The gift of Parbar

by Dan Phillips

At Parbar westward, four at the causeway, and two at Parbar.

(1 Chronicles 26:18 KJV)

Mm. Parbar. Deep stuff, eh? Oh yeah.

Back in the 70s and 80s, this was a chucklesome verse to many. Some claimed it as their life-verse. If I remember, it was the "motto" of the Christian satire magazine Wittenburg Door.

Why? Well, because nobody knew what "Parbar" meant. The translators of the KJV apparently didn't, so they just transliterated it. Same with the ASV, the NAS, and other versions.

So you could expect "Parbar" to come up in conversations among certain wags. After all, it was the ultimately wild-card. Nobody knew what it meant; so it could mean anything.

See where I'm going with this?

Remember when Mark Driscoll claimed the Holy Spirit was showing him pornographic footage? Note that he just tosses out, "This may be 'gift of discernment.'"

It may? On what exegetical grounds, pray? Mark doesn't share them. He just throws that out there, and then does what Charismatics must do: he tells select stories.

Now, lesser mortals such as you and I dursn't criticize this practice, because

1. At one point there was something called "gift of discernment" (?);
2. That was in the Bible (if he means 1 Cor. 12:10);
3. Nobody's absolutely sure what that is; so...
4. Maybe this is that!
5. You don't want to criticize something in the Bible, right?

Driscoll knows he's had the experience, it's got to be valid, we should probably call it something... so let's spin the wheel and pick one of those gifts concerning which Chrysostom, writing just a few centuries after the (hel-lo?) close of the Canon said

This whole place is very obscure: but the obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation, being such as then used to occur but now no longer take place. [John Chrysostom, Homilies on First Corinthians, Homily XXIX]

Because, who knows? Could be!

But then again, really, since the whole point is that we've got this imperative (we must validate the Charismatic's experience and his special powers), then heck: why not call it the "gift of Parbar"? I mean, do you know it's not the gift of Parbar? Well, do you? Of course you don't.

So there you go!

See, that's where the modern inventors of Charismaticism/"continuationism" went wrong. Parham and his poor dupes were originally seeking the Biblical gift of tongues. That is, they expected to be able to speak in unlearned human languages supernaturally. And when they started babbling and gobbling, they were convinced it had to be that, that Biblical gift, that falsifiable gift with defined contours and edges. So they went off to mission fields, expecting to be understood by the Chinese... but, yeah, you know how that went. Natives shrugged and, in effect, made little circular gestures by their temples. Incomprehensible babble.

So here's where the first-gen errorists went afield. They were sure their experience was valid (Charismaticism 101), so then took some large hammers and saws to the Bible, and eventually changed the interpretation of what "tongues" meant from, well, what it meant, to what they were doing. They took a well-understood gift and invented something that gave cover to their experience.

Never should have done it.

Should have just just said they got the "gift of Parbar."

See?

Same thing for all their other redefinitions. If they wanted some holy status for their errant feelings and hunches and "leadings," they should never have assaulted the well-known and well-defined Biblical phenomenon of prophecy, and embarrassed themselves by trying to redefine it to suit their experiences. If they were unwilling to call a hunch a hunch and take responsibility for it, just call it "the gift of Parbar."

Same with these bizarre little clairvoyant parlor-tricks, called (with zero exegetical support) "word of wisdom" and "word of knowledge" — they could be just subcategories of the multifaceted and glorious "gift of Parbar." Who knows? Who can disprove it?

I know some of you are seething, but if you've been here any time at all you know: we have this discussion every time we talk about Da Gifts. Every time we're trying to talk God's Word, someone is sure to ask, "So, what about when X happens? or when Y happened in 1843? How do you explain that, huh?" As if this is what really should consume the Christian, because we already have so well mastered all that actually-in-the-Bible stuff.

So look, here's my modest proposal: If we aren't going to start with sound exegesis of the Bible and be content with that... well then, I've got my answer:

Got to be the gift of Parbar.

Hey. It's as Biblical as all the other stuff. Every bit as Biblical.

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What in the "world"?

by Dan Phillips

In my review of the new EEC volume on the letters of John, I remarked on the author's selective lack of curiosity as to John's meaning in using "world" (kosmos) in 1 John 2:2. I noted that Derickson was forced to admit and consider other senses in later passages, though he had treated 2:2 as if the term could only be univocal, and only naked and baseless dogmatism could ever move one to another view.

My aim here is not to solve the difficulties in understanding 1 John 2:2 (on which I've shared a thought or two in the past). Rather, it is to open some minds — pause, to allow gales of laughter and tear-wiping to die down — of those who imagine that Bible readers who affirm Scripture's teachings about God's sovereignty in grace (i.e. "Calvinists") simply make up the notion that "world" could ever mean anything other than "every last man, woman and child who ever has been born or ever will be born."

I'd just like to observe that it is not only impossible to imagine that the word always has that meaning — it is, in fact, questionable whether it ever has that meaning.

My favorite example is John 1:10, which saith: "He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him."

Can we say, "World just means world," and be saying anything meaningful about that passage?

That is, is John really saying, "In the incarnation, the Logos was in the presence of every last man, woman and child who ever has been born or ever will be born, and every last man, woman and child who ever has been born or ever will be born was made through him, yet every last man, woman and child who ever has been born or ever will be born did not know him"?

Unlikely.

Rather, is not John saying "Jesus came to be in the society of mankind [Sense 1], and though the entire physical universe [Sense 2] had been made through him [cf. v. 3], yet the anti-God Satanic system within it [Sense 3] did not know him"? If so, then, do we not have three senses of the same word, kosmos, in a single verse?

Or how about John 3:17, the verse after the Arminians' favorite (imagined) trump-card verse? It reads, "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." Again, a threefold use of kosmos. Does John really mean, "For God did not send his Son in the Incarnation to every last man, woman and child who ever has been born or ever will be born to condemn every last man, woman and child who ever has been born or ever will be born but in order that every last man, woman and child who ever has been born or ever will be born will be saved through him"? If so, how come most of the world never got a glimpse of Jesus or heard a word He said (and still haven't), and how come so many people are in fact and will in fact remain lost?


Or take 1 John 5:19, which has virtually the same wording as 2:2 — "We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one." So, really? Is John actually saying that "every last man, woman and child who ever has been born or ever will be born lies in the power of the evil one"? What about John himself, and the believers to whom he wrote? John certainly didn't think they all lay under the power of Satan (cf. 2:13-14). As for Paul, he thought he was (and we are) "in Christ," not in the evil one.

We shall come to real misery when we try to apply this to John 17:9, where our Lord prays, "I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours." Is He saying, " I am praying for them. I am not praying for every last man, woman and child who ever has been born or ever will be born but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours." But aren't "those whom you have given me" people who have been born?

I could easily go on, and on, and on and on and on. Of course, no human power can dislodge dogma from the grips of its worshipers, but one may dare to hope that all fair-minded readers will grant the one point I'm making: the word kosmos is not univocal, and it does not "just mean 'world,' period." It means different things in different contexts.

What that specific meaning is must be determined by serious exegesis, and not by bilious assertion and airy, impatient dismissal.

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