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Seed Thoughts on Tithe Paying

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 21, 1916

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 93, No. 63.

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Seed Thoughts on Tithe Paying

By Albert E. Place

ALBERT E. PLACE
The Sabbath, as originally given in Eden, was instituted to show: (1) That God is the Creator of all things; (2) that he has a right to a definite, specific portion of the time furnished to man.
The Sabbath command is a divine evidence that God required this recognition on the part of his creatures. Before sin entered, this divine right and command was based on the one fact that God was the creator and giver of all time. After sin entered, the Sabbath still remained as a sign of creation, and in addition it became a sign of God’s power and promise to re-create. “It [the seed] . . . shall bruise thy [the serpent’s] head.” “I gave them my Sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify them.”
As Jesus is the only sanctifier, and his the only “name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved,” the Edenic Sabbath became the sign of all the re-creative, or redemptive, work of “the Seed,” from Eden to Eden.
If it was necessary, right, and reasonable to recognize the Sabbath in sinless Eden from the standpoint of creation alone, was it not far more clearly right and necessary after God had given it as a sign of redemption? Could the right, reason, or necessity ever change unless God should change the Seed, or the Redeemer, or the plan for sanctification?
The tree “in the midst of the garden,” was used to show God’s right to property; and not only this, but also to a definite, specific portion of all the property created and given to man.
To heed God’s command, This one tree is mine; do not touch it, would mean that man recognized the divine right to the specified portion, and to more if God should further specify. This divine right was also based upon the one fact that God was Creator.
If it was right and necessary, on the basis of the original creation alone, that man should recognize God’s right to this definite, specific portion of property, was it not more so in the light of redemption through the Seed?
Abraham recognized these principles, as shown by his meeting with Melchizedek. He gave to Abraham the bread and wine of the Melchizedek priesthood. Abraham saw Christ’s day and “was glad.” John 8:56. Abraham paid “tithes of all” to Melchizedek, clearly showing that Abraham, “the father of the faithful,” recognized that the paying belongs to the Melchizedek priesthood as truly and properly as it ever did to the Aaronic. Paul emphasizes this by showing that Jesus Christ, the Mediator of the New Testament, the Seed and Redeemer promised in Eden, is “a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” Heb. 6:20.
Therefore, whether man will recognize it or not, the Bible Sabbath and the tithe, representing specific portions of time and property, are divine principles of Edenic origin, purity, and power; and they stand together as signs between God and his redeemed children; and the souls who, in the face of the creative, redemptive power and love of God, do not recognize and apply these great tests of character, would themselves fall if placed in a sinless Eden.
As the Edenic Sabbath has been forsaken for a false day, so has the tithe been forsaken for a false system by which to support God’s work in the earth. In the Dark Ages it degenerated into paying money as penance, for indulgences, for masses for the dead, etc. Since the days of the Reformers even to this time, it has been church socials, festivals, and other money-making affairs. But as the reformation embraces God’s true Sabbath, the divine sign of both creation and redemption, his people, “Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (not Jews according to the flesh), meet the true Melchizedek and High Priest of the new covenant. They eat at his table the unleavened bread and drink the unfermented wine, and then, as did their father Abraham, they pay to the Melchizedek priesthood “tithes of all.”
San José, Cal.