the Spirit Watch

The "Do Scriptures" Twisted By Gwen Shamblin : An 8 Part Bible Study

Luke 6 Rightly Divided

By Rev. Rafael D Martinez, Spiritwatch Ministries

Father in heaven, we once again come humbly before you asking you to keep our minds and hearts set upon your truth and to seek your light that pours from your Word. Send your Holy Spirit to continue to draw, teach and transform us anew as we consider what You have said through Your Son, the Final Word you sent to reveal Yourself by. You alone are the Spirit of truth, and through You alone will we know your Will for our lives, so empower us to hear and do what You command and not follow the traditions of men who claim to speak for you out of their own minds and hearts set to establish their own ways. In the name of your Son Jesus, We ask, amen!

  Once more, we are going to examine another one of the group of “do Scriptures” that Gwen Shamblin compels study of by those being slowly indoctrinated into the Remnant Fellowship worldview through usage of her Weigh Down Workshop curricula. The verses we will examine are found in Luke 6:46-49. We’ve reviewed several Bible verses in this list in context to accurately determine what they teach in conjunction with the full testimony of Scriptural truth that relates to them. That has been the goal of these studies, with an aim at helping former RF members to move beyond the warping influences they’ve been struggling with.

We have seen over and over, Shamblin’s interpretations have been twisted and skewed perversions of what the Bible actually is asserting in each of these verses. We have also observed that, like most heretics, she conceals her error with a thin wrapping of truth to lead the unwary to reckon her viewpoint as entirely true. And while she may score many a painful point in her scathing observations she makes on the failings of the Christian Church, things we’ve also affirmed with her, she fails to provide any truly Biblical, balanced or sound alternatives that are not tinged with an abusive, cultic and manipulative spirit. This sad pattern continues here as we will see.

As it stands, I can only find one “easily” locatable place I can document Shamblin’s discussion of the thrust of Luke 6:46-49.

Luke 6:46-49

46        "Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say?

47        I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice.

48        He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built.

49        But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete."

WHAT GWEN TEACHES ABOUT LUKE 6:46-49

This is strategic and huge for your salvation and the salvation of those you love, the rock is Jesus Christ, and that rock said, “not my will but yours be done.” This rock is the one who lived out “my food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work.”  If you are grounded in doing the will of God and grounded in living only for God’s work or in other words, only living for God’s Kingdom work, then you are grounded. And if you love God’s word and His will more than your daily bread, and if you understand that man must not live on bread alone but on every word that comes out of the mouth of the Lord, then you will understand this dangerous wind that can crash a house. Again, if you have not fallen for the great deception of the church that was warned about years ago, then you will live and live forever, for you will hear “well done, my good and faithful servant.” A “servant” means that you’ve been working not for yourself but for your master, and “good and faithful”  means you’ve kept it up.

I live for these words: “Well done, good and faithful servant.” We are all servants, but who are you serving? Satan will let you think that you are working for the Master when you are really living to feed and to please yourself and other people. Watch out for religious groups that have turned the parable of the wise and foolish builders into a cute, peppy VBS song: (acts out hand actions) “The wise man built his house upon a rock?” - they’ve robbed you of the informative and shocking story that it really is. For Jesus says it even more powerfully in Luke chapter 6, verse 49: (quotes it). (WDA video week 3)

It is, once more, made abundantly clear by Gwen Shamblin that true Christian faith is something that is lived out in what she terms a “grounded”  manner. This is Remnant shorthand that refers to the lifestyle Shamblin has mandated that is based upon the ideals of her WDW philosophy and RF theology as she advocates them. Her principles of dietary moderation have been elevated into a worldview that narrowly defines reality as a duality of good or evil, righteousness or idolatry, “us” versus “them.” To be “grounded in living only for God,” in Shamblin’s view, is to deny self according to the proscribed manner that Remnant members are to pursue. This is a never ending pursuit of self-denial and separation from the unclean influences believed lurking around every personal and social institution that Remnant views as part of “Babylon,” the evil world order that is eternally at war with it. It is also an adoption of the unique perspectives on culture and lifestyle that Shamblin models as the appropriate ones to follow. A “grounded” life is to eat, drink, socialize, pray, study the Bible, raise children and relate to spouses as she proscribes it should be done.

Any failure to maintain these high standards requires a critical self-examination and self-purging from a perpetuation of “idols” of X or Y in one’s life. While such “idolatry” involves moral sin, it also can be instances of doubt in the “message,” intimate relationships with family and friends outside the Remnant “Nation,” and not being at the appropriate weight one is told to be at. Submission to leaders for tailor-made “counsel” them involves a total submission to the admonitions and compulsions of the group leaders, including confession of sin and public rebuke if needed. And while the “doing of God’s will” certainly involves a commendable personal morality and spirituality self-evident in their personal piety and lifestyle choices, it also demands the Remnant member to firmly isolate themselves from a world hell-bent for judgment by God within the social bounds of the Remnant social order at whatever the personal cost may be and to redefine Christianity itself in keeping with Gwen’s demand that one must be “working for the Master” and “doing the will of God” to show real growth in “grace”.

So according to Shamblin, when Jesus is speaking of hearing and doing “the word,” He is actually making reference to a divine mandate upon “the message” she has created and her prophetic call to comply with it. Those who live by “the message” are shown to be the wise ones who build a life of holy sanctity based upon truth, which will lead to their eternal salvation in the “ark” of the Remnant. Those who don’t, of course, if the words of Jesus as understood here as Shamblin interprets them, are those who will live lives of carnality and wickedness (excess poundage being the obvious sign of this since worship of food is so obviously involved) and will face God’s judgment for not building their lives on a “grounded” foundation as they ought to be doing.

 

LUKE 6:46-49 RIGHTLY DIVIDED

We’ve reviewed these Shamblinized “do” Scriptures often enough by now to be able to discern the relationship between faith and works, between obedience coming as the fruit of true repentance from sin and faith in Christ and an obedience mingled with a determination to earn favor from Him. By now, I would hope that we would recognize that faith in the perfect sacrifice and sinless life of Jesus Christ alone is the only ground for our Christian hope. There is nothing that any of us can do, no amount of self-reinvention or any amount of vast and sweeping personal change that we can initiate that can ever measure up to the price of Calvary that the blood of Jesus, our Passover Lamb, forever purchased for our salvation. Only faith in that shed blood and a transformative encounter with God in Christ by the Spirit of God who makes us new creations in Jesus makes the difference. Good works don’t cleanse the heart of sin - only faith in Christ does. Such good works are the fruit, the subsequent personal manifestation of that glorious Spirit-endowed change that trust in Jesus alone will bring. That has been what we’ve been discovering in these “do” verses thus far.

Here, in verses 46-47, Jesus is again sharply distinguishing between those who follow His words and those who go to great lengths to hear them, but never practice them. He rebukes powerfully those who would call Jesus their Lord but whose life is a clear testimony to their stubborn rejection of His commands. To live for God is to love His Son. And we authenticate our love and faith in Jesus by our passionate zeal to keep HIS commandments and devote one’s life to them. “As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments,” Jesus said, “ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love” (John 15:9-10).

This is not the fulfillment of the religious mandates of any man or any woman: it is rather the ardent and unfeigned love we have for our Lord and our heartfelt willingness to submit to the Lordship He so rightfully commands and expects of us that Jesus is referring to. This is what underlies our walk with God and what makes a true disciple in heart and mind. He then relates, with a remarkably concise yet memorable parable, how to tell the difference between those who live for God and those who do actually do not, but say that they do.

It is a cautionary parable and one filled with tremendous significance for all of those who claim to know God in truth, and one that Shamblin and all RF followers need to revisit. In verses 48-49, Jesus makes clear that there is no middle ground for negotiation just whose words are to be followed: they are HIS commandments. They are HIS sayings. They are HIS teachings. It is HIS Gospel that He has preached that we are to keep. Those who truly know, love and therefore truly obey Jesus’ commands will ground their lives upon following His sayings and in so doing will build a spirituality (the “house” mentioned in these verses) on a solid foundation that will stand any test or tempest. And those who pursue building their spiritual lives upon anything else except the very words of Jesus Christ himself will find themselves facing a bleak future of spiritual ruination. That is the plain and terrible warning Jesus leaves for us to consider, in the same manner any good rabbinical teacher of Israel would frame the issue. You will either be blessed for obedience to Jesus’ words or cursed with judgment for dismissing them, and the contrast cannot be clearer for all to see.

It is particularly noteworthy that nowhere in these verses do we see any room for the blasphemous reckoning that Gwen Shamblin’s commands on how to live are to be equated with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet this is, in effect, what Remnant teaching has done. Her misinterpretations of Scripture have been pressed into service to support her manifold and binding directives on how Remnant members are to live, act and think. Shamblin’s persistence on this point is legion throughout Remnant faith and practice. But these traditions she’s developed for how to pray, how to act around others, how to raise children, etc. are elements of her total “message” that actually endanger Remnant members through the radical self-righteousness it models that establishes disobedience from the way of Christ.

What are the teachings of Christ that Shamblin’s “message” disobeys and teaches others to practically forsake? Time simply would fail us to discuss them as they should be, but even the most casual reading of Jesus’ teaching called the “Sermon On The Mount” in Matthew 5 shows us where Remnant teaching is so spiritually perverse:

But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother Raca, shall be in danger of the council, but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. (v. 22)

I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you. (v. 44)

Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily, I say to you, They have their reward. (Mt. 6:1-2)

Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?  (Mt. 7:1-2)

Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets. (7:12)

The spirit of Shamblin’s Remnant teaching and practice at so many levels clearly militates against these principles of the teachings of Jesus. A quick comparison on this is in order.

First of all, their position that Remnant is the only true church can only be maintained with a full-court press of antagonistic judgmentalism against those not associated with their self-anointed elite status - truly, anger without cause. Such hateful and divisive pride in no way reflects the spirit of Christian love toward all people that seeks the good of all, but only again reminds us of their cultic introspection that damns all who are not in their “club.” It is well known that prayer against enemies is a common practice in Remnant gatherings – such prayer times are nothing remotely resembling Jesus’ command to pray FOR enemies. Their continual self-promotion of “the message” as their way to weight loss and family restoration as well as personal salvation is propped up continually by an endless parade of Remnant member testimony. And of this testimony, what is heard is the same scripted expressions - the “sounding of a trumpet” - that are aimed at convincing outsiders and reinforcing insiders that Shamblin’s teachings are true.

If this be the case, and I have in no way exhausted all the Scriptural points that could be made that would show this, than one very sobering observation begs to be made: how can those drawn to the Remnant message be truly building their life upon the “rock” of the words of Jesus when they choose to associate themselves with a “message” that so compels them to disobey His very sayings? Which of the two men building homes in the parable of Jesus are those to whom the average Remnant member in “the truth” could actually be likened to then? In short, who are the ones that actually are building a life with no real foundation that will not stand when the outages of life come?

I offer a response: such people would be those who have chosen to embrace the “message” and have instead become so entangled in a “mess” of religious tradition created by a manipulative blond Tennessean woman that they’ve lost sight of the words of Jesus. Gwen Shamblin’s words are being treated as cutting-edge restoration truth for the last days, and for any one of a hundred different reasons are still not being fully recognized for the heretical and damagingly polarizing blasphemy that they really are.

Behind all the pretty pictures of a Remnant Nation in play and worship are innumerable untold stories of churches, marriages, families and lives torn apart as sacrifices for separation unto “the message.” I won’t pretend that all of those personal connections that Remnant members have chosen to separate from have all been Christian, let alone healthy or positive. There has been much personal chaos that the structure of Remnant’s cultic regimen has put in perspective simply because of its demand for loyalty and “total obedience” to the sharply defined code of conduct for their social organization. But such authoritarian absolutism is, in the long run, just as damaging, destructive and will leave many with scars and regrets they will bear for the rest of their lives.

Saddest of all, and I type this with a heavy, sorrowful heart, these precious people whose zeal for God has been so perverted to serve the empire-building of an equally twisted woman who reckons herself to be a prophetess are being systematically and spiritually ripped off. In the process of seeking a foundation for Christian spirituality that they may not have found in their own church experiences, Remnant members have embraced a false one that crumbles like frozen sand in the heat of a morning sun. All the sincerity and earnest cannot change that plain fact. When the trials of life come, though they turn to the Remnant “authority line” for love, acceptance and concern for their needs, they will instead get just enough attention as Remnant shepherds can give out to them. Such positive regard comes with the price tag of conditionally bestowed charity: failing to live up to what the RF shepherd believes you should be devoted to earns you a trip to a penalty box of public shaming, rebuke and punitive sanctions.

And all of this is reckoned to be part of the Abundant Life of Jesus Christ, based upon the “rock” of His words.

I would strongly beg to differ. The words of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ have never been totally lost or forsaken, and the church that Gwen Shamblin hates is the Bride of Christ that He died for. Jesus suffered what he did for the Christian Church and He himself said that the gates of hell would never prevail against it, no matter what Gwen’s theology about historical cycles and a total apostasy from truth claims to the contrary. I will trust Jesus’ plain words found in Scripture and taught by the Spirit of God than anything she teaches. For her to hate and disparage the precious thing our Lord died to create, preserve and sustain out of His overflowing love is a detestable thing to behold and is nothing less than a smiting of His face all over again.

So while Luke 6:36 may be blithely pressed into service by Shamblin as another abortive attempt to prove that we need to be “doing the will of God” to be saved, once we realize what it is that Shamblin views as “the will of God”, it is clear that her “do” emphasis is once again found in error, weighed and found wanting.

IMPLICATIONS

Again, while I’ve plainly observed that there are many things about the laxity, carnality and outright sinful failure of the church that Gwen’s observations target which we can agree upon, there’s little else to agree upon with Shamblin. We’ve seen this over and over, which is why I cannot prepare the “Right/Wrong” comparisons I usually do. In this verse, it would seem to be too compromising.

We can agree with Shamblin that a practical daily pursuit of self-denial and repentance from dead works for personal spiritual sanctification unto God’s purposes is at the heart of true spirituality. But we'd emphatically and totally disagree with Shamblin's notion that the act in and of itself that cleanses or makes holy the believer - only faith in the blood of Jesus Christ does that. All the “doing” one can do will never improve upon the Cross of Calvary. 

We will conclude next week the study of the "do Scripture" list with our examination of 1 Kings 11:38.

 Go To 1 Kings 11:38a Rightfully Divided    Back To The Spiritwatch Home Page