Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
To claim that all church giving to the poor is in nature the same as Judas is pure recklessness, and so typical of Lee and his followers. In one fell swoop they can condemn 2 millennia of good works by the church, as if none of it benefited the gospel. The hypocritical problem that LC'ers face is that they are guilty of the same sins which they ascribe to the rest of Christendom. By rewriting history for all their members, LC leaders whitewash all of their own sordid history. How does Evangelical explain all the business deals, failed and otherwise, which Lee and LSM have pushed upon their members?"
In my mind it is far more noble and godly to build an orphanage in Haiti, than it is to build luxury motor homes at Daystar. How do we compare an inner city crisis pregnancy center with the Linko boondoggle outside Taipei. (Where did all that money go?) When Lee got busted by immigration officials for carrying gold, was that really for "the gospel?" Is that Taipei skyscraper of LSM really for "the gospel?" This list could go on for quite a while.
Isn't it just amazing how the LC faithful believe every "program" coming from Lee and the Blendeds to be "of the Lord, for the gospel, and fruitful, preparing the bride for His return, etc.", and every other program to be "poor, poor, fallen, natural, and now we learn Judas-like, mis-aimed inventions of fallen and degraded Christianity?"
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The instructions Jesus gave at the end of the gospels is around preaching the gospel and the accompanying miraculous signs. He mentions nothing about giving to the poor. Anyway the disciples were too poor to give, "silver and gold have I none".
We are the church. When "we" each individually do our charitable deeds, that is the "church giving". "Church giving" does not mean everyone in the congregation giving their money to the leader or to some group (for them to pocket or put towards their business jet). It means each individual person giving as the Lord leads in secret, as per 'left hand not knowing what the right is doing'.
As an evangelical in my view the purpose of the church is not to fix the world's problems but to save as many as possible. The world is a sinking Titanic and addressing the world's problems is merely re-arranging the deck chairs (making the Titanic a better place), while it heads towards destruction.
I see it is the role of world government to address the world problems - after all a large portion of my tax dollar already goes to overseas and local welfare.
Modern tithing is a carry over from medieval times when the church was the source of welfare. It was introduced in the middle ages. I believe for some countries in Scandinavia a proportion of ones income still goes to a mandatory 'church tax' or tithe.