Dynamic Kernels

In 1940, a miller in Tecumesh, Michigan was inspired by two verses of scripture (John 12:24 & Malachi 3:10) and decided to put the Word to the test in an experiment that received nationwide publicity. He called his experiment "Dynamic Kernels." I love this true story.

The following is excerpted from The Intelligent Heart, by David McArthur.

While many experiences exist of individuals testing tithing as a tool for expanding their abundance, there was a very objective test that was conducted by a group of people in Michigan around 1940. They conducted their experiment in a public manner and kept careful records.

In their experiment they started with one cubic inch of wheat containing 360 kernels. They blessed the wheat and made the commitment to tithe ten percent of the harvest to their church. They then planted the wheat in a little plot behind the church.

From the first year's growth they harvested fifty cubic inches and tithed five cubic inches to the church which they fixed for the minister's breakfast. They planted the remaining nine-tenths which was forty-five cubic inches.

From the second year's growth they harvested seventy pounds of wheat. Their tithe to the church that year was seven pounds. By this time more and more people were interested in their experiment and over 350 people, including Henry Ford (who was himself a proponent of tithing), came to the dedication ceremony.

By the third year the public interest had really expanded with over 1,000 people, including the press, attending the event. The fourth year the governor of the state was in attendance, and the results were carried in the newsreels of the day. When they reached the sixth and final year of the experiment they did not have enough land to plant the wheat in. They sold the wheat to local farmers who agreed to keep careful records and to give a tenth of the harvest from the wheat to the church of their choice.

The final harvest after six years of planting nine-tenths of each year's harvest was 72,150 bushels of wheat. The tithe was 7,215 bushels.

At the start of the experiment, the people had arranged with a local miller not only to keep track of their harvest but also to compare their yields with the yield of other wheat farmers in that area. Using the state average for each year's production, the miller computed that if they had not tithed but had utilized the full ten-tenths of their crop, they would have received a yield of 5,297 bushels.

Planting ten-tenths = 5,297 bushels

Planting nine-tenths (one-tenth to God) = 72,150 bushels

Their tithe was greater than the entire harvest they would have received if they had not tithed.

The stunning result of this study comes not from what they did receive, but from what the miller's figures showed if they had continued to run their experiment for another six years. In the sixth year (the twelfth of the experiment), there would not have been enough land mass on the planet Earth to receive the nine-tenths for another planting.

In the biblical book of Malachi, there is a promise made that if we tithed, God would “… pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” These people showed that promise to be literally true.