X Marks The Spot : The Point Of Decision

 By Andy Gould

Some time ago I was glad to see that Amir Tsarfati, an Israel-based tour guide and populist current events commentator, appeared to have come out against the New Apostolic Reformation or NAR.

Since then however he has become a "person of interest" for NARWatch Israel as I began to notice some doctrinal inconsistencies and recently some strange and aberrant, even unethical behaviour as well as a clear set of double standards under which he appears to be operating.

Tsarfati purports to hold to sound doctrine, and appeared to be against the NAR some months ago when he held an interview with a local Israeli pastor, but he is in fact in open ministry association with a well-known and indisputably false teacher called Steve Berger of Grace Chapel in Franklin Tennessee. Berger, in addition to advocating serious false doctrines and dangerous and forbidden occult practices such as communing with the dead, has openly linked himself with New Apostolic luminaries like Lou Engle, new-agers like Leonard Sweet, and also endorses the grossly heretical and blasphemous "The Shack" of all things.

 A number of individuals have approached Tsarfati and tried to point out these problems, but not only has he refused to listen, he has been wilfully digging in his heels and attempting to close down biblically-based correction and or rebuke. This is not a good sign. Here is one of Tsarfati's own supporters experience in confronting him.

"I don’t know how Amir met Steve Berger, but recently  I have seen the two together, speaking of upcoming events at which they both will be present.  Before I knew anything about Steve Berger, I just thought that Amir found a new brother in Christ and is going to minister the Gospel with him.

But then I began reading about Steve Berger being deeply rooted in the NAR (New Apostolic Reformation) and if anything could be worse than being steeped in NAR teaching;  I found out about the book teaching necromancy which became a best seller.

I also read that Steve Berger, who had pastored a small congregation before he wrote the book in 2010, was now a pastor of over 4000 people!

At first I wanted to believe that Amir did not know about Berger’s book based on necromancy, and also that Steve Berger was a NAR preacher. Amir is a busy man and travels extensively, sharing the Gospel. It was conceivable that he was just not aware of this man’s beliefs.

But my hopes that Amir was not aware of the NAR teaching and the necromancy came crashing down.  I saw many people (quite a few who had been admins for Amir) asking for him to denounce these evil practices and distance himself from Steve Berger, until a time when Steve would also repent.

But instead of having a conversation on Behold Israel with those who were attempting to tell him the truth; I was shocked to see Amir deleting their comments and deleting those who commented."

This is bad enough, but it gets worse. Much worse.

Deleting viewer comments placed on your own YouTube Channel, Blog or Facebook page is one thing. That is someone's own privilege, whether or not we agree with it. Sometimes it can be necessary if there are obnoxious, abusive or obscene or just downright stupid comments left on your Facebook page or blog. Sometimes comments are deleted because they are spam or just because there is not time to deal with or answer them and because of the danger of comments with false teaching misleading others they are removed; we can all understand this, but this is not what is happening here.

More recently, from the evidence presented to NARWatch, Tsarfati has also been making fraudulent copyright claims against a number of YouTube channels that have uttered critique against some of his false teachings (such as his claim Jesus is the Archangel Michael) in order to force those videos to be taken down, even though under the terms of "fair use" -using another's material for which one does not hold the copyright is perfectly legal for the purpose of review, critique evaluation etc.

According to witnesses, in quite a number of cases the videos in question contained none of Tsarfati's material at all. So in actual fact he has LIED and made copyright claims that he knows are baseless. Such things are not the hallmark of someone who cares about sound doctrine and integrity. They are more often than not the behavioral patterns of a false teacher, doubling down on his error and desperately trying to cover up or suppress exposure of his false teaching and his associations with other false teachers.

Every Bible teacher will at some point in their ministry make a mistake or say something not quite right. This is part of the process of learning and growing in one's understanding. Most of these tend to be committed earlier on in one's career, when experience and knowledge is less developed. When such an one teaches something erroneous and someone calls them to account, they are confronted with a choice. They can examine the critique and evaluate it against the clear statements of Scripture; if it reveals them to be in error they must repent, withdraw the teaching and where possible issue a correction. Once this has been done, if anyone flags up a past error, they can be simply pointed to the retraction and correction. No one will hold a repented from and corrected error against that teacher, in fact we would regard it as mark of humility and integrity, that God's truth is more important to them than their own reputation.

The other option is to refuse correction, to disregard biblically-based concerns and to close one's ears, the next stage is to try and silence the voices of concern. The biblical name for this behaviour is hardening one's heart. This is extremely dangerous for us as believers. When we begin to do this, it marks the transition point between having taught something that is false and actually becoming a false teacher who is opposing the truth. A true teacher of God's Word will also be correctable at some point. If provided with good evidence of error, he will receive instruction. A false teacher is not, the Word of truth tries him and reveals his true nature.

The question then, for every one who is confronted with clear error, is simply this: which side of the X do you want to stand on?