Writings Storehouse

This is an article that was published in Ministry and to which I wrote a reply. See my reply in the next blog. There is no need to comment on this post but you can on my reply.

WHERE IS THE STOREHOUSE?
Robert J Kloosterhuis, Vice-President of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adentists
Published in the August, 1997 issue of Ministry.


Is the storehouse the local conference? Or the local church? It may surprise you but the Bible does not sanction either one as the storehouse! There are those who believe the storehouse should be the local church. They see parallels in the practices of ancient Israel. They contrast the present practice of Seventh-day Adventists with that of Scripture and say it is not biblical to have the local conference as the storehouse. On the other hand the world church follows the plan of the local conference/mission as the storehouse. Which is biblical? Unfortunately, this question is not easily answered by a crystal clear statement of Scripture either in favor of the local church or of the local conference.

A review of ancient Israel’s usage of the storehouse principle can shed some light to help us ascertain what latter day Israel’s practice ought to be. We begin with a familiar text:—“Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house, and thus put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts; see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing” (Mal 3:10 NRSV, emphasis supplied). What was the prophet’s intended meaning and his hearers’ understanding of the term “storehouse” when Malachi spoke the above words? Is contemporary denominational practice contrary to, or at least not fully in harmony with, Malachi’s intentions? Some sincere people are wondering why the local church is not the storehouse. Perhaps a more basic question is: Are Seventh-day Adventists following biblical principles, when they designate the local conference as the storehouse?

Storehouse in the Old Testament

The earliest reference regarding the remittance of tithe is of Abraham returning tithe to the high priest Melchizedek (Gen 14: 20). This brief allusion of Abraham paying tithe indicates that he returned tithe to an individual. This particular reference could lead us to understand that Melchizedek was considered by Abraham to be the storehouse.

Before crossing the Jordan River, the Lord instructed the Israelites to return all tithes to Him (Lev 27:30, 32) and He would “give to the Levites all the tithes in Israel as their inheritance in return for the work they do while serving at the Tent of Meeting” (Num 18:21 NRSV). The Levites also were instructed to tithe (v 28).

Following the conquest of Canaan, the Levites, given the fact that they were to “have no allotment in their land, nor have any share” (Num 18:20) lived in scattered areas usually near one of the 48 specially designated cities (Num 35:6). Soon after the crossing of the Jordan the Israelites pitched the Tabernacle at Gilgal, then later at Shechem, Shiloh, Nob and Gibeon. All male Israelites were enjoined to come and worship at least three times annually (Ex 23:17) and were instructed to bring their offerings with them for “no one is to appear . . . empty-handed” before the Lord (Ex 23:15). Only at the place designated by the Lord could sacrifices be offered (Deut 12:11).

Those who view the local church as the storehouse may cite Deut 14:22-29 as support. This is seen by Jewish scholars as the “second tithe.” [See Jewish Encyclopedia, art. “Tithe in Rabbinical Literature.] ”Ellen White concurs with this interpretation. [See Patriarchs and Prophets, page 530. Deut 14:28 indicates there was even a “third tithe.”] It is vital to keep in mind that just as there were many ceremonial sabbaths but only one holy weekly Sabbath, so also careful study reveals that there were other tithes along with the sacred tithe used only for Levitical support.

Period of the Monarchy

Early in his reign David brought the ark of God to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6). His son, Solomon, constructed a beautiful temple in Jerusalem which became a permanent place for the storehouse (1 Kings 6). With the passing of time the practice of returning tithes and offerings to one of the nearest 48 designated cities was discontinued. It appears that all Israelites returned directly to the temple storehouse the required tithes and offerings.

Note the practice in vogue during Hezekiah’s reign. “He commanded the people who lived in Jerusalem to give the portion due to the priests and the Levites, so that they might devote themselves to the law of the Lord. As soon as the word spread, the people of Israel gave in abundance the first fruits of grain, wine, oil, honey, and of all the produce of the field; and they brought in abundantly the tithe of everything. The people of Israel and Judah who lived in the cities of Judah also brought in the tithe of cattle and sheep, and the tithe of the dedicated things that had been consecrated to the Lord their God, and laid them in heaps. In the third month they began to pile up the heaps, and finished them in the seventh month. When Hezekiah and the officials came and saw the heaps, they blessed the Lord and his people Israel. Hezekiah questioned the priests and the Levites about the heaps. The chief priest Azariah, who was of the house of Zadok, answered him, ‘Since they began to bring the contributions into the house of the Lord, we have had enough to eat and have plenty to spare; for the Lord has blessed his people, so that we have this great supply left over.’ Then Hezekiah commanded them to prepare store-chambers in the house of the Lord; and they prepared them. Faithfully they brought in the contributions, the tithes and the dedicated things” (2 Chr 31:4-12 NRSV, emphasis supplied).

This passage suggests that following the division of the twelve tribes, the 48 specially-designated cities with the Levites living near them no longer functioned as the cities had during the period of the Judges. Now with different conditions in the cities, it was more expedient to return the tithes and offerings directly to the temple in Jerusalem.

Post Babylonian Captivity

Following the Babylonian Captivity, under Nehemiah’s reformatory leadership, he reintroduced the tithing and remittance systems as practiced earlier. “And the priest, the descendant of Aaron, shall be with the Levites when the Levites receive the tithes; and the Levites shall bring up a tithe of the tithes to the house of our God, to the chambers of the storehouse” (Neh 10:37-39 NRSV). “On that day men were appointed over the chambers for the stores, the contributions, the first fruits, and the tithes, to gather into them the portions required by the law for the priests and for the Levites from the fields belonging to the towns; for Judah rejoiced over the priests and the Levites who ministered” (Neh 12:44 NRSV). [These verses give the impression that the only tithe brought to Jerusalem was the Levitical tithe of the tithe for the priests and that the 90 percent was stored in the local villages. However, Neh 12:44 is not as clear as we would like; the meaning is not certain. “The portions required by the Law for the priests and the Levites” were brought to the temple. These portions included the tithe as suggested in verse 47: “All Israel gave the daily portions for the singers and the gatekeepers. They set apart that which was for the Levites; and the Levites set apart that which was for the descendants of Aaron.” All these tithes were stored in the temple.
Perhaps Neh 10:38 is simply saying the Levites brought their own tithe of the tithes to the temple, and the people brought theirs to the local storage places in the villages. The other passages indicate that all tithe went to Jerusalem for storage.]

Later between Nehemiah’s two terms as governor, the people lapsed into apostasy and stopped returning the tithe. Upon his return, Nehemiah remonstrated both leaders and people for neglecting the house of God (Neh 13:11). They repented and reinstated the tithing system (v 12). It was during this period of time that God, through the prophet Malachi, called on His people to reform in both corporate and individual lifestyles. “Will anyone rob God? Yet you are robbing me! But you say, ‘How are we robbing you?’ In your tithes and offerings” (Mal 3:8 NRSV). Then follows our Lord’s command and promise: “Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house, and thus put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts; see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing” (v 10 NRSV). Notice that the words “storehouse” and “my house” refer to the same location.

Where was the storehouse? Clearly it was the temple in Jerusalem.

The thrust of Malachi’s words and the people’s understanding of them was clear. Both understood the word “storehouse” to refer to the sanctuary, the temple in Jerusalem. There may be some validity in the argument that the remittance locally of tithe to the Levites took place in the small villages and towns at certain times in the past. But at the time of Nehemiah and Malachi, it was unequivocally understood that Malachi was referring to the temple in Jerusalem as the storehouse.

New Testament Practice

Only eleven verses in the New Testament refer to tithe. Not one of them gives any information regarding the storehouse. Thus we are unable to ascertain how early Christian believers practiced the “storehouse” principle. The New Testament does tell us that Paul collected funds from some churches for the poor believers in Jerusalem suffering from famine. Paul, along with certain brethren, took the offerings to Jerusalem (2 Cor 8:19). Apart from a few instances about offerings there is no information of collecting the tithe. Hence we are left to rely on the Old Testament for understanding the meaning of “storehouse” and its usage.

Denominational Usage

Two years before the organization of the General Conference, a small group of leaders and believers convened in Battle Creek, April 26–29, 1861, to make preparation for the incorporation of the publishing association which came to be known as the Review and Herald. Prior to this meeting many members felt that the time had come to consider denominational organization as well. (There were many who opposed formal organization of the church.) Thus during the publishing conference it was voted that the nine ministers present write an address for the Review and Herald on that subject.

The outcome was a carefully prepared conference address entitled “Organization,” signed by J. H. Waggoner, Joseph Bates, James White, J. B. Frisbie, J. N. Loughborough, M. E. Cornell, E. W. Shortridge, Moses Hull, and John Byington. It set forth the basic principles that have guided the denomination ever since. The writers proposed (1) a more thorough organization of local churches; (2) proper organization of “state or district conferences,” which would grant ministerial credentials; (3) the holding of “general conferences” that would be “fully entitled to the name” as representing the will of the churches. The article appeared in the June 11, 1861 issue of the Review and Herald.

The article indicated that at the local church level there should be elders and deacons. At the state level, the conference would authorize the licenses of ministers to preach, pay the ministers, hold title of church properties, and receive the tithe. The general conference would be a convening of delegates of all state conferences and would reflect the will and thinking of all the local churches.

The Seventh-day Adventist form of church government reflects characteristics of several systems—particularly the congregational, with its emphasis on local church authority; the presbyterian, which provides for church government by elected representatives; and in some points the Methodist, because it has conferences as organizational units which assign ministers to the local churches. However, these features were not conscious imitations, but grew out of the situations and needs of the developing Seventh-day Adventist movement.

By October of 1861 the first conference of the future Seventh-day Adventist Church was organized—the Michigan Conference. One of the first items of business was to arrange a fixed salary for the ministers of the Michigan Conference. It also issued letters of credentials which were renewed annually. The source of the funds came from the members via the churches composing the new conference. This resolution in essence had the practical effect of making the conference the storehouse.

Two years later in 1863, the General Conference was formally organized. At the same meeting a model constitution for state conferences was prepared and recommended to the delegates for all state conferences. Article III of the newly recommended model constitution said, “Funds were to be raised by the Systematic Benevolence plan and other gifts, and reported regularly to the conference treasurer.” This Article informs us that our pioneers intended that the source of funding for the local conference should come from the members of constituent churches of the state conference. Thus the tithe and other offerings would form the base for conference finances. This fund was to be used for the support of evangelistic/ ministerial work.

The General Conference work was at first financed by irregular appropriations from the state conferences. In 1878 the General Conference Committee recommended that conferences pay a tithe on their income to the General Conference. Later when union conferences were organized in 1901, the conferences paid tithe of their income to the unions, which in turn paid tithe to the General Conference. [The preceding five paragraphs are a summary of the article, “Organization, Development of, In the Seventh-day Adventist Church,” SDA Encyclopedia, 1976, 10:1042-1054.]

It must be noted that local churches did not employ and pay the salaries of ministers. Nor did they grant licenses and credentials. It was the newly organized local conference that assumed these responsibilities. Today local churches are not legal entities, but the local conference association is. Churches join together to form a conference/association which serves their needs as a legally recognized body to hire and supervise the ministry, to pay the ministers’ salaries, and to collect tithe and offerings from the churches to fund evangelistic endeavors. The local churches having no legal status which precluded their employing ministers on an individual basis, delegated to the local conference these responsibilities. At present newly organized local churches are accepted into “the sisterhood of churches” in the local conference based on these same conditions at regularly called constituency meetings.

What was Mrs White’s understanding of the term “storehouse”? Note what she said in 9T 249, “If our churches will take their stand upon the Lord’s Word and be faithful paying their tithe into His treasury, more laborers will be encouraged to take up ministerial work.” In the context of what she said “treasury” is clearly the local conference.

Mention should be made of a time when Dr Kellogg was returning to the local conference all the sanitarium workers’ tithe and was contemplating discontinuing this practice. Mrs White was in great distress at the thought. “For him to separate the tithe from the treasury,” she wrote, “would be a necessity I greatly dread” (Letter 51a, 1898).
Very little can be found in her writings about the “storehouse” principle simply because it was not an issue.

Advantages of the conference storehouse

To suggest that the local church become the storehouse is possible. But at what cost? It would seriously disrupt and discombobulate the organizational and governance structure of the denomination, as we now know it. It would, in all probability, destroy one of the most remarkable systems of church financing witnessed in the past century and half. The world mission program, as it now exists, would cease to function.

How grateful we are that our Lord led the pioneers to establish the present system of church finance. By adopting the concept of the local conference as the storehouse, a small band of believers laid the necessary foundational financial support for the miraculous development of the remnant church into one of the most remarkable world missionary movements in modern times. It is based on the Biblical principle of returning an honest tithe and designating the local conference as the storehouse. The Spirit of Prophecy never disagreed with this procedure, a practice paralleling nearly fifty years of her ministry. Mrs. White upheld the principle of designating the local conference as the storehouse. If it had been morally wrong, she would certainly have had much to say to right that wrong. But this is not the case. There is not one sentence objecting to the practice.

Conclusion

From our brief discussion we can note the following points:
1. Scripture teaches that tithe is to be returned to the storehouse.
2. Tithe remittance practices always involved either the Tabernacle storehouse or the Temple storehouse in Jerusalem
3. In the Old Testament the location of the storehouse was not always permanent, because the Tabernacle storehouse moved periodically from place to place until it was located permanently in Jerusalem.
4. Because the temple storehouse in Jerusalem no longer exists, the Seventh-day Adventist Church in general assembly decides the location of the storehouse.
5. Actions taken by our founding fathers to designate the local conference as the storehouse were within the will of God.
No inspired message came from Mrs White to contradict this action. She in fact wrote that church members should obey the voice of the church because Christ has delegated to his church the right of decision.
6. There is no prohibition in Scripture to designate either the local conference or the local church as the storehouse, and from the inception of the organized church, the local conference has been designated the storehouse.

Where is the storehouse?

Where is the storehouse? After more than 130 years of highly successful practice in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, it can be clearly and confidently answered: “The local conference.”