Summary: This is another very powerful and emotional talk on the importance of tithing and how our eternal life literally depends on it, even if you are a non-member, just taking the discussions. Robert D Hales mentions that even donating tithing money to charitable donations is very wrong. It is up to the LDS Church, Jesus' Church, to decide where your money goes, what it is spent on, not the person that is donating. He then says: "As soon as you have demonstrated your faith in paying tithing over a period of time and kept the other necessary commandments, you will be able to enjoy the eternal blessings of the temple. I plead with you, do not let this opportunity pass by. Do not procrastinate." This tells me that our eternal life hangs in the balance. No matter how great of a person we are, no matter how great of a spouse, parent, etc, we will not be eligible for the "eternal blessings of the temple", if we don't pay our tithing to Jesus Christ and his Church. As he also mentions, "I encourage you to gather your little ones around you and help them count their pennies." The Lord's Church needs every cent that it can get, even "little one's pennies", in order to further the work. He then discusses 2 missionaries that were teaching a very poor family, that lived in a house "made out of pressboard and sticks, with a dirt floor and no electricity or beds." The Father worked everyday, just to be able to put food on the table each night. In other words, they were about as poor as you can get. The Senior companion wondered if they should even teach tithing at all, or at least delay it, while the junior companion, wanted to teach it in the next discussion, even though it wouldn't be for 4 more discussions. Why you ask? The junior companion expressed it this way: "I know the principle of tithing isn't taught for four more discussions, but can we please teach it the next time we visit? They need to know about tithing now because they need the help and the blessing of the Lord so much." You see, even though they weren't members; the Lord couldn't bless them, even though he wanted to, because they weren't members of his Church, paying their tithing. As Robert D. Hales says, in a summary of this story: "The Lord wants to bless this family and anxiously awaits their obedience so He can." So, even though they didn't realize or know that they should be paying tithing and that they were being disobedient, The Lord couldn't bless them, even though he anxiously wanted to. That is powerful. The Lord can't wait for them to be LDS and paying their tithing, so that He can bless them. In the meantime, The Lord needs to leave them in poverty, without those blessings that he "anxiously awaits" to bless them with. This clip shows the importance and power of tithing and how the Lord can't and won't bless you and will withhold blessings from you if you don't pay it, even if you aren't LDS and didn't even know that you should be paying it. Their is no salvation in ignorance and we are all accountable for our sins of commission and omission, even if we don't know better. Robert D. Hales says the following: "Keeping the commandments, which includes paying our tithing, will qualify us to enter those temples, be sealed to our families, and receive eternal blessings." So, the opposite is also true; if we don't pay our tithing, "we will not be qualified to enter the temples, be sealed to our families and we will not receive eternal blessings." Robert D. Hales gets very emotional at one point in this talk, as you can hear his voice crack, talking about the importance of tithing and you may want to get the tissues ready. He is a great man. This talk is amazing and basically breaks it all down and leaves no doubt; if we don't pay our tithing, nothing else we do really matters and everything in eternity, hinges on paying our tithing. This talk was given in the October 2002 General Conference.
