Robbing God of Tithes and Offerings: An Exegetical Compendium of Scriptural Injunctions And Carnal Doctrinal Extrapolations

Robbing God of Tithes and Offerings

Tithes and Offerings: Scriptural Injunctions and Carnal Doctrinal Extrapolations

Michael Umunna, ThD

The Ultimate Gentile

Contents

Dedication

Preface

Untitled

1. Question of the tenth: A Compendium of Definitional Thoughts on the Tithe

2. Tithe as Tax: Historical Considerations

3. The Tithe as Old Testament Covenant for Jews

And he blessed him and said…

4. Formalization of the Tithe as a Tenth: The Tithes of Abraham and Jacob

5. Tithes and Offerings: Formal Scriptural Injunctions

Ever since the time…

6. Robbing God: Disloyalty in Spiritual Places

7. Bridging the covenants: the relevance of Malachi’s gospel in the explication of the use and misuse of the robbing of God narrative

8. Carnal Doctrinal Extrapolation: Use and misuse of scriptural narratives for personal magnification

9. Devine Intervention: The Message of Malachi

This is the covenant…

10. It is finished: Christ’s Utmost Sacrifice and the Ushering in of the Gospel of Grace

Christ is the end…

11. Christ Fulfilled the Law and the Prophets

The point is this…

12. The Worth of God’s Grace Through Faith

Notes

Contents

Dedication

Preface

Untitled

1. Question of the tenth: A Compendium of Definitional Thoughts on the Tithe

2. Tithe as Tax: Historical Considerations

3. The Tithe as Old Testament Covenant for Jews

And he blessed him and said…

4. Formalization of the Tithe as a Tenth: The Tithes of Abraham and Jacob

5. Tithes and Offerings: Formal Scriptural Injunctions

Ever since the time…

6. Robbing God: Disloyalty in Spiritual Places

7. Bridging the covenants: the relevance of Malachi’s gospel in the explication of the use and misuse of the robbing of God narrative

8. Carnal Doctrinal Extrapolation: Use and misuse of scriptural narratives for personal magnification

9. Devine Intervention: The Message of Malachi

This is the covenant…

10. It is finished: Christ’s Utmost Sacrifice and the Ushering in of the Gospel of Grace

Christ is the end…

11. Christ Fulfilled the Law and the Prophets

The point is this…

12. The Worth of God’s Grace Through Faith

Notes

To my mother, Mrs. Philomena Odah Umunna,

who always wished and prayed that one of her five sons will be Catholic priest.

You never thought it would be me doing the work of God, neither did I, as you well know, I was your son for a very long time – at least until I graduated from college.

I am not a Catholic priest mom, but I am content with being an Evangelist,

and I am sure you are too.

Preface

The question of what constitutes a tithe, its doctrinal legality in contemporary Christendom, or as a New Testament prescription for attaining sanctification and salvation continues to pervade theological discourse. The tenacity and potency of this tendency are preserved by the proliferation of false doctrines that tend to confuse Christians, especially new converts, in this day and age when intellectual and spiritual laziness engender levels of knowledge porosity and vacuum that are not easily filled. It becomes imperative, therefore, that a sensitive subject matter, such as the tithe, receives the level of attention necessary to appropriately educate the mind of a confused subject, using relative Biblical materials. Hence the necessity of the appropriate extension or suffix of the foundational title of this exegetical exercise: … scriptural injunctions and carnal doctrinal extrapolations.

Based on facts from extensive research, it is determined that the tithe literarily means a tenth; and in much of Old Testament revelation, no divergent definitional attempt was strictly made to deviate from this understanding. In actuality, scriptural sources made it clear that the tithe represented both a form of thanksgiving to God for his omnipresent providence, and propitiation to him for forgiveness of sin. It is also clear that the spiritual logistics and rituals that accompanied the presentation of the tithes were necessary for the reestablishment of spiritual cohesion between Almighty God and his people, who had almost completely lost consciousness of his character due to their servitude and subordination in Egypt.

Scriptural facts also reveal that in the immediate pre-entry Israeli socio-cultural context into Canaan [the Promised Land], the relevance of the collection of the tithe became more potent since it was extensively supposed to meet the survival needs of priests and Levites, who had the primary obligation of orchestrating the maintenance of the territorial integrity [doctrinally, spiritually, socially, and economically] of God’s sanctuary. The inability of the achievement of this reality, due to the carnality of the inheritors of God, engendered another phase of the subjection of God’s people into captivity.

However, with the coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and his accompanying gospel of grace, the fight to rid humanity of spiritual captivity, most especially, is tougher because it is not just Israel now, but people of all nations and their idiosyncrasies that must be tampered with to reach their hearts.

This task is arduous indeed; Christianity and Christians are besieged by a crop of prosperity preachers and false prophets who use the Bible to satisfy their personal needs through a process I call carnal doctrinal extrapolation.

This presentation debunks that tendency with an in-depth reliance on Scriptures in the explication of God’s truth. To do this effectively, supportive narratives are extensively quoted and digested for the purpose of securing the reader’s attention in the here and now, while ensuring that nothing that helps to clarify an issue [including background narratives] are left unemployed.

It is hoped that, while this effort does not pretend to answer all the questions regarding tithes and offerings, it will help in some appreciative measure to answer the following questions:

What is a tithe?

What are offerings?

How are they related?

What was the purpose of the tithe?

What is the purpose of offerings?

Is tithing scripturally prescribed?

Is the tithe prescribed in New Testament theology?

How should representatives of God ensure, through the management of God’s offerings, that His character is manifested and His image magnified?

For the purpose of historical relevance at this point only, it is worthy of mention that in the Bible, specifically in the Old Testament Books of Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, relative to tithing in Jewish society: the tithe system was organized in a seven-year cycle, the seventh-year corresponding to the *Shemittah-cycle (the seventh year in the seven-year agricultural cycle, when the land is left to lie fallow – emphasis mine) in which year tithes were broken-off, and in every third and sixth year of this cycle the Second tithe was replaced with the Poor man’s tithe. These tithes were in reality more like taxes for the people of Israel, and were mandatory. Not optional giving.

The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago

1

Question of the tenth: A Compendium of Definitional Thoughts on the Tithe

The term Tithe originated from an Old English word teogopa , which means tenth. ¹ In universal application, based on this basic definition, a tithe could be said to quantifiably describe one-tenth of anything. For instance, if one was to possess one hundred pieces of, say tubers of yam, from a bountiful harvest, a tenth or 10 pieces extracted from the total quantity would constitute a tithe – a tenth or one-tenth, as you may.

Beyond this basic conceptualization, the word tithe has also been employed as descriptive of parameters for measuring, and, in some instances, actually determining levels of taxation and giving in diverse classical and contemporary societies.

While it is not my intention to pursue a comprehensive historical analysis of the origins of the tithe or tithing, as the case may be, within the purview of my present consideration, suffice it to say that elements of historical perspectives of tithing as a practice [outside religious considerations] will indeed be summoned, where and when their application are essential, especially in explicating the potency of the practice in contemporary Christendom. Therefore, as we proceed in the primary pursuit of examining scriptural prescriptions of tithes and offerings and their carnal extrapolations, the historical elements that constitute the next several paragraphs will be of immense foundational necessity.

2

Tithe as Tax: Historical Considerations

Since ancient times, the Jews have practiced some form of tithing. ² Some historical documents claim that the practice of tithing was widespread in the Ancient Near East – cultures with which Israel socially communed. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago listed the following instances of the Mesopotamian tithe:

the tithe system was organized in a seven-year cycle, the seventh-year corresponding to the *Shemittah-cycle (the seventh year in the seven-year agricultural cycle, when the land is left to lie fallow – emphasis mine) in which year tithes were broken-off, and in every third and sixth year of this cycle the Second tithe was replaced with the Poor man’s tithe. These tithes were in reality more like taxes for the people of Israel, and were mandatory. Not optional giving.³

According to the same source, among the English, the legal right to receive tithes was granted in 855 to the English Church by King Ethelway. The English tithe, which was collected as a royal tithe, and assessed using ecclesiastical boundaries in 1188, was called the Saladin tithe. This application of religion to shield what, in all ramifications, was actually a government sanctioned affair, was legalized by the Westminster Statute of 1285. Several enlightened scholars, of the period and later on, frowned against this legal action by the government, including the notable economist, Adam Smith, who criticized the move in his Wealth of Nations in 1776. The system was gradually decimated in 1836 with the tithe commutation act, which shifted the religious undertone of this tithe system to specifically address taxes on land awards and/or rentages classified as commutation payments.

In France, the tithe referred to as "la dime,"