Got the Pastor from HELL? JUST WALK OUT!

By Patricia Backora

Although MOST greedy preachers wouldnt REALLY bring such an intimidating item to illustrate their sermons, they do want their slice of the pie. And theyll get you below the belt..in your spare change pocket, that is. Time and again I read the sad old story: Churchgoers complain about their pastor piling on the pressure for them to tithe. One testimony I read went something like this: My pastor gave a fifteen minute speech about tithing and he let us know hes gonna do that every single service till he shakes the stinginess out of us. He said tithing will establish a covenant with God. He used Malachi 3 to threaten us with. If we dont pay him tithes God will curse us. If you dont tithe youre being greedy. And tithing means 10 per cent of your GROSS, not five per cent or one per cent. Not only that, our sweet, loving pastor called all the tithers up front so everybody would know who WASNT tithing.

Man, that pastor must have made those poor non-tithers feel like dog crap. No sense mincing words. That WAS his intention all along! If you cant justify your manmade doctrine with RIGHTLY DIVIDED scripture, social ostracism and shame should do the trick. Now what did Jesus say about giving in secret (Matt.6:3-4)? In other articles I present an overwhelming mountain of evidence that tithing on money was NEVER a valid scriptural doctrine, and tithing was NEVER put on New Testament Christians by any apostle. But sneaky pulpit snakes count on the fact most Christians are so busy working their jobs they dont have time to study their Bibles to see if monetary tithing is a valid church doctrine. Christians have the right to prove all things, even the teachings coming from the pulpit (I Thes.5:21). The guy who wrote this testimony had been saved and filled with the Spirit for only a couple of years, still a babe in Christ. He gave money to other Christians who had needs but was told that didnt count as part of his tithe, and he still owed Mr. Preacher a big chunk of his paycheck. The poor guy thought Christ died to set him free, but still felt like a prisoner being held to ransom by the pastors demands. The Lord is ticked off about predatory pastors stealing not only new converts cash but their brand-new joy in the Lord. This guy wrote that he went from one church to another and they were all the same: they were only after your money and if you dont pay up god is gonna curse you with a curse. Most professional ministers know full well what theyre doing: preying on other peoples ignorance. Theyve been to Bible school and they are fully aware that tithing was NEVER done on money in the Bible, just on agricultural produce taken from the LAND OF ISRAEL (see Lev.27:30-34). Next time your preacher begs for tithes, stand up, stand up for Jesus and ask him why he never preaches on Deuteronomy 14:26, which allows you to buy beer and wine with money gained from the sale of tithed produce. Why doesnt your pastor let parishioners use their tithe to have a big party of thanksgiving unto the Lord? Why doesnt your pastor give ALL the tithe to poor widows and foreigners in the land every three years, as mandated by Scripture (Deut.26:12). If your pastor doesnt allow you to eat your tithe and give it to the stranger in need, hes the one whos breaking the tithing law, not you! God is a stickler for detail and if you

change Gods laws to suit yourself, you end up cursed, not blessed (Deut.4:2). Thats the only covenant God makes with modern tithers. When preachers sense that the stick approach isnt working, they might use the the carrot approach. Even the carrot has a barbed hook on the end of it. Preachers bellow about how blessed youll be by God if you start keeping the tithing law. Galatians 3:10 promises you a curse, not a blessing, for coming back under law! The Law isnt a restaurant menu you can pick and choose from. Keep one law you gotta keep em all! Failure to do so brings Gods curse. Failure to keep the tithing law the true Biblical way brings a curse. God has posted a NO FISHING sign next to the deep, deadly pool of the Law. Preachers fish out their favorite ordinance, tithing, give it a facelift (changing tithes from edible items to money) and force it onto the backs of Gods sheep. They turn the flock of the Lord into a herd of sweating, toiling donkeys to keep the money rollin in! The Law ministers condemnation and death, not life (2 Cor.3:7,9). That greedy preacher could care less if you feel your joy in the Lord draining away and fear taking over, just because youve moved from the realm of grace into the dangerous area of law. No matter how hard things get, that damn tithe money has to be paid or your pastor will hate your guts and pray for god to curse you. Its sickening how they claim that what we give to others is over and above THEIR tithe money! HOGWASH!!! Let those lazy preachers get up off their fat backsides and go WORK for that brand new Cadillac or that second home on the beach! How many hamburgers would those rich televangelists have to flip to buy that horse ranch in Texas? Conservative Bible-thumpin tithe collectors dont believe in social programs to help people below the poverty line. They call people on welfare leeches who wont do an honest days work. But I think its far more strenuous to scrub fryers at McDonalds than preach a short sermon twice a week and fly off (first-class) to pastors conferences a couple times a year. You get more corns and calluses on your feet from serving cranky customers in some restaurant than you do pacing the floor like a tiger, threatening Christians with the wrath of God for withholding money from the building fund!

Preachers threaten you with hellfire and damnation if you dont tithe to THEM to keep them fat and happy. And even if you DO sneak into heaven, they give you the impression youll be poor as dirt when you get there.

One of my most disgusting memories happened during a time of great economic hardship for the area we lived in. It was a small church attended by mostly poor people. A lot of them asked for prayer because they were between jobs and didnt know how theyd make it from one week to the next. The pastor of that congregation liked to do a lot of traveling to conferences and enjoyed the income gained by pasturing a church. But he had a bee in his bonnet about the small change contributed by people who found it hard to spend the gas money to come to church. Something had to be done to get the congregation to progress from coins to paper cash. So that night he went behind the pulpit and said, Ill start the offering. He put in a ten in full sight of everyone,

contrary to what Christ preached about doing your giving in secret and not in the sight of men. He said, If you wanna put in nickels, why act like youre ashamed of it? Why not let everybody see what youre doing? He fished a bunch of nickels out of his pocket and slammed them down in front of his pulpit. I got so disgusted I never went back.

One bigwig preacher excoriated men who stay home with the kids instead of going out to work, and allow their wives to support the family. Well, what if the woman is a highly-paid professional who makes twice as much as her husband? Would the preacher rather have the couple struggle to afford to pay someone else to watch their kids while both work (and earn tithe money for the greedy preacher?) All this gobbledygook about family values being peddled from rich pulpits! Preachers beat hard-working couples on the head for failure to spend quality time with their kids, then chastise them for failure to go out and earn extra tithe money for them! One preacher hollered for lazy people to get off their blessed assurances and go out to work 72 hours a week so they could prosper. Is this man stupid to realize you cant take the kids to work while you do your nurses shift or work at a chicken pluckin plant, and then do a second job at some burger joint? How in Sam Hill do you work 72 hours a week and still spend

quality time teaching the kids about Jesus if youre brain feels so fried from exhaustion all you want to do is crash in the sack when you get home? My word, folks are getting so hard up they cant even afford to take a Stay-cation once a year (stay-at-home vacation).

Even if you catch on to the fact tithing is NOT required of New Testament saints (be sure to read Acts 15 to see what God DOES require), preachers are sure to yank out the authority ace up their sleeve to scare the pants off you. If you disobey THEM and stay true to what the Bible teaches, youre in rebellion, mister, and Gods gonna work you over. But what did Peter and other apostles say when the religious authorities of their day ordered them to stop preaching the truth? They said We ought to obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29). Preachers preach bloodcurdling sermons about how the Curse of Malachi is hovering over your head like a thug in a torture chamber to FORCE you to cough up your tithe. Other articles I wrote explain that

this curse was directed at the Sons of Levi and the Sons of Jacob, not the sons of the Apache Indians, the Chinese or the Japanese, or the Outer Mongolians. If anybodys risking a curse by preaching tithing in the Church Age of grace, its those money-grubbing preachers! Jesus pronounced a terrible woe upon anyone who would make His little ones stumble in the way of righteousness (Matt.18:6). When preachers FORCE Christians to tithe under threat of Gods severe retribution, they force believers back under the Law and all its penalties. They force believers to fall from grace and risk losing their salvation (Gal.5:4). One weasly preacher even said tithing ensures you a place in heaven. If anything, just the opposite is true! When you depend on religious works to stay on Gods good side, youve fallen away from faith in Christ alone for your salvation. When you attempt to keep an Old Covenant Law in mans way instead of Gods by changing the terms and conditions of that law, youve just as good as broken that law in your attempt to keep it! To preach tithing is spiritual extortion and highway robbery. Its worse than Judas selling Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. Preachers sell their listeners spiritual treasures: salvation through grace and faith in Christ alone and freedom from the Law through Christ. They deny the priesthood of baby believers who dont know the Word well enough to realize they are a kingdom of priests unto the Lord (I Pet.2:5,9). Priests NEVER tithed under the Old Covenant, so why should they do that in the New Testament? Preachers put believers under a mountain of fear and false guilt. They cause economic hardship through squeezing tithes and extra offerings out of poor people who grow discouraged and fed up with going to church. Actually, its the people who ARE the church, not the building! If the apostle Paul were here today, he would probably feel the same way toward these thieving preachers that he did toward the Judaisers who preached law to the Galatians. Paul pronounced a curse on those who spy out the liberty of the saints and try to put them back under law with a different gospel (Gal.1:8,9; 2:4-5). Todays preachers preach the gospel of give, give, give (to THEM), so you can get a slot machine jackpot from heaven. Next time that ogre preacher uses naming and shaming tactics to try to squeeze money out of you or force you to live like his slave, do a victory march for Jesus, OUT THE FRONT DOOR! If the church floor is wooden, all the better. With every head bowed and every eye closed, be sure youre wearing your noisiest shoes, preferably shoes with

bulky two-inch heels that go clunk clunk every time you walk. And dont sneak out quietly. You aint the one who should act ashamed, its the preacher who should feel bad. You and other folks who are fed up with the way spiritual abusers have turned church into a torture chamber shouldnt hang around to take that weekly whipping anymore. When Old Preach calls the tithers up front, or names and shames the non-tithers, stand up tall and proud. Turn your back on that sheep slaughterhouse and start walking down that aisle toward the front door , arms swinging and singing The preacher had me bound but Jesus set me free The preacher had me bound but Jesus set me free The preacher had me bound but Jesus set me free Singin glory hallelujah Jesus set me free! ****** http://banpreachergreed.tripod.com http://boogerbucks.tripod.com http://kingdomage.tripod.com