Tithing is divine commandment, applies to all mankind
E-mail story
It's easy. Send a link to the story you were just reading to a friend. Just fill out the form on this page and we'll send it along.
Your name and e-mail address are transmitted to the recipient. Otherwise, it is considered private information; see Privacy policy.
In the welfare session at the October 1980 general conference, President Spencer W. Kimball spoke of an inspiring incident in the life of Mary Fielding Smith, the widow of Patriarch Hyrum Smith.
He said that after she arrived in the Salt Lake Valley with the pioneers, a man at the tithing office (located where the Joseph Smith Memorial Building now stands to the east of Temple Square) chided her for paying tithing, since she was a poor widow.
"She said to the man, 'You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Would you deny me a blessing? If I did not pay my tithing, I should expect the Lord to withhold His blessings from me.
"I pay my tithing, not only because it is a law of God, but because I expect a blessing by doing it. By keeping this and other laws, I expect to prosper, and to be able to provide for my family.'"
President Kimball said, "Tithing is a law of God and is required of His followers. To fail to meet this obligation in full is to omit a weighty matter. It is a transgression, not an inconsequential oversight.
"Brethren and sisters, the law of tithing is a divine commandment and applies to all the children of our Heavenly Father. All who believe the Bible ought to believe that it is a law of God.
"But none understand it and live it like the Latter-day Saints attempt to live it, because it has been renewed to us by modern-day prophets.
"There echo again and again the words of the Master: 'Render . . . unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.'" (Matt. 22:21.)
