For years, Christians have been told that tithing is a compulsory practice.
This is all shifting, thanks to two clerics, Pastor Sam Adeyemi, Senior pastor of the Daystar Christian Center and Tunde Bakare. So far, these two are among the few popular pastors that have gone against the grain by challenging the traditional belief that not paying your tithe makes you eligible for a divine curse.
But how did the good folks in Nigeria end up here? Since time immemorial unanimity in the Christian community has it that tithe is the Law of God and not paying it is commensurate to the vice of stealing or robbing God.
The controversy can be traced to Radio Presenter, Daddy Freeze. For a while, he has been challenging men of God in Nigeria, calling them ‘Yahoo Pastors’ (meaning fraudulent pastors) for mandating their followers to pay tithe, a practice he said is unscriptural.
Two years ago he tweeted:
Instead of paying your tithe to a glamorous church, why don’t you use it to feed the poor & pay bills of the sick? #SUNDAYPRAISEJAM
— Daddy Freeze (@DaddyFRZ) September 25, 2016
Now, fast forward 2018, the question of tithing is back again and this time it’s quite divisive.
Recently, a new video of the Sam Adeyemi surfaced online. In it, the clergy declares that the 10% requirement has expired because Jesus Christ has freed Christians from the practice.
“So I say again, tithing as practised under the Law of Moses as a regulation has expired. No Christian should feel guilty for not paying tithes. No Christian should be made to feel guilty for not paying tithes,”
Adeyemi said.
Quoting Romans 8: 1–4, the influential preacher defended his position on tithing by saying:
‘Nobody should tell a Christian that for you to be accepted before God first or for you to be righteous you must pay your tithes. When Jesus said it is finished it was finished. There is nothing anybody can add to what Jesus did to be justified before God. All anybody needs to do now to be free from sin is to pray and ask for forgiveness.”
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc6P8fJ4IaU[/embedyt]
Pastor Adeyemi is not alone on this one. In February 2018 Prophetic-Apostolic pastor Tunde Bakare of the Latter Rain Assembly weighed in on the tithe controversy.
Like Pastor Adeyemi, he agreed that it is no longer compulsory for Christians to take 10% of their income to the church.
Speaking with BBC Yoruba, he said,
“Tithing is not compulsory. No-one should feel compelled to pay — no-one is holding a gun to their head. Churches, where pastors are becoming fat and the members, are growing lean, God will judge them.”
What’s really funny about Pastor Adeyemi recent remarks is that he did not always have this particular anti-tithing mentality. In a previous message called Covenant System for Increase on his church’s website, he had taught that tithing was a requirement for God’s blessings.
It is still to be unearthed what the senior has encountered over the past years that has led him to this retrogression.
Check out what other Pastors thinks of Tithing here.
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