Wednesday, December 8, 2021

Joseph F. Smith on Tithing (1917)

During a tour to the southern USA, beginning September 11, 1917, Joseph F. Smith was recorded as teaching the following on tithing to Church members:

 

Think what it means to hold keys of authority which--if exercised in wisdom and in righteousness--are bound to be respected by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost! Do you honor this Priesthood? Do you respect the office and honor the key of authority that you possess in the Melchizedek Priesthood, which is after the order of the Son of God? Will you, who hold this Priesthood, profane the name of Deity? Would you be riotous, and eat and drink with the drunken, with the unbelieving and with the profane? Would you, holding that Priesthood, forget your prayers, and fail to remember the Giver of all good? Would you, holding that Priesthood, and possessing the right and authority from God to administer in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, violate the confidence and the love of God, the hope and desire of the Father of all of us? For, in bestowing that key and blessing upon you, he desires and expects you to magnify your calling. Would you, as an elder in the Church of Jesus Christ, dishonor your wife or your children? Would you desert the mother of your children, the wife of your bosom, the gift of God to you, which is more precious than life itself? For without the woman the man is not perfect in the Lord, no more than the woman is perfect without the man. Will you honor the Sabbath day and keep it holy? Will you observe the law of tithing and all the other requirements of the gospel? Will you carry with you at all times the spirit of prayer and the desire to do good? Will you teach your children the principles of life and salvation so that when they are eight years old they will desire baptism, of their own accord? (F.W. Otterstrom [official Church Reporter], "A Journey to the South: Gems from President Smith's Talks to the People on the Way," Improvement Era 21, no. 2 [December, 1917]: 105-6)