Sam Adeyemi, a world-renowned prosperity preacher based in Nigeria, who previously taught that tithing was a requirement for Christians to allow God’s blessings to flourish in their lives, stunned followers and critics in a recent message when he declared the requirement had expired because Jesus freed them from the practice.
“So I say again, tithing as practiced under the Law of Moses as a regulation has expired. No Christian should feel guilty for not paying tithes. No Christian should be made to feel guilty for not paying tithes,” Adeyemi said in a hotly debated video clip posted online.
Adeyemi is the founder and senior pastor of the more than 20,000-member Daystar Christian Centre, which is one of the fastest growing churches in Africa.
Quoting Romans 8: 1-4, the influential preacher who challenged leaders at Willow Creek’s 2017 Global Leadership Summit to build hope into the next generation, defended his new position on tithing.
“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit,” he said.
“Nobody should tell a Christian that for you to be accepted before God first or for you to be righteous you must pay your tithes. When Jesus said it is finished it was finished. There is nothing anybody can add to what Jesus did to be justified before God,” he added. “All anybody needs to do now to be free from sin is to pray and ask for forgiveness.”
Adeyemi’s recent message on tithing stands in stark contrast to his previous message called Covenant System for Increase.
