Questions & Answers
Questions 161 (COD Page 680)
Would it be wrong to use tithes on church building funds?
176 Well now, here–here’s a touchy little thing for the church now. No, correctly tithes is to go to the minister. That’s right! In the Bible they had a box they’d set at the door in the Old Testament when the–building. This box was a fund where the people put in there for the repairing...You’ve read it many times in the Old Testament. They kept up the buildings and things like that...All the repairs on the building was taken care out of that fund. But a tenth of that went–a tenth of the tithings–all the tithings went to their priests, their pastors. Yes, tithings are to go for nothing else.
177 I know people take their tithes and give them to a widow woman. That’s wrong. If you’ve got anything to give the widow woman, give her, but don’t give her God’s money. That’s not yours in the first place. That’s God’s!
178 If you sent me downtown to get a loaf of bread, and you give me twenty-five cents to get the loaf of bread, and I met somebody on the street wanted it...something else, and I’d give him the twenty-five cents, see, I give them your money. If they asked me for something, let them get it over here in this pocket and give them my money; but this is your money. And a tenth of it is the Lord’s. And Levi, the priesthood, lived by the tenth.
179 The tenth is to be a tithing that’s to be brought into the storehouse with a promise of God to bless it. And a proof, He said, “If you don’t believe it, come and prove Me and see if I won’t do it.” See? That’s right!
180 The tithings goes into the church for the pastor and so forth like that to live on. And then the–the–the building funds and things like that is a separate fund altogether. Now, that–that is Scriptural.
181 One time when we get started, I want to take a night...I’ve went here some time ago before I left the tabernacle and taken about two or three weeks and just on subjects like that and went plumb through it and showed what tithings was in the church.