LDS Quotes on Tithing
“Pay your tithes and offerings out of honesty and integrity because they are God’s rightful due. Surely one of the most piercing lines in all of scripture is Jehovah’s thundering inquiry, ‘Will a man rob God?’
“Paying tithing is not a token gift we are somehow charitably bestowing upon God. Paying tithing is discharging a debt.”
Now, do not get me wrong. I am not here to say that if you pay an honest tithing you will realize your dream of a fine house, a Rolls Royce, and a condominium in Hawaii. The Lord will open the windows of heaven according to our need, and not according to our greed. If we are paying tithing to get rich, we are doing it for the wrong reason. The basic purpose for tithing is to provide the Church with the means needed to carry on His work. The blessing to the giver is an ancillary return, and that blessing may not be always in the form of financial or material benefit.
| Tithing:An Opportunity to Prove Our Faithfulness
“We would not lend a neighbor money with which to run his business without interest. Neither would we expect him to lend us money without paying interest. I found I was using God’s money and the business talents He had given me without paying Him interest. That’s all I’ve done in tithing—just met my interest obligations!”
| quoted by Ernest L Wilkinson, “The Principle and Practice of Paying Tithing,” Brigham Young University Bulletin, 10 Dec. 1957, pp. 10–11
“The honest payment of tithing provides a person the inner strength and commitment to comply with the other commandments.”
| Ensign, November 1996
“Pay your tithing as a declaration that possession of material goods and the accumulation of worldly wealth are not the uppermost goals of your existence…In a society that tells us money is our most important asset, we declare empathically that it is not.”
There has been laid upon the Church a tremendous responsibility. Tithing is the source of income for the Church to carry forward its mandated activities. The need is always greater than the availability. God help us to be faithful in observing this great principle which comes from him with his marvelous promise.
| Tithing:An Opportunity to Prove Our Faithfulness
By this principle it shall be known who is for the kingdom of God and who is against it. … By it shall be known whether we are faithful or unfaithful.
| Gospel Doctrine, 5th ed. (1939), 225.
“..tithing isn’t something I do to clear my conscience so I can do whatever I want with the 90 percent–it also belongs to God! I must seek his direction and permission for whatever I do with the full amount. I may discover that God has different ideas than I do.”
| Money, Possessions and Eternity
“My mother was a widow, with a large family to provide for. One spring when we opened our potato pits she had her boys get a load of the best potatoes, and she took them to the tithing office; potatoes were scarce that season. I was a little boy at the time, and drove the team. When we drove up to the steps of the tithing office, ready to unload the potatoes, one of the clerks came out and said to my mother, ‘Widow Smith, it’s a shame that you should have to pay tithing.’ … He chided my mother for paying her tithing, called her anything but wise or prudent; and said there were others who were strong and able to work that were supported from the tithing office. My mother turned upon him and said: ‘William, 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.”
| Joseph F. Smith, Conference Report, Apr. 1900, p. 48
“The basic question is not how much of our money we should give to God, but how much of God’s money we should keep for ourselves.”
| A Husband After God's Own Heart
families not worth over seventy five dollars each, should not be required to tithe themselves and yet retain an honorable standing in the church
| Far West Record, 129.
“Tithing is a principle that is fundamental to the personal happiness and well-being of the Church members worldwide, both rich and poor. Tithing is a principle of sacrifice and a key to the opening of the windows of heaven.”
| “Opening the Windows of Heaven,” Ensign, Nov. 1998, 59.
“I bear witness—and I know that the witness I bear is true—that the men and the women who have been absolutely honest with God, who have paid their tithing, … God has given them wisdom whereby they have been able to utilize the remaining nine-tenths, and it has been of greater value to them, and they have accomplished more with it than they would if they had not been honest with the Lord”
| Conference Report, Apr. 1912, p. 30
One of the great blessings the people of this Church have is to meet with the bishop once each year, settle their tithing, and report that what they had paid in contributions constitutes a tithe. It is also a great blessing for the bishops to have this experience.
“If we like luxuries or necessities more than we like obedience, we will miss the blessings which he would like to give us.”
“A man who has not paid his tithing is unfit to be baptized for his dead. … If a man has not faith enough to attend to these little things, he has not faith enough to save himself and his friends.”
| History of the Church, 7:282.
Some were disposed to do right with their surplus property, and once in a while you would find a man who had a cow which he considered surplus, but generally she was of the class that would kick a person’s hat off, or eyes out, or the wolves had eaten off her teats. You would once in a while find a man who had a horse that he considered surplus, but at the same time he had the ringbone, was broken-winded, spavined in both legs, had the pole evil at one end of the neck and a fistula at the other, and both knees sprung.”
| Journal of Discourses, 2:306–7
We never felt that it was a sacrifice to pay our tithing. We felt it was an obligation, that even as small children we were doing our duty as the Lord had outlined that duty, and that we were assisting his church in the great work it had to accomplish.
The bishop should encourage every man, woman and child who earns and receives a return for labor, to honor the Lord and to prove obedient to the law of God by giving the one-tenth of that which he or she receives, as the Lord requires, so that they may have their names enrolled on the book of the law of the Lord, that their genealogies may be had in the archives of the Church, and that they may be entitled to the privileges and blessings of the house of God.
“Grandpa Vanisi’s spirituality inspired an awe in me as a child. I remember following him daily to his plantation. He would always point out to me the very best of his taro, bananas, or yams and say: ‘These will be for our tithing.’ His greatest care was given to these ‘chosen’ ones. During the harvest, I was often the one assigned to take our load of tithing to the branch president. I remember sitting on the family horse. Grandfather would lift onto its back a sack of fine taro which I balanced in front of me. Then with a very serious look in his eyes, he said to me, ‘Simi, be very careful because this is our tithing.’ From my grandfather I learned early in life that you give only your best to the Lord”
| Tongan Saints: Legacy of Faith, Laie, Hawaii: The Institute for Polynesian Studies, 1991, pp. 79–80
“I appeal to the Latter-day Saints to be honest with the Lord and I promise them that peace, prosperity and financial success will attend those who are honest with our Heavenly Father. … When we set our hearts upon the things of this world and fail to be strictly honest with the Lord we do not grow in the light and power and strength of the gospel as we otherwise would do.”
| Conference Report, Oct. 1929, pp. 4–5