Author and former military man Frank Chase Jr. grew in Baltimore, MD. He got interested in writing from watching movies and listening to a radio show called mystery theatre, but it was only in his thirties after a divorce that his desire to write escalated. His debut book “False Roads to Manhood: What Women Need to Know: What Men Need to Understand” took him seven years of research and writing. If he weren’t a writer, Frank would be a stage actor as it has been his passion since high school.Being a writer has taught him that everyone will not agree with you or what you may write, but it leaves a record and a legacy that can help future generations long after you have passed on. He is currently writing a scripture-centered book and also plans on writing a fiction novel soon. Read full interview…
In these videos, I explained how Malachi 3:8-10 has been taken out of context to justify how followers of the Messiah are supposed to pay the church an obligatory ten percent until death. I would argue that if you are going to give your church money, use the scriptures of the New Covenant to teach giving. Malachi is the foundation and the backbone of all tithe teaching today. Over the 30 years of my church experience, these verses scared the daylights out of me. I remember days when I struggled to pay tithes or buy food and the guilt that followed when I chose to buy food instead. It took me years to gain enough confidence to sit down and study Malachi in context. When I did make that decision, I was shocked beyond measure at how far off the tithe of Israel had been contextually corrupted. The tithe doctrine based on the Malachi text is often presented in a context of fear, which produces fear based giving to avoid a curse from God. Sometimes tithing is presented in a dynamic fashion of overwhelming blessing that faithful tithers receive for paying tithes to the storehouse, which is supposedly the church. What I did was examine Malachi in great detail. As I searched the Scriptures, darkness became light and what I thought was true about tithing morphed into falsehood. The truth of God’s word brought me great relief. I realized that I had been fooled by slick hermeneutical and exegetical misapplication of the Scripture concerning tithing. Anytime you read Malachi, follow up by reading the book of Nehemiah.
The tithe doctrine based on the Malachi text is often presented in a context of fear. The words, will a man rob God can conjure up all kinds of unnecessary fear when taken out of context. When I first heard those words, it produced fear based giving to avoid a curse from God. But if you are afraid not to tithe, don’t be. Because the Bible says, “God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, love and sound mind” (1 Tim. 1:17). If that’s the case, why are pastors and churches using a spirit of fear to get people to cough up money to prevent a curse from God? Sometimes tithing is presented in a dynamic fashion of overwhelming blessing that faithful tithers will receive for paying tithes to the storehouse, which is supposedly the church. When I did examine Malachi in great detail and searched the Scriptures, darkness became light and what I thought was true about tithing morphed into falsehood. The truth of God’s word brought a great relief. I realized that I had been fooled by slick hermeneutical and exegetical misapplication of the Scripture concerning tithing. Anytime you read Malachi, follow up by reading the book of Nehemiah.
In other church circles, tithing is presented in a dynamic fashion of overwhelming blessing that faithful tithers receive for paying tithes to the storehouse, which is supposedly the church. When I did examine Malachi in great detail and searched the Scriptures, darkness became light and what I thought was true about tithing morphed into falsehood. The truth of God’s word brought a great relief when I understood that appeals to fear and overwhelming blessings from Malachi where not what the Bible teaches. I realized that I had been fooled by slick hermeneutical and exegetical misapplication of the Scripture concerning tithing. Anytime you read Malachi, follow up by reading the book of Nehemiah
Anytime you read Malachi, follow up by reading the book of Nehemiah because it is important to understand the context of both book of the Bible concerning the tithe. One of the big lies of tithing is that everybody paid a tithe. But if you read the Scriptures very closely, the landowners and cattle ranchers were the tithers who paid tithes in livestock and produce. What very few people know is that everybody in Isreal did not tithe. One of many of my research books, written by Benny D. Prince addressed this matter of who did not tithe pages 38-39 and says,
Now since the tithe was only from land produce and livestock, the following people did not have to tithe in Israel. The tradesmen who made baskets for harvesting, the cobblers who made the shoes for the servants of the field, the carpenters who made wagons used for harvesting the fields, the potters who made the jugs for carrying water to the servants in the fields, women who made garments for the field workers and fishermen, since fish aren’t a land produce or crop. And by the way, the Lord Jesus who was a carpenter by trade did not tithe.
Take the information in this post and study it. Learn about tithing and you will know what is truth and what is falsehood about giving. The videos and the slides from my initial power point study should start you on a rewarding journey into the Bible. And, it is for this reason that I desire to blow up the erroneous Malachi tithe doctrine because of incidents such as a church sending a member a collection notice for not paying unpaid tithes.
What you often hear in church week after week is called a spiritualized version of Malachi and not the correct textual version. Check out the slides below.
If you do not study tithing or any biblical teaching, you will fall into what is called a TRAP where the institutional church will Takes Reasoning Away Permanently, and it does not turn out so good if you suspend your mind, will and inner voice to allow someone else to be your puppet master.
Tithes are taught as threats and blessing. The “threat” is that if you don’t tithe you “rob God.” If you don’t “pay tithe” you are not doing your part to pay the electrical bill on the church building–or you are not giving that money that the work of the church “requires.” On the other hand, if you do tithe–God will open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing.” In other words, if you pay tithe, God will pay you back–sometime–somewhere–the check is in the mail–(and superstition will take care of the rest. (Taken from a article titled Tithe, What Your Pastor Doesn’t Want You to Know)
One final point about Malachi is that most people who read the words will a man rob God, they often assume that God is speaking to everyone in the church today. In my book shoot this argument down and so does one of the research books I read titled Defusing the Malachi Bomb by Thabani Maphosa. He writes,
When God asks “will a man rob God? he is asking an individual and not the entire nation. It wasn’t the general Israelite population which was robbing God and thereby bringing down a curse on the entire nation. It was the dishonest thieving priests like Eliashib (Nehemiah 13:4-14) that was robbing God and cauing the entire nation to come under a curse on account of their dereliction of [preistly] duties.
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