“What Comes from Above Is Sacred,” Liahona, June 2021
Come, Follow Me
What Comes from Above Is Sacred
By Elder Jorge M. Alvarado
Of the Seventy
The Lord’s commands should not be treated casually.
Illustrations by Dilleen Marsh
When I was 15 years old, I decided to put the law of tithing to the test. I was working as a grocery bagger in Ponce, Puerto Rico. Every two hours I got a 15-minute break. During the break I would count how much I made in tips; then I would place my tithing money aside. After I started doing this systematically, I noticed that the amount of my tips increased! I don’t know that this was a result of divine intervention, but I knew that I was keeping a commandment and that when we keep commandments, sooner or later we receive blessings.
Of course, blessings don’t always come in quite the way we think they will. After I had been paying tithing for a while, I knew that what I was doing was sacred. It wasn’t just donating money to the Church. I was treating what the Lord had said with respect, and I was making sure my tithing was paid regularly and promptly. I was excited to do what I could to help build the kingdom of God.
I Left My Tithing Behind
Then one Sunday morning, I took longer than usual to wake up. My parents wanted to get to church early, so when I finally did get up, I was in a rush. I didn’t realize until we were at the meetinghouse that I had left my tithing money behind. “I’ll just pay it next week,” I thought. But I felt bad. I wanted Heavenly Father to know I was obedient.
After the meetings, we arrived home to find that our home had been burglarized. Jewelry, a video camera—pretty much everything that had value had been stolen. I rushed to my room and went through the drawer where I had left my tithing. It too was gone. Now I felt particularly bad. I felt that if I had remembered to bring my tithing to church, it would not be missing now.
Then I felt prompted to say something to my father: “Don’t worry. Everything is going to be OK. The person who robbed us took the Lord’s money, so he took something that is sacred.” I didn’t think the Lord would let that go unnoticed.
But I think the Lord wanted me to learn to be more careful with what belonged to Him. Soon the thief was apprehended, and everything was recovered—except my tithing money. To make things right, I took the same amount out of savings and took it to the bishop the very next Sunday. Ever since, I have always tried to pay my tithing in a timely manner. I know that tithing is a law from God, and that means I should take it seriously.
Don’t Treat Sacred Things Lightly
In Doctrine and Covenants section 63, the Lord teaches a sacred principle: obedience. “I, the Lord, utter my voice, and it shall be obeyed” (verse 5). What He says “is sacred, and must be spoken with care” (verse 64).
At the time this revelation was received, Joseph Smith was being criticized by several who had turned against him. One of them was Ezra Booth. Booth had been a minister of another faith but decided to be baptized after he saw Joseph heal a woman’s arm through the power of the priesthood.
However, Booth soon lost faith in that which he had witnessed. He became critical of the Prophet. He didn’t understand that signs or miracles alone do not produce lasting faith. When he began to treat sacred things lightly, he lost his way and became one of the “wicked and rebellious” (verse 2).
It is interesting to me that when the Lord talks about our obedience, he also talks about His choices. His choices are not random and arbitrary; they are based in doctrine and principle. In section 82 of the Doctrine and Covenants, He declares, “I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say” (verse 10).
To me what this means is that He promises that if we will be obedient, He will always keep His promises. He will protect us. He will guide us. And while we should not look for signs to convince others of the truth or to prove our faith, signs and miracles do and will occur as a result of faith in Jesus Christ, in combination with the will of God (see Doctrine and Covenants 63:9–10). Our obedience actually has a bearing on the Lord’s ability to bless us. This is profound to me.
His Judgments Are Just
Another principle of obedience is that the destruction and judgment meted out upon the wicked, though difficult to hear about or imagine, will be just. Without obedience taught and expected, this could not be so. But because eternal laws have eternal consequences, even the recipient of the consequences will know that the Lord’s judgments are just (see Mosiah 16:1). “All flesh shall know that I am God” (Doctrine and Covenants 63:6).
The rewards and punishments are the Lord’s to give. When He warns those who rebel, He does so out of love for them, to encourage them to return to the right way while they still can, “for without faith no man pleaseth God” (verse 11).
“He that endureth in faith and doeth my will, the same shall overcome” (verse 20), and “unto him that keepeth my commandments I will give the mysteries of my kingdom, and the same shall be in him a well of living water, springing up unto everlasting life” (verse 23).
“By Word and by Flight”
In fact, the Lord says that not only should we be obedient ourselves, but we should encourage others to do the same. He says, “Every man [and woman] should take righteousness in his [or her] hands … and lift a warning voice unto the inhabitants of the earth; and declare both by word and by flight that desolation shall come upon the wicked” (verse 37).
“Both by word and by flight.” I love this phrase. Those who are obedient will flee the world and gather in Zion. That used to mean to gather to the headquarters of the Church; today, it means to gather together in places of righteousness, including the temple. As President Russell M. Nelson has said, “Each one of us needs the ongoing spiritual strengthening and tutoring that is possible only in the house of the Lord.”1
As we gather to Zion, that should be a message to others. In other words, people should notice that we don’t participate in certain things. We remove from certain places; we flee to the temples, to chapels, and to our homes. It should be clear to others what we consume and don’t consume, what we watch or don’t watch, what we read or don’t read, and what we say or don’t say. Our flight from the world should be noticed, and this itself will be a message to the disobedient.
Also, the Lord expects us to use our voices. While we flee the evils of the world, we must also declare the glories of the gospel. In normal and natural ways, people will be curious about why we don’t participate in certain worldly things, and we should have the courage to answer them, not out of condescension or pity but out of love and a genuine desire to save them.
As Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said: “I am not asking that you stand on a street corner with a megaphone and shout out Book of Mormon verses. What I am asking is that you always look for opportunities to bring up your faith in natural and normal ways with people—both in person as well as online. I am asking that you ‘stand as witnesses’ [Mosiah 18:9] of the power of the gospel at all times—and when necessary, use words.”2
Do What Is Right
When I began paying tithing many years ago, I didn’t realize the full significance of what I was doing. But I knew that it was right and that I should take the commandments of God seriously, because what comes from above is sacred. It is interesting to me that section 63 also talks about financial decisions and donations to the Church and gives this promise from the Lord: “He that is faithful and endureth shall overcome the world.
“He that sendeth up treasures unto the land of Zion shall receive an inheritance in this world, and his works shall follow him, and also a reward in the world to come” (verses 47–48).