I know it's a waste of time arguing on youtube but I was addressed in a response about the church on a video.

The posters questions are: "Do you have any documentation proving that any of the General Authorities receive money from the Tithing Fund as part of their stipends?
Do you have any proof that Tithing donations were used in building the City Creek Center Mall?"

Can anybody help me give some info or proof. I know that is where the money came from even if it meant it was tithing investments but I'd like to school this person even if they stick fingers in their ears and yell "La la la la la"


Please humor me and help me at least make this person think (I know I know that is asking a lot but still...)


Thanks guys!!!

forget it.

It's like trying to teach a Pig to sing.

'everyone' knows that financial info from ChurchCo is a giant Black Hole.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/24/2011 02:36PM by guynoirprivateeye.

The money trail from tithing to the mall has probably gone through more laundramats than the Columbian cartels

You will not find a paper trail. This will always be denied, and any evidence will be buried so deep through different corporate channels, that evidence will only arise if they have a traitor in the upper ranks.

deco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The money trail from tithing to the mall has
> probably gone through more laundramats than the
> Columbian cartels
>

The trail no doubt goes thru the SAME laundromats as the drug cartel monies. LDS have rendered service to "friends" in powerful places.

Didn't Zions get cited for not reporting some large transactions to the government? The speculation was they could have been drug related, but maybe they were mall related.

I've just about given up on this point:

NOT ALL THE $ THAT CHURCHCO RECEIVES FROM MEMBERS IS TITHING!

Giving 'extra' to ChurchCo is another of their 'Righteous Badges'!


LOTS OF LONELY WIDOWS/WIDOWERS -SENILE OR NOT- GIVE 'EXTRA' TO CHURCHCO:

STOCKS & BONDS

REAL ESTATE

OTHER ASSETS.

and, lot's of would-be heirs feel Cheated, as do victims of $cam$ that 'TBMs' perpetrate on gullible victims!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/24/2011 02:58PM by guynoirprivateeye.

My MIL gave a gift of money to the church. She gave it to them with no stipulations.

In her mind it was equivalent to tithing for next life brownie points.

To them it was cash to do with whatever they wanted.

I suspect they have business investments that generate money for other investments and projects. LDS business men lending and investing might be several layers away from technical tithing.

The point is that any money given to the church in any form is implied to be used to further the "Lord's work." The "Lord's work" obviously involves maintaining the business environment in the areas the church controls. This has been going on since Brigham Young and before that with JS and his bank adventures.

The problem is that the church is allowed to have so many "categories" of businesses and funds. It is irritating. They are a business, darn it, and they should be taxed like one. When was the last time you got a deduction for donating to a business that buys malls? Just call it a religion!

That's TSCC position on ALL money they receive.

Do they have any proof to the contrary? Ask him to demand of his church to disclose their financials as 90% of all churches do. Ask how long he'd have to make these demands before he is threatened with ex-communication.

Ask him to do some quick calculations on the amount of money the church brings in every Sunday just in the US. Ask him where he thinks all that money goes. They supposedly never go into debt to do any new building and maintenance is minuscule to what they bring in.

Where is the money?

Even the Catholic church makes at least a fake report to each parish.

That is a good idea. Asking for proof to the contrary.

I know it's a huge waste of time but sometimes when the smugness is so infuriating I have to say something. They really don't listen but since it's so rare I engage in any type of debate this one time I just had to say something.

Explain to them there are two types of income stream and they are not separate..

Tithing and dividends from tithing. End of story!


It is simple math:

If you pay 10$ in tithing and they invest that tithing and make 10% you now have $11 in from tithing .
If they peel of that $1 and spend it on a mall it is still tithing.
Now times all this by billions and you get the picture.

Now take it a step further and ask them why there are nine donation categories on a tithing slip when just simple tithing will do?

...Tithing
...Fast Offering
...Ward Missionary
...General Missionary
...Book of Mormon
...Humanitarian
...Temple
...Perpetual Education
...Priesthood restoration fund

I haven't gone to church in over 40 years, I have NEVER given the church one cent in tithing or fast offering, so I really don't give a rat's ass how they spend members hard earned "donations". At some point there will be a reckoning and I will be an interested observer. It would be once hell of a class action law suit if and where the whole thing tanks and the sheep want a refund!!

It's their claim to prove but since TSCC doesn't publish it's financial statement they have no evidence that TSCC doesn't use tithing for this type of business enterprise. TBMs are willing to accept their leaders assertions but you and I aren't obligated to believe anything they say.

However, it wasn't that long ago that the church was broke. It had no other income but tithing. So, it can be argued that all investments since that time were originally supported through tithing even though they may now be separate cash flow producing assets.

If I sell drugs and use my drug profit to invest in legitimate businesses which provide income which I use to towards other purposes can I really argue that those original profits are not drug related?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/24/2011 04:04PM by caedmon.

Besides, if they want, they can use the $$ anyway they want and it's none of our business anyhow.

if they are spending money to restrict or deny the rights of my fellow Americans, then

I make it my business!

It's definitely MY BUSINESS when the money they collect (however they collect it) is used to deny my civil rights.

It makes me sick to know that my own family are still paying tithing & making contributions to LD$, Inc.

The other day, my SIL told me that his elderly & wealthy parents (they have 7 kids) will be leaving their whole estate not to their kids, but to the LD$ church. I had to bite my tongue. And it HURT!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/24/2011 08:48PM by PapaKen.

Simple, ask, where did the church get the $4billion dollars?

When they say, from the profits of the corporation, ask back: Wait, so the church makes a profit off its holdings? Why did they spend that on a mall instead of fighting poverty, or at least building missions?

Then ask, How did the church get business in the first place? What's the chicken and which is the egg?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/24/2011 05:27PM by Jesus Smith.

The other question is: why do you need to know that?

Who me? Or the other person?

I think members should know where their money goes. I don't engage and tell them they are wrong for believing what they do but I am a big believer in transparency and education. So instead of arguing over what is right and wrong just talking about matters within the church such as where their tithing money goes etc is better than outright saying what they believe is wrong or belittling them for their beliefs. Make sense?

Thank you guys for the advice. I have some good ideas. I know a paper trail is not going to be there but I have a better idea of how to address this issue. Thanks!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/25/2011 02:25PM by flanders.

If they spent any money, they spent tithing money.

That might work slightly better as:

If they spent any money, they spent the members' money.



But your point is valid: it's all fungible, and it all originated from the membership.

This is just my logical chain based on articles, it is not verifiable, except for the articles stating the source of income from which the mall was built.

The church has a lot of business holdings, and in theory, the businesses mainly serve charitable aims. Tithing goes to build these businesses. They own cattle ranches, the own all sorts of things. In theory, these businesses generate goods used for charitable aid. For instance, farm goods for staples going to the needy. But they also sell the goods. They also own land that is rented, and rents are collected, etc. The profits are invested. The church says that the funds to build the mall came from investment dividends. In my own mind (again, no sources) this is just laundered tithes in terms of tithes not being used to build the mall. At the end of the day, the the church did not collect tithes and other donations, they would not have the means to build these businesses that generated revenue that was invested, that realized dividends, that built the mall.

A second thought (for which I have NO SOURCE at least there are articles quoting funds coming from dividends from invested business profits) is kind of a no brainer, tithing is invested, It's not just sitting in a checking account, it's all invested, dividends just from tithing and donations (estates, etc.) alone would generate the sort of money required for this project.

By church admission alone, tithes is the important grease allowing all church cogs to work. There's the building blocks, tithes build the businesses, etc.

There is no escaping any scenario where church funds going to the city creek project are completely separated from tithes. (in my mind, at least)

But one of the Seventies gets up every General Conference and talks about how after an intensive audit, all the Church Financial doings are completely a hundred percent ethical and that the church does not play games with the money. If you can't believe broad statements from a biased party about a topic that he refuses to share specific details about, who can you trust?

fuckers.

They're Professionals at mind-bending, obfuscation, and ambiguity.

Apostles were witnesses of Christ's resurrection (then)

Apostles are a Board of Directors of a multi-nation <international> conglomerate, of which TSM is the ONLY Owner.(now).

ChurchCo is a Giant Shell game, the members/'contributors' are gullible pawns, just like people who 'believe' that investing with an unregistered broker will earn them extraordinarily high profits (affinity scams).

Only the threats of separation from loved ones or Eternal Damnation would motivate/intimidate people to participate.period.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/25/2011 02:58AM by guynoirprivateeye.

The Ostlings estimated the corporations assets at 25 to 30 billion, a large chunk of which is real estate (steady but not high yielding, and maybe not yielding at all in the current market). If they made enough profit to finance stuff like the billion-dollar mall, they would have to make a pretty nice margin on their operations.

If they say no thing money is being used, I'd like to see how they are able to extract such sums of money from the current market to invest in commercial real estate. To me, there are only two probable options: criminal money or tithing money. No way any legitimate business is going to sink that kind of cash in commercial real estate these days.

So basically, there is no proof that this happens then?

Sorry, just reading this thread, I haven't seen any actual proof yet.

I think if you can't find proof for this, you should just give up. There's lots of other things that disprove mormonism that we have proof of, so if you're trying to get everybody else to leave the church, use one of those arguements which actually have proof to back it up.

With this tithing arguement, we're basically saying "Well, the money obviously comes from X and Y. I can't prove it to you, but if you think about it, it's the only logical source".

Where do you suppose the money came from, then, if not from revenue and investments made from the profits of businesses and ventures established with tithed money?

Sure, we can't pinpoint the exact venture that yielded the profit that was invested to earn dividends that paid for the mall, but we can say with certainty that the majority of church operations are built, at the heart, from member tithes.

To say "the church is misusing member money" is not an attempt to disprove the church, there's ample info out there to prove that the church is not true. All this message does is prove that the church is a scam, bilking its members out of their hard-earned money in order to fund corporate style interests.

This thread has not provided hard truth, only common sense. There's a very good reason for that. The church refuses to open its books. Had they nothing to hide, would this be the case? If everything was on the up and up, would they release this?
We know, roughly, the baseline of money going into the church. Do we see charitable works matching even a small percentage of this? No, we don't. Where is the money going? We'll never know. So when it comes to corporate stye projects, all we can do is use common sense, and backtrack from the sources claimed by church sources.

When the church releases public statements that they run companies, invest profit and are using dividends to pay for the mall, and then the church releases over-the-pulpit messages that members need to keep paying tithing so that the church can continue to run their very important organizations (the sanitized term for their for-profit farms, etc.), do you not see any connection between that money?

Brethren, we are missing the finer point. What kind of stores does this mall have? Does it have a Hot Topic or a Spencers Gifts? Is there a Victoria Secrets? Is it just fast food places in the food court, or are there fancier joints that serve beer?

Of course none of these things are evil, and Mormonism has a long history of double standards when it comes to making money off of us gentiles, but it would be fun to point out that the Church is running a company that profits off of the sale of naughty outfits for girls.

IMO it's pretty simple

Tithing should be enough..any excess tithing funds after that should be used to help those in need.

I think if the LDS church was ever forced to open their books to their members, it would shock the faithful to see how wealthy the corporation of the president really is. Many might be tempted to stop donating. And, we couldn't have that now, could we?