Mike Pence encourages Americans to pray, keep tithing to church
As churches have made the hard choice of suspending services, churchgoing Americans should continue to send their tithes as ministries are playing a vital role in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, Vice President Mike Pence said at a White House press briefing Saturday.
Americans are responding to the novel coronavirus pandemic with âcommon sense, compassion and generosity,â Pence said and praised religious leaders and faith communities for their continued service.
âMaking the hard choice to suspend services, to have online services, even while those ministries are continuing to support food banks and come alongside of the most vulnerable,â he said....
Actually, Jesus set the standard for tithing by adding TO, not diminishing FROM:
Mt 23:23 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
When this Wuhan flu crisis is over, and churches open to regular services, etc, I wonder if the result will be full churches for a few weeks as people make a big collective effort like they did after 9/11. Then a month or two later, you will go back to the same old same old attendance patterns. I even wonder if people today will look around and seriously analyze their church lives and say, hey, I only say hello to 3 or 4 couples who in my area of the church, and then I go home. What is the difference from today when I can call them every day? Do I really need to get up early, dress up, go to this building? I could stay home, work in my garden, go fishing, golfing, shopping, and have time for other things like visiting sick people in the hospital or elderly in the ALFs.
Jim; My hope is in & through Christ Alone, as all others will fail you & fall short of the mark of absolute perfection that only Christ can fulfill. As no politician or pastor can cleanse one of their transgressions against, no King but Christ Alone!
Personal holiness isnât a suggestion or a mere option for one either, Jim. As without being Born Again from Up Above Alone. Itâs utterly impossible to please God, in which one hasnât tasted the sweet tasting nectar of Christ being ones mediator. As you talk Christianese language but you are devoid of having a personal relationship with Christ, that reflects you are baring Godly fruit, in your life on here. As speak of no Godly brokenness in transgressing against Christ holiness.
Heb 12:14 Pursue peace with all people, & holiness, without which no one will see the Lord:
Theodore Roosevelt is usually an excellent person to quote, Timothy, for example:
Theodore Roosevelt wrote: Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him in so far as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth â whether about the President or about anyone else â save in the rare cases where this would make known to the enemy information of military value which would otherwise be unknown to him.Â
excerpt from, " Lincoln and Free Speech" đ
https://tinyurl.com/snf37a8
NeedHim, I won't quote from the following again though I sure am tempted to since it's such an excellent comment from Phil Johnson--the sidekick of John MacArthur!
Jim; Praise God, that I can acknowledge & experience my great daily need of Christ Alone. As their is no other sufficient means one can have their sin washed & be justified in & through Christ Alone amen!
Pro 20:9 Who can say, âI have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sinâ?
Jim: Why; LK 6:46 âBut why do you call Me âLord, Lord,â & nât do the things which I say?
Jim; You donât know the way of grace, for grace, humbles one, it brings humility & Godly fear, into ones life. As Scriptures teaches one to decrease as He would increase in ones life!
In which you clearly know nât of or have you experienced having your spiritual heart of stone being removed!
Phil 2:14 Do all things without complaining & disputing,
Churches have been running short for 3 weeks. If you have a church than runs 20,000 per week to operate and miss 3 weeks, with online giving only a 25%, staff will be laid off at the end of.month. Forward thinking can and does put many churches in a good standing; but if your church provides daycare, meals for indigent, nursing care, itâs a hard blow. If youâre in a church that is run by committee, and they ask you to be on the financial committee. Say yes, and youâll figure out that if all members tithed, you could weather most storms. But this one hurts people and the plate badly.
Mr. Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt said, âIt is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.â As far as I can tell, Jim, you are not doing anything, you have never done anything, and you have no ambition to do anything, and yet you constantly bombard others who ARE attempting to do something with criticism. All of us tend to have a beam in our eye from time to time, Jim, but you have an entire lumberyard in yours.
MS wrote: Christians are not under Old Testament tithing law. We cheerfully give to those who faithfully preach Jesus Christ and His Gospel of free and Sovereign Grace. Galatians 6:6-10.
Very true, MS.
NeedHim since you don't like what Jesus said or one of his followers, John MacArthur, I would say you definitely need Him
PK, what gets me worked up is White Islamđ https://tinyurl.com/y576t94t (Should Christians try to force the kingdom on others?)
And:
https://tinyurl.com/jko49r6Â (Christians and Politics, Part 3)
Read the intro to the following.
Joseph D. Harder Ph.D. wrote: I am also attempting to explain evangelical conservative political theology to outsiders, for to many non-evangelicalsâeven to some evangelicals who do not share itâthat ideology is mystifying at best....Many of these stances make little sense to those outside the ideology. That could be said, of course, of any political ideology...
--- '"Heal Their Land": Evangelical Political Theology From the Great Awakening to the Moral Majority"
https://tinyurl.com/sswpdgw
Dr. Harder is is much more pleasant about it than I am.đ
I do enjoy reading how Jim gets everyone fired up on here, just by a comment he makes. He really is good at getting to yâall. Proverbs 26:4. Take it as you will.
Dr. Tim; What do you except from Jim, When his expectations do not come from the Lord alone!. As Jim is a unregenerate man, who is in a hostile with Christ. As he is a grumbler, as he knows nât the way of Grace, Through the utter highway of holiness, that Christ call His people to be holy as He is Holy!
As Jim doesnât practice in being a doer & a hearer, as his feet, are on quick sand amen!
Christians are not under Old Testament tithing law. We cheerfully give to those who faithfully preach Jesus Christ and His Gospel of free and Sovereign Grace. Galatians 6:6-10.
Actually, Timothy, if I was really trying to criticize Pence, I would have mentioned them by name. If you read John MacArthur you know tithing was an Old Testament idea. 10% isn't that enough for many people, or shouldn't be. Now if you wanted to pray along with Paula White-- that's your problemâ
So what I read of Mr. Pence's statement it actually wasn't too bad, it just needed to be elaborated on.
I knew this was coming, Jim. Never miss an opportunity to criticize the president or the Veep. And of course stingy peopleâincluding stingy people who like to accuse others of being greedyâwill always find an excuse not to tithe. While youâre at it, why donât you go ahead and cut down Franklin Graham for trying to help coronavirus victims in Italy? Iâm sure you will find a way to impute some evil motive to him for doing so. You are one disgusting individual, Jim Lincoln, and not fit to wash the dirty drawers of the least of all saints.
5. âWhen you pray, you shall not be as the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Most certainly, I tell you, they have received their reward. 6. But you, when you pray, enter into your inner room, and having shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.
John MacArthur wrote: .... New Testament believers are never commanded to tithe. Matthew 22:15-22 and Romans 13:1-7 tell us about the only required giving in the church age, which is the paying of taxes to the government. Interestingly enough, we in America presently pay between 20 and 30 percent of our income to the government--a figure very similar to the requirement under the theocracy of Israel.
The guideline for our giving to God and His work is found in 2 Corinthians 9:6-7: "Now this I say, he who sows sparingly shall also reap sparingly; and he who sows bountifully shall also reap bountifully. Let each one do just as he has purposed in his heart; not grudgingly or under compulsion; for God loves a cheerful giver."
--Does God require me to give a tithe of all I earn?"