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| Pastor Anu Ojo |
By 'Gbenga Bankole
The Superintendent of Christ Apostolic Church, Vineyard of Mercy Districts Coordinator Council (DCC), Sabo-Yaba, Pastor Anu Ojo has said that those who are seeing tithing as old testament law are wrong because it was not a law in the old testament when Abraham gave tithe.
The cleric who said this in an interview with CAC NEWS noted that Abraham paid tithe to Melchizedek in appreciation of God’s goodness when he overcame and was able to secure his nephew and get back all what the enemy has taken from him.
He further stated that; "the grandson of Abraham, Jacob made a vow when he fled from Esau his brother and wanted the Lord preservation over his life. He said if the Lord will keep him and preserve him on his journey, God will be his God and the tenth of what he has will be given to Him. He made the vow without God telling Him anything."
According to him, God turned tithing into an ordinance for His people when they moved out of Egypt.
"God wanted to have what is called, not just administration, but he wanted the Israelite to be a nation. And to be a nation you need to be organized. Spiritually he gave them Judges, leaders and rulers. Those rulers had to do what is called spiritual services and some of them were Levite. There was a way God wanted Levite to live and concentrate on the work of the ministry. There is a way God want the Levite to administer their services among His people so that they can concentrate. He said they should not go out to work like other people, but people will give them tithe. He now instituted what is called tithe. In the New Testament when Jesus talked about tithe, He said that do the work of mercy and don’t omit tithing. Jesus asked them to combine the two together. He never condemned tithing," he noted.
Pastor Ojo said that the problem he thinks some of tithe critics have is that they feel that so many ministers of God today are living on the tithe and are enriching themselves with it.
He said they believe so many ministers of God are becoming big as a result of the tithes they are collecting and tithe should not be given to them but to the poor.
According to him, tithes critics believe Ministers of God are using tithes to buy airplanes, private jets and other things.
"There problem is that they have a grudge and they want to use that to erase what the Lord has established. You have something against the minister of God of a church and you want to rubbish the bible because you want to attack what that person is doing.
Let even assume you want to give your tithe to the poor. There are people who are not even faithful to the tithe. If people are faithful to tithe, the church will be richer than it is now. If they are faithful to tithing, the body of Christ will be wealthier than the Arab world even with all their oil, gold and other things,"
"Those who are complaining that Ministers of God are buying private jets have not seen anything because people are still not faithful enough in terms of giving to God,"
"If the whole tithe is not going to the church but to the poor, they will no longer be poor, they will be wealthy. Tell me who they are going to give it to again because the poor will no longer be poor. They will be buying airplane and private jet. They will also attack those ones because they will now become rich," he said.
He emphasized that the wealth of God is meant for His people whether you are a Pastor or a member of the church, but that which is due to the church must be given to the church and the one due to the ministers must be given to them.
Pastor Ojo said that; "they will continue to attack the church of God. There was a time they were talking about fake miracles. They said the church was doing fake miracles, but it means there are real miracles. They said some people are preaching heresies, but that means there are true sermons. The same way they are talking about the tithe. Some people are using it wrongly the same way some people are using it rightly."