The administration of The Kingdom of God "family" kept, pooled and used all the money that the applicants got by selling their possessions. According to Acts 4:32 the members of the Kingdom of God, that special artificial "family", shared everything they had - an early form of Socialism. And per Acts 5:2 Ananias kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles' feet. Per Acts 5:5 he fell down and died after he had been confronted by Peter about that missing portion. Also his wife fell down and died per Acts 5:10 after she, too, was confronted by Peter about that.
..... "Treasure in heaven" probably originally meant their money was pooled and kept by the administration of the Kingdom of God "family". Only carefully selected persons were members, not "all of the children of Israel."
..... "Tithes" is what these days we call taxes - in those days the Jewish leadership was the equivalent of government; they collected tithes, and the Romans apparently collected taxes in addition via private enterprise tax collectors who were hated considerably. |