tithing

• taxation in light and life

55:3.2Hu­man gov­ern­ment in the con­duct of ma­te­rial af­fairs con­tin­ues to func­tion through­out this age of rel­a­tive prog­ress and per­fec­tion. The pub­lic ac­tiv­i­ties of a world in the first stage of light and life which I re­cently vis­ited were fi­nanced by the tithing tech­nique. Ev­ery adult worker—and all able-bod­ied cit­i­zens worked at some­thing—paid ten per cent of his in­come or in­crease to the pub­lic trea­sury, and it was dis­bursed as fol­lows:

• early form of taxation

70:7.18These clubs were em­ployed by mer­chants to col­lect debts and by rulers to col­lect taxes. Tax­a­tion has been a long strug­gle, one of the ear­li­est forms be­ing the tithe, one tenth of the hunt or spoils. Taxes were orig­i­nally levied to keep up the king’s house, but it was found that they were eas­ier to col­lect when dis­guised as an of­fer­ing for the sup­port of the tem­ple ser­vice.

• Abraham gave 1/10 of his spoils to Salem treasury
• introduced by Abraham

93:3.1With the pass­ing of a decade, Mel­chiz­e­dek or­ga­nized his schools at Salem, pat­tern­ing them on the olden sys­tem which had been de­vel­oped by the early Sethite priests of the sec­ond Eden. Even the idea of a tithing sys­tem, which was in­tro­duced by his later con­vert Abra­ham, was also de­rived from the lin­ger­ing tra­di­tions of the meth­ods of the an­cient Sethites.

• Abraham gave 1/10 of his spoils to Salem treasury

93:5.13When Mel­chiz­e­dek heard of Abra­ham’s dec­la­ra­tion of war, he went forth to dis­suade him but only caught up with his for­mer dis­ci­ple as he re­turned vic­to­ri­ous from the bat­tle. Abra­ham in­sisted that the God of Salem had given him vic­tory over his en­e­mies and per­sisted in giv­ing a tenth of his spoils to the Salem trea­sury. The other ninety per cent he re­moved to his cap­i­tal at He­bron.

93:5.14Af­ter this bat­tle of Sid­dim, Abra­ham be­came leader of a sec­ond con­fed­er­a­tion of eleven tribes and not only paid tithes to Mel­chiz­e­dek but saw to it that all oth­ers in that vicin­ity did the same. His diplo­matic deal­ings with the king of Sodom, to­gether with the fear in which he was so gen­er­ally held, re­sulted in the king of Sodom and oth­ers join­ing the He­bron mil­i­tary con­fed­er­a­tion; Abra­ham was re­ally well on the way to es­tab­lish­ing a pow­er­ful state in Pales­tine.

• tithes paid by all members of Melchizedek brotherhood

93:6.8Upon the con­sum­ma­tion of the solemn covenant, the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion be­tween Abra­ham and Mel­chiz­e­dek was com­plete. Abra­ham again as­sumed the civil and mil­i­tary lead­er­ship of the Salem colony, which at its height car­ried over one hun­dred thou­sand reg­u­lar tithe pay­ers on the rolls of the Mel­chiz­e­dek broth­er­hood. Abra­ham greatly im­proved the Salem tem­ple and pro­vided new tents for the en­tire school. He not only ex­tended the tithing sys­tem but also in­sti­tuted many im­proved meth­ods of con­duct­ing the busi­ness of the school, be­sides con­tribut­ing greatly to the bet­ter han­dling of the de­part­ment of mis­sion­ary pro­pa­ganda. He also did much to ef­fect im­prove­ment of the herds and the re­or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Salem dairy­ing projects. Abra­ham was a shrewd and ef­fi­cient busi­ness man, a wealthy man for his day; he was not overly pi­ous, but he was thor­oughly sin­cere, and he did be­lieve in Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek.

• Jesus tithed from proceeds of dovecote

123:4.4Mary main­tained a dove­cote on top of the an­i­mal house ad­join­ing the home, and they used the prof­its from the sale of doves as a spe­cial char­ity fund, which Je­sus ad­min­is­tered af­ter he de­ducted the tithe and turned it over to the of­fi­cer of the syn­a­gogue.

• minor duty

166:1.4When the Mas­ter had thus spo­ken, they cast their eyes upon the ta­ble and re­mained silent. And since no one spoke, Je­sus con­tin­ued: “Many of you Phar­isees are here with me as friends, some are even my dis­ci­ples, but the ma­jor­ity of the Phar­isees are per­sis­tent in their re­fusal to see the light and ac­knowl­edge the truth, even when the work of the gospel is brought be­fore them in great power. How care­fully you cleanse the out­side of the cups and the plat­ters while the spir­i­tual-food ves­sels are filthy and pol­luted! You make sure to pre­sent a pi­ous and holy ap­pear­ance to the peo­ple, but your in­ner souls are filled with self-righ­teous­ness, cov­etous­ness, ex­tor­tion, and all man­ner of spir­i­tual wicked­ness. Your lead­ers even dare to plot and plan the mur­der of the Son of Man. Do not you fool­ish men un­der­stand that the God of heaven looks at the in­ner mo­tives of the soul as well as on your outer pre­tenses and your pi­ous pro­fes­sions? Think not that the giv­ing of alms and the pay­ing of tithes will cleanse you from un­righ­teous­ness and en­able you to stand clean in the pres­ence of the Judge of all men. Woe upon you Phar­isees who have per­sisted in re­ject­ing the light of life! You are metic­u­lous in tithing and os­ten­ta­tious in alms­giv­ing, but you know­ingly spurn the vis­i­ta­tion of God and re­ject the rev­e­la­tion of his love. Though it is all right for you to give at­ten­tion to these mi­nor du­ties, you should not have left these weight­ier re­quire­ments un­done. Woe upon all who shun jus­tice, spurn mercy, and re­ject truth! Woe upon all those who de­spise the rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther while they seek the chief seats in the syn­a­gogue and crave flat­ter­ing salu­ta­tions in the mar­ket places!”

• mint, anise, and cumin

175:1.17“Woe upon you, scribes and Phar­isees and all other hyp­ocrites who make sure that they tithe mint, anise, and cumin and at the same time dis­re­gard the weight­ier mat­ters of the law—faith, mercy, and judg­ment! Within rea­son, the one you ought to have done but not to have left the other un­done. You are truly blind guides and dumb teach­ers; you strain out the gnat and swal­low the camel.