Copyright © 2006 by The Voice of Prophecy

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You Can Be a Philanthropist

Dick Horowitz is a Beverly Hills insurance broker. He is a respected businessman and philanthropist, well known in the insurance industry. He has written over $4 billion worth of insurance for his clients. But today most of his time and income goes to helping people. He turns over a large percentage of his income to charity, and spends many hours weekly counseling young people about their future, and teaching a marriage class.

Mr Horowitz is proud of his Jewish heritage. Part of that heritage is tithing. In an interview published in the April 21, 2002, issue of Society Today, he was asked about his giving. Here's what he said:

"The first year Bev and I made any reasonable amount of money, we gave 10 percent. That was the hardest money we ever gave, because we were just barely making ends meet. Since then it's gotten easier and easier. The following year we made more money, so we gave 15 percent. We kept increasing it gradually, pushing ourselves to expand our giving, but not to the point where we'd feel deprived and resentful. For the last 15 years, we've been giving 30 to 50 percent of what we make annually."

Then the interviewer asked, "Why don't you keep more of your money in the family?" I thought his answer was fascinating.

"Someone once said," he replied, "that money is like manure. If you put it in a big pile, all you get is a big smelly pile. If you spread it around, you make a lot of wonderful things grow. We don't understand the philosophy of people who just accumulate money. If you give too much money to your kids, you ruin your kids. And if you happen to get lucky with your kids, you'll ruin your grandchildren, and eventually the money's lost. Very few families keep money for generations." Then Mr Horowitz said, "if you take care of the Almighty's children, He'll take care of your children. This philosophy has worked for us."

Mr. Horowitz is an Artesian. If you tuned in yesterday, we talked about three kinds of givers. Some were like a dry well—they didn’t give at all. Others were like an ordinary well, with plenty of good water, but you had to coax it out of them. But the best kind of giver is an Artesian well, always flowing with pure, sweet water.

Now the world calls Artesian givers “philanthropists.”

Some time ago I was looking at a website which specializes in serious investment advice. Someone had written into the site and asked a question. What level of giving qualifies a person as a philanthropist? One of the featured experts on that site gave an answer that surprised me.
Before I share it with you, maybe you're wondering what a philanthropist is. Let's break the word down into its roots. "Philo" means love of, and "anthropos" is the Greek word for man. So the root meaning of philanthropist is someone who loves their fellow men, a lover of humanity. But the word has come to mean a generous person who gives away a lot of money.

So what level of giving makes someone a philanthropist? Well, our financial expert claimed that anyone who gave away 10% of their income could be considered a philanthropist. Just 10%! Think about it! That sounds easy enough!

Millions of Christians have been returning 10% of their income and more to God all their lives. I do. So do all the people on my staff. We're all philanthropists and we didn't even know it.
Let me introduce you to John Templeton. He's a philanthropist in every sense of the word. He has made thousands of people rich. He has given millions to charity and is one of the world's most respected investment advisers, so he knows something about money. At over 90 years of age he is an unpretentious and very robust citizen of the Bahamas, where the locals call him Sir John.
Sir John believes that his spiritual exercises, not his market acumen, made him a great financial success. He says he wants to be remembered not for the great wealth he personally created for himself and others, but rather for his work to unlock the secrets of spirituality and to prove scientifically that faith works.

Templeton was born in the small Tennessee town of Winchester in 1912. Through hard work and study, he earned a scholarship to Yale University and became a Rhodes Scholar and an Oxford graduate.

In 1937, with the nation deep in the Great Depression, Templeton went to work on Wall Street. In just three years he was able to start his own fund management company. In 1954, he founded the Templeton Growth Fund, a mutual fund that has become part of his legacy. When he sold his funds, they were worth a staggering 80 billion dollars. He walked away with more than 900 million dollars in his pocket and set about the business of helping people acquire spiritual wealth.
In 1972, Templeton founded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, which each year awards about $1 million to the person who deepens man's understanding of faith in the physical world.

Sir John has sixteen rules for investment success. I'm only going to share with you his first rule, which is this: "Begin with prayer. You will think more clearly and make fewer mistakes." And he practices what he preaches. Each meeting of his shareholders or funds directors opens with prayer, led by him or colleagues.

The surest investment, says Sir John, is investing in God. "Most other investments have risk factors," he says, "But in my judgment, this is a sure thing."

Templeton practices tithing. That is, he returns 10 percent of his own income to God. And what does this man who is recognized as one of Wall Street's keenest market analysts have to say about tithing? He says—now listen carefully—“In all my lifetime of helping thousands of people, almost every person I've known who tithed for as long as 10 years has become both prosperous and happy.”

Now if I told you that, you would never believe me. But here is a financial expert saying that tithing brings prosperity. Do you understand what that means? It means that tithing is not so much an obligation as it is an opportunity. It's not that you HAVE to tithe; you GET to! God invites you to make heaven a partner in your business affairs. What a privilege!

What is the difference between tithes and offerings? An offering is something you give over and above your tithe. It's like saying, “God, I know you asked your people in Old Testament times to tithe, but I live on this side of the cross, and I'm so grateful for your blessings and your love toward me that I want to go far beyond the mere letter-of-the-law minimum. I want to open my heart to you and give a gift that costs me something.”

Many Christians believe that tithing was only for Jews under the Mosaic law. But the practice of tithing was known long before the law was ever given to the Jews. In Genesis 14:20, Abraham, who was wealthy, returned tithes to Melchizedek, the local priest. In Genesis 28:22 Jacob promised God that he would follow in his grandfather's footsteps and give God a tenth of all of his possessions. God impressed these men to do this before He ever commanded tithing under the Law.

Now if the minimum giving that God required of his people under the law was a tenth of their income, then how can we who live under grace, in the light of the cross, and who enjoy so much greater blessings than they did, give any less than that?

God feels so serious about tithing that He led Malachi to describe people who did not tithe as robbers of God. The passage is found in Malachi 3:8. “Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. But you ask, ‘How do we rob you?’ In tithes and offerings.”

Now, surely you would never consider reaching in the offering plate, picking up a fistful of bills, and stuffing it in your pocket. But you may be doing the same thing in God's eyes. It's robbery. How wise can it be to steal from the most powerful being in the universe? Many Christians live without God's blessing in their life because they have not given God what rightly belongs to Him.
Our tithe belongs to God, so returning the tithe is simple honesty. Giving beyond that is generosity. And everyone can afford to be generous, because Jesus promises in Luke 6:38, "Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." Notice that the incoming is based on the outgoing. God says that your measure of generosity toward Him will be the same measure of generosity He will use toward you.

Let me quote Sir John Templeton again. “The more we give away,” he once wrote in the New York Times, “the more we have left.” That's not new math, that's kingdom math.

You see, when we give for the joy of giving, the law of abundance starts to work for us. A mystical, invisible current of blessing starts to flow our way. God says, “You are abundant and handle abundance well, so here's some more.”

Many Christians don't understand this principle. They treat God like they treat their dog. They give Him the leftovers. God doesn't want leftovers; He wants first-fruits. Proverbs 3:9 says, “Honor the Lord with thy substance and with the first-fruits of all thine increase.” This means we should give God our tithe off the top of our increase. Before we pay taxes and other bills, we should tithe. I believe this principle includes benefits and gifts that we receive, even though they do not come to us in the form of cash.

So, friend, become a philanthropist. An Artesian. Let go and give to God, joyfully and unconditionally. Accept His challenge to put Him to the test, and watch Him “throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.” That's what He promised, friend, and that's what He'll do.

Tomorrow I have a fascinating story about Donald Trump to share with you. It’s entitled, “The
Day THE DONALD Got Lost, and the Dillons Got Lucky.”