Personal
from Herbert W. Armstrong
Some of our readers are still in danger of losing their jobs or having their salaries cut even in this economic upturn.
Right now business analysts are reasonably confident that sustained but moderate growth will be continuing at least in the short period for the U.S. and a number of her trading allies.
Few realize that there are certain economic LAWS in motion that regulate business conditions.
I remember vividly the sudden nose dive depression of 1920. I was then a publishers’ representative in Chicago. I was a member of the Chicago Association of Commerce, through its Advertising Club division.
In early January that year, at the regular midweek Association of Commerce luncheon, in the Cameo Room of the Morrison Hotel, the noted business analyst, Roger Babson, was the speaker. He warned the businessmen of Chicago that within less than a year we were going to crash into the most drastic depression our generation had seen.
I noticed some important bankers and security brokers smile knowingly in disagreement. They were sure Mr. Babson was wrong.
A year later Mr. Babson was again the speaker at the same Association luncheon.
“I saw some of you businessmen smile, a year ago, when I warned you of the coming economic tragedy,” he said. “Now let me tell you WHY I knew what was coming, and you didn’t. When you want to know what is the temperature in the room, now, you look at the thermometer on the wall. But if you want to know what the temperature will be, an hour or two from now, the thermometer can’t tell you. You go down to the boiler room, or consult the U.S. Weather Bureau. You look to the factors that determine conditions, not the thermometer that records conditions after they have occurred.
“You gentlemen looked at charts of current business activity, at bank clearings, records of freight car loadings, the stock market quotations – the thermometers on the wall.
“But,” he continued, “there are LAWS that govern economic conditions. These laws are the factors that determine what conditions will be, a few months or a year from now. They are the CAUSES.”
Yes, and your own personal economic future is determined by definite LAWS! Very few realize that the Eternal Creator set in motion invisible, yet inexorable LAWS, which regulate personal financial conditions!
In my 52 years in God’s ministry I have seen these laws actually work in the experiences of many people whom I have known personally. I have experienced their relentless working in my own life! I had to learn this lesson the hard way, myself!
I have often mentioned in articles in The Plain Truth how God struck me down, not physically, but economically, to bring me to him. That very depression of 1920 destroyed my business. Everything I touched turned not to gold like “King Midas,” but to loss of and lack of money. It was in poverty and hunger that God actually conquered me, and turned me to him, giving my life to him, over 56 years ago.
But even after conversion – even after my ordination as a minister of Jesus Christ in 1931 – our family was still on the economic rocks. I had begun to learn something about God’s law of tithing, as a Bible doctrine. I had studied it in the Bible. I had learned – seen PROVED – that this law as still in effect. Yet, in those early years, it didn’t seem to apply to me. I had seen it as a doctrine to accept as true – not as a LAW which I, personally, must OBEY.
How many of YOU are right now like I was then?
I had learned the lesson of FAITH. I trusted God implicitly to “supply every need,” as he has promised (Phil. 4:19, RSV). But I had another lesson to learn.
We had frequently gone hungry before I was converted. Now we went hungry even more frequently. Then one day, it dawned on my mind that we, ourselves, were actually breaking God’s financial law by not tithing! All of a sudden God made me see his financial law as something personal – not merely a doctrine to accept impersonally. It meant ME! That very day I took 10 percent of what we had (and it was not enough to buy food), added an offering, and mailed it to the Church treasury.
That very afternoon food came for a completely adequate meal. I don’t remember how, but I do remember that the very day I REPENTED for not having accepted tithing as a personal obligation, instead of a mere doctrinal argument, THAT VERY DAY FOOD CAME!
God did not bring us immediate financial prosperity. For some years more, for our own good, we were forced to live in very poor economic circumstances. But that very day our financial condition started upward.
Since that time I have known of similar experiences of scores of other people.
One young man already was tithing the money that he handled. He was a farmer. He suddenly realized that they were not selling their eggs and had not been tithing them in any way. That same day he brought to us a tithe of all the eggs his hens had laid that day.
Believe it or not, that same day his hens went on an egg-laying spree. Yes, laugh if you will – those hens cackled too – it actually happened. It was the off-season for eggs. But that very day they began to lay more eggs than was normal in the best egg-laying season! It seemed incredible – BUT IT HAPPENED!
I have given our longtime readers the facts, before, of a well-driller who was unable to get any business in 1933, during the depths of the Great Depression. He began to tithe – one single dollar of the only $10 he had. Next day a man who had owed him $50 he never expected to collect came and paid it – and he tithed $5. Immediately he began to get more wells to drill than he could handle.
Almost daily, some television or radio listener, reader of The Plain Truth, or co-worker in this Work writes me a letter telling of a similar experience – beginning to pay God’s honest TITHE, and beginning to PROSPER financially.
Now don’t get the idea from this that in every case God is going to work some incredible miracle. Don’t get the idea that if you try tithing, you are to expect some astounding thing to happen – or that you are going to fall heir to a million dollars the next day. Perhaps in most cases the increase in income is not immediately apparent at all.
But of this, you MAY BE SURE! Over the long haul, the 90 percent of income God allows you to keep for yourself will increase to more than the 100 percent formerly was. God PROMISES to bless and prosper the tither! God KEEPS his promises!
God did not establish a binding law of tithing without a good reason! Actually, there are many reasons. All of God’s laws are for our GOOD.
Listen to God’s Word to us: “Observe and hear all these words which I command thee, that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee for ever …” (Deut. 12:28).
It is not good for a person to get something for nothing, or for very little effort. This evil human urge to GET without giving – to receive without paying – is the very thing in human nature that produces criminals.
All God’s spiritual law may be summed up in one word – LOVE. But Jesus magnified this into the two great laws – love to God and love to human NEIGHBOR. Love is the principle of GIVING. Jesus summed up the reason for it when he said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” God knows, and reveals, that we receive a greater blessing by giving than by acquiring. God wants us to have blessings!
People, too, really want blessings, but few know the way. Most people think the greater blessing comes from receiving – getting – taking – acquiring. The WAY of most people today is to try to get more than they give. Formerly, employers cared more about getting from labor than what they paid employees in wages. So labor organized. Then the labor union principle seemed to be to get more in wages than they gave in production from their labor. Less work – more pay!
We talk, today, about owning property. But God actually owns all the earth. That includes the property on which you pay taxes. God says the EARTH is his – for he created it! God OWNS it. He lets us occupy HIS earth, as temporary tenants. All wealth comes from the ground. It is not good for man to take all he consumes out of God’s earth without paying anything for it! If you rent ground from a MAN who thinks he owns it, he charges you rent – up to 50 percent or more of what you produce from it.
God set a LAW in motion – that we should pay him, not 50 percent, but only 10 percent, plus whatever offering we have in our hearts to give. Now a LAW is not a law without a penalty. God does not force you to tithe. But if you don’t, there is a penalty! You lose the BLESSING that goes with honest stewardship. You come under a CURSE (Mal. 3:9). Too many people have robbed God. The man who does not pay God his tithe is a thief – and, worse than a criminal robbing a bank, he is robbing God! Yes, God SAYS so – Malachi 3:8! And one of the Ten Commandments is, “Thou shalt not steal.” The man who does it puts himself immediately under the law – under penalty of death for all eternity! – unless he repents, and pleads the blood of Jesus Christ for forgiveness, and reconciliation to God.
Ignorance of the LAW does not excuse. You may say, “Well, I never knew all this.” Well, you are without excuse, for you know it now – or you can know it if you’ll check up in THE BIBLE! But God is most merciful. The minute you really repent, quit breaking this law, begin keeping it honestly, and go to Christ for forgiveness, then all is forgiven and God begins pouring out his blessing, just as he did on me.
Hundreds have written me, during the past years, saying God had opened their eyes to his tithing law, and telling how they have been blessed. One even wrote that she, too, had started tithing eggs, and her hens, too, had immediately gone on an egg-laying spree! She had either heard me mention that experience over the air, or read of it in an early issue of The Plain Truth. Of course I won’t guarantee God will cause hens to start laying eggs faster every time. Probably it won’t work out exactly that way – but he does promise a blessing (Mal. 3:10-12).
How do you, then, pay your tithes to God? By putting them into God’s WORK – where God himself is working – where his gospel is being preached; not merely MAN’S gospel about Christ, but the very message Christ preached. Most professing Christians have never heard that gospel today! Jesus preached only one gospel – that about the KINGDOM (government – rule) of God – of how God is going to RULE ALL NATIONS – of how we may, by being begotten now, be actually BORN INTO GOD’S KINGDOM at the Second Coming of Christ, and the resurrection of the dead in Christ – being then GLORIFIED just as Christ is now glorified, in the very FAMILY of God! But most professing ministers of Christianity today deny this gospel altogether – say it is not for this time!
WHAT does God do with his tithe? He uses it for his ministry to preach his message of the KINGDOM OF God – the world tomorrow! It is the message of GOD’S WAY. It is the message of true salvation. It is the message of a changed, and a fuller, happier LIFE – the message of ETERNAL life.
He uses it to tell mankind THE WAY to happiness, joy, prosperity and eternal life in HIS KINGDOM.
But look at the CURSE! God’s WAY has not been preached. The WORLD is unhappy, empty, sick, poverty-stricken, cursed with fears and worries, restlessness, frustrations, insanity, crime, violence, war – DEATH!
Even though the NATIONS are under a curse, you as an individual may come under GOD’S BLESSING! It’s your BEST assurance of holding your job – of continuous and increasing INCOME!
