The Bible paints a painful picture of the world before the second coming of Jesus. Daniel talks about “a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation, even to that time” (Daniel 12:1, NKJV). Considering some of the troublous times in the past, what he is referring to here must be pretty bad.
The book of Revelation also points to troubling times before the return of Christ.
Read Revelation 13:11-17. How do financial matters fit in with the end-time persecution?
Image © Phil McKay
You can’t buy or sell? How much of our lives today revolves around buying and selling? Our work is, in a sense, our selling of our time and skills and goods to those who want to buy them. Not being able to buy or sell all but means not being able to function in society. The pressure on those who remain faithful will then be enormous. Plus, the more money that you have, the more stake you will have in this world, at least in terms of material possessions, and so, surely, the pressure to conform will be even stronger.
How then do we prepare? We prepare now, by making sure through God’s grace that we are not slaves to our money, to the things of the world. If we are not bound to them now, we won’t be when we will, in order to be faithful, have to give them up.
Read Deuteronomy 14:22-23 and the last part of verse 23. What were God’s people to do with their increase or production each year? Why did God ask them to do this?
God explained through Moses that one of the reasons He established the tithing system was “that you may learn to fear the LORD your God always” (Deuteronomy 14:23, NKJV). In the poetic parallelism of Psalm 31:19, we see that fear is synonymous with trust.
“Oh, how great is Your goodness,
Which You have laid up for those who fear You,
Which You have prepared for those who trust in You” (NKJV).
These parallel lines show us that to fear the Lord is to trust Him. Therefore, we understand that God established the tithing system to protect us from selfishness and to encourage us to trust Him to provide for us. While being faithful in tithe is certainly not a guarantee that people will stay faithful in the end, those who are not faithful in tithe are surely setting themselves up for trouble.
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