“The welfare plan, in any age, is that part of the gospel which is designed, under the then existing circumstances, to care for the temporal needs of the saints on the basis of gospel principles. Such a system is one of the evidences of the divinity of the Lord’s Church. Unless and until members of the Church give freely of their means for the support of their less fortunate brethren, they do not develop those attributes of goodness and godliness which prepare them for a celestial inheritance” (McConkie, Doctrinal New Testament Commentary, 2:432).