By John Amoda
FROM my wife to my daughter, from my congregants to my good neighbour and elder brother, him that we call ToT, I have received the admonition.

·Talk and teach about something else;
·There is more to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ than your inordinate focus on Christian tithing;
·Talk about salvation, talk about the saving grace of our Lord Jesus. Such sundry words of advice have been thrown my way.

However, I know why I could not but see the strident advocacy of Christian tithing as a red flag. I believe God kept my attention constant on this singular issue to bring to pass the following injunction of Moses to Israel: “Hear, O Israel, The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words which I command the this day, shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou riseth up.

And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy house, and on thy gates” (Deuteronomy 6:6-9).

Moses was in effect encouraging Israel to be magnificently and totally engrossed with these words until they saw and realised that “the LORD our God is one LORD whom Israel should fiercely and devotedly love.

Israel’s love for God is to be our Love for Him; a love which is not only an echo of His love for us but is also the identification with His love for the world. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life.

For God sent not the Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:16-17). Reciprocation of this love of God for the world is what Jesus proclaimed as the intent of the Law of God. And now I know and realise why my opposition to the advocacy of Christian tithing is so total and absolute.

Christian tithing is the cornerstone of the foundation of the Gospel of Anti-Redemption Christianity. Although I had suspected that the above was so, it was not until the reading of Oswald Chambers comments on 1 Peter2:24 “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree” that I saw that I could articulate the aim of my opposition to Anti-Redemption Doctrines of tithes.

“The Cross of Jesus”, explains Oswald Chambers, “is the revelation of God’s judgment on sin. Never tolerate the idea of martyrdom about the Cross of Jesus Christ. The Cross was a superb triumph in which the foundations of hell were shaken. There is nothing more certain in Time or Eternity than what Jesus Christ did on the Cross: He switched the whole of the human race back into a right relationship with God.

He made Redemption the basis of human life, that is, He made a way for every son of man to get into communion with God. The Cross did not happen to Jesus: He came on purpose for it. He is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”. The whole meaning of the Incarnation is the Cross. Beware of separating God manifest in the flesh from the Son becoming sin. The Incarnation was for the, purpose of Redemption.

God became incarnate for the purpose of putting away sin; not for the purpose of self-realisation. The Cross is the centre of Time and of Eternity, the answer to the enigmas of both. The Cross is not the cross of a man but the Cross of God, and the Cross of God can never be realised in human experience.

The Cross is the exhibition of the nature of God, the gateway whereby any individual of the human race can enter into union with God. When we get to the Cross, we do not go through it; we abide in the life to which the Cross is the gateway.

The center of salvation is the Cross of Jesus, and the reason it is so easy to obtain salvation is because it cost God so much. The Cross is the point where God and sinful man merge with a crash and the way to life is opened-but the crash is on the heart of God”.

The advocates of Christian tithing may not know the real effect of their advocacy. But these words above in the Gospel Process unveiled by Oswald Chambers put into words what it was I was contending for in contending against the Gospel of Christian tithing.

I am an advocate of Redemption Christianity and an opponent of Anti-Redemption Christianity. “I seek to bring believers out of congregations of Anti-Redemption Christianity into membership and fellowship of Redemption Christianity.

To the exponents of Christian tithing, the preaching of the Cross is foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:18). They either do not yet see or they have rejected the fact that “the incarnation was for the purpose of Redemption.

(That God became man) “for the purpose of putting away sin; not for the purpose of self-realisation” (That the Cross) is the center of Time and of Eternity, the answer to the enigmas of both (that the Cross) “is the exhibition of the nature of God, the gateway whereby any individual of the human race can enter into union with God”; (that) “when we get to the Cross, we do not go through it; we abide in the life to which the Cross is the gateway.

In summary the Cross is the revelation of “Love so amazing, so divine” that “demands my soul, my life, my all” (I Watts, 1674-1748- author of “When I survey the wondrous cross, on which the Prince of Glory died”)
Christian tithing is thus a practice of an Anti-Redemption Christianity that is in violent opposition to the Gospel of Sonship.

It is a denial of the resurrection grace of life in the Body of Christ. Like the serpent’s “you shall not surely die” (Genesis 3:4),  pro-Christian Tithing advocates deny by doctrine and conduct that Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree.

That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith …For (we) are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of (us) as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for (we) are all one in Christ Jesus, and if (we) be Christ’s then are (we) Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:13-14, 26-29)

We are to enter into Christ’s life at the straight gate into the narrow way of Redemption Christianity and we are to warn believers attracted to Anti-Redemption Christianity to make a u-turn and to be converted, because “wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in threat” (Matthew 7:13).