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PASTOR ADEBOYE, THE TITHING APOLOGY, MY FIGHT WITH MY DAD WHO WAS A PASTOR UNDER PASTOR ADEBOYE, AND ANOTHER NEW BIBLICAL ERROR PASTOR ADEBOYE HAS MADE AFTER HIS APOLOGY
I have seen a video circulating about Pastor E.A Adeboye apologizing for his famous position he has held for many years that non tithers would not make Heaven.
Pastor Adeboye is a huge Principality in the Spirit Realm, and anyone with the Seeing Eye or a Prophetic eye would agree with me.
That notwithstanding, my pain after listening to that apology was that it reminded me of my late Dad. I am sad that he isn’t alive to hear Pastor Adeboye apologise on what we argued vehemently for years during our Family Bible studies at home.
My Father was anointed and ordained by Pastor E.A Adeboye right there at the Redemption Camp many years ago. My Dad was a Pastor for so many decades in Pastor Adeboye’s church, and although my dad was very deep in the prophetic and demonstrated many gifts of the Spirit, we had our own fierce disagreement when it came to certain subject in the Word.
One of our biggest contention was the subject of tithe. My Father was one of those who took whatever Pastor Adeboye said hook, line and sinker. And I had a very serious problem with that. I always told my Dad that, yes, although you are my biological Father, and also my Spiritual Father, but I also, in all humility, think that you are making certain mistakes as a Pastor.
One of the mistakes I pointed to my Dad was that, he needs to realise that Pastor Adeboye was not THE WORD OF GOD. He is also a MAN of God and can err.
Unfortunately, all my persuasive arguments sometimes led to obnoxious discordance and my Dad felt that I wasn’t being spiritual enough, although he could not sufficiently establish their conclusion using scriptures.
I insisted that my Dad and Pastor Adeboye can both never prove this assertion using the scriptures. None of them had any solid grounding in the Word to establish the doctrine that a Christian who doesn’t tithe will not go to Heaven.
But I noticed something, and that thing is still there in the Christendom till today. Most Christians DONT STUDY THE WORD, THEY JUST BELIEVE THEIR PASTOR! They don’t spend quality time to research and study the word to do proper exegesis and rightly divide the Word to compare whatever they are being told on the Pulpit with what the Word of God actually say!
This is a very dangerous way to live as a Christian, when you don’t take your time to read the Word yourself and allow the Holy Spirit to teach you, instead you only listen to your Pastor and assume they are always right.
Paul said follow me as I follow Christ. Immediately your Shepherd is preaching the word and he deviates into an unscriptural area, your antenna should be able to pick that error and delete that part from that food you are feeding your Spirit.
Imagine what next would be apologized for, and if you have lived by that “truth” all your life, denying yourself of certain important things, then after 30 years of holding on to it, your Pastor comes and apologise that he had been wrong all those decades?
Tithe has NO ETERNAL CONSEQUENCES! None! From Old Testament to New Testament, there is no where whatsoever where the Bible says paying Tithes has a special reward beyond this Earth. All tithers in the Bible recieved earthly rewards and earthly blessings.
Even Abraham who paid tithe to Melchizedek, who was a type and shadow of Christ, He never promised Abraham any eternal value, all through scriptures, the reward of Scriptures had always been an earthly reward.
Aside Pastor Adeboye, another person I heard preaching similar message many years ago was Pastor George Agyeman of Winners Chapel Ghana. I heard him right with my own ears on Sunny FM one afternoon, that if you don’t pay tithes you are Cursed.
This is a big Lie! There is absolutely no Born Again Christian that can be cursed by non payment of tithes. A Christian has been born unto mount Zion as a completely blessed seed of Christ! Only spiritually blind and malnourished Christians get frightened and miseducated by these errors from a Preacher – however unintended it could be from that Preacher.
Accurate knowledge of the word of God will give you spiritual boldness and divine liberty in the Spirit Realm.
The truth is, our Pastors and Leaders are also fallible and are also learning, as they grow, they could come into a greater light of the knowledge of Christ, and I completely admire Pastor Adeboye’s courage and humility to be able to boldly come forthright to correct an error that had remain in RCCG for so many decades!
What is more worrying however, is that, after Pastor Adeboye apologized for the error, he then proceeded to make another error. I was very toey when I listened to him go ahead to make a new error on Tithing after he apologized for the first “No tithe no Heaven” error.
And here is the new error:
Pastor Adeboye then said inter alia, that paying one tenth is the basic level of tithing, and that the members should go beyond paying a tenth and start paying more, they can pay tithe of 20%, 30%, 40% etc. So paying one tenth is low and inadequate especially for those who have been in it for long.
Respectfully, this is not correct. It’s a new error. It’s like he apologized to correct an old error and created a new one howbeit unintentionally.
Tithe has a DEFINITE Literal Meaning in the Scriptures. Tithe is not a subjective phenomenon. It has a clear interpretation and never anywhere in scriptures was the definition in doubt or at variance with the original understanding that TITHE IS TENTH!
A tithe CAN NOT be more than 1/10. The meaning of Tithe is 1/10.
Now, it is possible that a Believer can be led by the Spirit to give more than 1/10. That giving would no longer be called Tithe, it might be an offering, a seed, etc but never Tithe because anything beyond ONE TENTH can’t be called tithe since tithe means a Tenth.
The Bible is not Confusing at all, you have to put in alot of effort to confuse people with scriptures.
Let me give you an example:
If I gave you $100 and I said; “Give HALF of this money to your Dad”
You wouldn’t be confused or ask me any questions as to how much to give your Dad, why? Because HALF HAS DEFINITION! Half has a definite literal meaning. It is 50%! In Arithmetic, half as a fraction would be 1/2.
This means, you know that the amount I expect you to give your Dad is $50.
Now, you can decide that you love your Dad so much because he has done much good for you, and so you prefer to give him $75 instead of $50. That is fine, but would $75 still be half of $100? NO! That would no longer be called Half, that would be THREE QUARTERS, in arithmetic, three quarters as a fraction would be 3/4.
It would be an absurdity and very unintelligible to insist that although you gave your dad $75, it is still half of $100 that I had advised you to give him. Does this make sense?
So yes, Tithe will forever mean 1/10. It is what it is. Anyone that says you can pay more and it’s still tithe, has to write their own new human language, create their dictionary for that language, and give us a new definition and arithmetic fraction of what Tithe would mean in that World.
Infact, when you have time, research it yourself and go back into time for the etymological analysis of the term Tithe, you would come back without any equivocation to the conclusion I have drawn – it is, and has, and would always be a tenth.
I respectfully submit therefore, that Pastor Adeboye, suggesting to us that we can pay more than 10% as Tithe, is an error, a new one he has created. And he also could not substantiate it in the Word of any instance where anyone paid or gave more than 10% and it was still called a tithe.
For the sake of emphasis, I haven’t said one can’t give more than 10% to God. Many of us do way more. But it won’t be tithe anymore. Tithe has a fixed meaning and measure – it is tenth. Anything you give more could be called anything else including special offering, seeds, etc.
Now…in conclusion, it is also false that if you don’t pay tithe, a Devourer would devour you. That Malachi 3:10 Preachers quote, was not referring to you and I, it was referring to Priests of their days.
Today in Christ, no Devourer can devour us because we have been translated out of darkness into the Kingdom of His Dear Son. We are sitted together with him in Heavenly places in Christ where no Devourer can even access!
Should a Christian pay tithe at all? This is a topic for another day, so I don’t digress.
Is this article saying you shouldn’t pay tithe? No. I haven’t said that. I have only clarified some errors that has been miscommunicated from the pulpit and has put many in fear and miseducation of the Word!
Shalom!
~ BigGodwin Martey
