Welcome to Parbar Westward!

This Parbar Westward Bible Teaching web site is about passion, love, desire, and opportunity:

• A passion for God and His truth and for the ministry of Bible teaching;
• A love for His infallible Word, the Bible;
• A desire to see Christians grow in spiritual maturity and understanding, to see them walking more deeply in reality and holiness in their relationship with Jesus Christ; and,
• An opportunity to share with the Body of Christ the small portion, the widow’s mite, the “five loaves and two fishes” of insight and revelation through the Bible-teaching ministries which God has entrusted to us.

If you’d like to dive right in and begin reading, shepherd your cursor over to the Navigation Menu on the left and sample what’s available.  Some messages will be stand-alone articles (for example, And Joseph Was Brought Down by Jim Kerwin), others will be installments in a series (e.g., Hearing God), and another group will be chapters of entire books we are reproducing here on Parbar Westward (like Faith Is Substance by Pastor Percy Gutteridge and New Testament Holiness by Evangelist Thomas Cook).  One of the newest stream-able and downloadable audio messages is The Temptations of Christ by Percy Gutteridge.

Why the Strange Name
Parbar Westward?

Parbar is a bit obscure, isn’t it?  It comes from 1 Chronicles 26:18 in the King James Version, an obscure verse that can’t possibly stand alone out of context, because without context it is meaningless—almost gibberish.  As a young Christian (back in the late 1960’s) a friend and I memorized hundreds of Scripture verses.  This was one that we memorized for fun, a “nonsense break” from the serious passages.  But lately I’ve been impressed that Parbar is a worthwhile, if strange, name to give to this Bible-teaching ministry site because:

• God seems to love obscure believers.  After all, there are so many of us!  The teachers whose ministries are presented here are obscure.  Like most Christians, we don’t have “big names,” aren’t famous, and are in no danger of becoming so.  This is quite in keeping with the way God loves to operate, employing ordinary people, the weak, the foolish, the obscure—as vessels and channels of His blessing to men.  Parbar is obscure, and we are happy to serve in obscurity, as long as we can serve Him and you.
• Text—Context or Pretext?  Parbar is a reminder that (as the late cult expert Dr. Walter Martin was fond of saying) “a text out of context is a pretext.”  To that end, this site will always provide a unique feature—any time a verse or passage is referenced in the teachings on the site, you can mouse-over the reference and see it in context.  A small Bible-text-and-notes window will “pop up” on your screen.  (Try it here—see 1 Chronicles 26:18.  Note that for this to work properly, you must be using a fairly recent version of an Internet browser and you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser’s default settings, at least for this site.)  You will see the text of the Bible verse(s) involved, but you will also be able to scroll up and down through the text of the entire chapter.  That will allow you, like the Bereans (Acts 17:10-12), to “search the Scriptures” and judge for yourself “whether these things are so.”  (Unlike the Bereans, however, you’ll have to use the King James translation; we employ this version here on the site to avoid any copyright infringement problems.)
• We don’t know all the answers.  Take the word Parbar, for instance.  Scholars in their commentaries admit they don’t know what it means, exactly.  Our loving Heavenly Father has, through the Person of the Holy Spirit, written most of the Bible in such a way that even a young child may read and understand and joyfully receive and obey.  Yet there are a few obscure (there’s that word again) matters, translational challenges, mysteries, and unplumbable depths of truth.  It is our privilege (and, to a certain extent, our responsibility) to inquire into these matters.  To aid readers just a bit where we can, we will provide highlighted words with pop-up definitions (try it here—ParbarParbar:
  The meaning of this word is not entirely clear, and could signify colonnade, suburb, open portico, or open pavilion.) and occasional footnotes.  (Footnotes, like Bible verses, will appear in a separate browser window when you click on a footnote call-number like the one at the end of this sentence.0  Note that these footnotes will appear as endnotes, should you choose to print out the document.)  It behooves us to walk in a sense of awe when grappling with a Book crafted by an Infinitely Intelligent, All-Wise, Omniscient (and loving!) God; and it is a healthy exercise in humility, especially for Bible teachers, for a soul to sometimes confess, “I don’t know!”
• We shouldn’t “major in minors.”  In the end, it doesn’t matter too much what “Parbar” means.  The name and its meaning are minor distractions from matters of Truth which are really important—the love of God the Father, salvation for sinful Mankind through the atoning death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, the New Birth, the work of the Holy Spirit in baptizing believers into Christ, purifying and empowering them for Christ’s service, and bringing them into maturity.  Let’s remember what matters!
• Watchmen should take their ministries seriously.  In the context of the entire chapter of 1 Chronicles 26, we find that the passage is part of a list of station assignments for Levites who were to serve as watchmen of the Solomonic Temple.  These Levites, who assisted the Temple priests, were set apart to God and were to take their service to Him seriously.  Four of these assigned watchmen were stationed near the Parbar (whatever it was) and two were stationed at the Parbar.  As teachers, we are to be watchmen, too, warning the Church against false doctrine and (worse, to my way of thinking) unfocused, unclear, misguided, self-centered misinterpretation of God’s truth.  May we be as faithful here at Parbar Westward as the Levite watchmen were of old and take this calling as Teachers seriously.

Yes, I take my Bible-teaching ministry seriously, but modesty and humility (twin disciplines in which it seems difficult for all human beings to walk) allow us some leeway for mildly self-deprecating humor at our own expense.  “At Parbar westward, four at the causeway, and two at Parbar.”  Anyone running a site by the name of Parbar Westward will never be in danger of taking himself too seriously.  Now you know the “inside joke” as well as the more thoughtful reasons behind the name.  I hope both the spirit and content of what is presented here on Parbar Westward will be a blessing to you, bringing you more insight into God, His Ways, His Truth, and His Book.