Covenant. Isn't is strange that in all the writing of the NT when the apostles asked the body of Christ to giving they never once told them that tithing was necessary? Why? Because tithing was to maintain the Temple system of the Old Covenant. This was no longer necessary because we are not under the Old Covenant anymore and we aren't suppose to have a temple system anymore. However, that's what has been done with Christianity today. It start way back during the time of Constantine and hasn't stopped. The Catholic Church refined it, abused it and the Reformation continued it.
The money collected today in churches everywhere barely goes to meet the needs of the local body of believers. Instead the money goes toward building buildings, all the utilities that go to maintain these buildings, the renovations for these buildings, sound systems, lighting systems, elaborates holiday displays, and the list can go on. The point is the money we see being collected in the NT was to meet the needs of individuals in the body of Christ but now has become a prop to make a select few wealthy, keep the institutionalization religion of Christianity alive and give the devil a foothold in the gospel of the kingdom of God.
The life of a church today must serve money to exist, therefore the false justification of tithing.
Matthew 6:24 (NIV)
[24] “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
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