Senior pastor of the Trinity House Church in Lagos Ituah Ighodalo said that Christians were supposed to pay their tithes and first fruits to enable church leaders cater for their own needs.
The Cleric spoke on the touchy issue of tithe and first fruits in an interview published on Saturday by The Punch.
He said that tithes and first fruits paid by Christians were God’s ways of compensating leaders working in the church full time.
According to him, “when a person pays his tithes and first fruits, God is duty-bound to ensure the source does not go dry.
“The tithes and the first fruits belong to the priests; that is God’s way of compensating them for their commitment and dedication to the work of God. So when you pay your tithe, your tithe goes to sort out the welfare of the priests; both the high priest, the priest, and the sons of Levi, the musicians, and all that.”
Ighodalo noted that some portions might go to the welfare cases, the poor, or church building.
Explaining what first fruit means in the modern day, the 62-year-old said it was the first salary that one earned or the first income one generated from a business.
He also explained another angle of first fruit using the analogy of one getting a salary increase from N100,000 to N150,000, with the additional N50,000 “one gets the first time one earns that N150,000, becoming the first fruit of one’s increase.”
Ighodalo, whose wife Ibidunni died in 2020, said paying first fruit was to ensure that the increase did not fail and that it continued.
According to him, paying tithes and first fruits did not mean that everything would work out fine for a Christian.
He said sin and generational curses could also be stumbling blocks to one’s progress.
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