The Rise of the False Witnesses - Unleavened Bread Warning 2025

It's almost as if, though, the Internet has brought out the worst in man. And as far as the eye can see, when looking upon its pages, we see that there is a sin that has come into the body of Christ. It is a cancer that has been spreading widely in the body, which God will cut out and throw into the fire. The courts and the justice systems of this world have done a better job at justice than the body of Christ. The pagans of the first century has done a better job than the religious. And today God is calling all to an account. During this feast of unleavened bread, many of you are feasting. While you should be mourning, many of you are getting rid of bread. While you haven't gotten rid of your sin, many of you have gone to sleep whilst you should have been awake. We are in a time and in an age where there is no more time to play around, brothers and sisters, and play church. We are living in a time and in an age where we hear something, an accusation, here or there, of another, and we accept it without question. We do not ask for a defense. We do not ask, where are the witnesses. And even when we understand the concept of two to three witnesses, we do not understand what a witness truly even is. Today we will speak of these things. And I ask that you take this seriously, for there is a warning attached to this from the Lord. Passover is about putting blood on the doorpost, but it's also about repenting, lest you be swept away with the plagues that were destined for Egypt. And if judgment begins with the household of God, it's time to cleanse the leaven. I'm speaking of the casual posture that believers have taken with maligning others falsely. We have taken the requirement of two to three witnesses to establish a matter to mean two to three rumors. Do you not know, dear brothers and sisters, that murderers and everyone who loves and practices falsehood will not inherit the kingdom of God? Revelation 22:15. During Passover, my mind has been on the crucifixion of Christ. And today I ask you, what is this sin that murdered Christ? Was there jealousy? Yes. Was there betrayal? Yes. Was there pride? Yes. But it all culminated in a certain Leaven. See, the Pharisees and the religious leaders who wanted him dead had a big problem on their hands that the people actually held him to be a prophet. It says in Matthew 21:46, as though they were seeking to arrest him. They feared the crowds because they held him to be a prophet. But how then did we end up with a Crowd of people crying out, crucify him. Luke 23:21. The bearing of false witness is what started the process of his false conviction and execution. And you would think that religious people who were so focused on the law and morality, you'd think they'd understand justice. But the great irony is that during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the same period that we are in right now, Israel were cleansing their homes of leaven and at the same time nailing their Messiah to a cross. And it was their leaven that put him there. And today we do the exact same thing. This is the disgrace that is within Christianity today. The believers commit the same sin even whilst cleaning out the leaven or whilst celebrating Passover. We celebrate his crucifixion, all while crucifying him all over again. You may say, pd, what are you going on about? At the end of the day, the bearing of false witness is something that has become so normalized and rampant that we have become so casual about it and we don't even recognize it when we do it. We spread false report like it is just another day. We say, we heard this, we heard that. Did you hear this? Did you hear that? And we believe whatever we've been told without question, as long as it's about someone we already don't like. Oh, I knew it. Obviously it must be true, because I personally already was on some form of a trajectory of doing things that I don't like. Like. But have we forgotten what is written regarding witnesses? Many of us know the scriptures of oh, we should have two to three witnesses. But do we even know what a witness means? As a reminder, a single witness shall not suffice against the person for any crime or any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two or three witnesses shall a charge be established. Today we will establish that a witness is a firsthand eyewitness. Someone who themselves saw it, who is now coming forward with the accusation and the information. It is someone who is identifiable, not someone who is anonymous, not hearsay, not. There is apparently someone who wrote some anonymous letter of something that someone has done that means nothing according to the standard of justice that Scripture demands us to ask for and expect when an accusation and a charge is to be established. A witness is someone who places their reputation on the line for the claim that they are making about someone else. It is someone of good reputation whose words can be trusted. It is someone whose words are also tested to be true. One of the first things that we have done is we have done away the need to know who these witnesses are. We have thought that it's okay to have an anonymous witness. In what world is that okay? Even Paul said that those who are accusing him must have their witnesses appear in person to bring that accusation. Acts 24:19. They ought to be here before you and to make an accusation should they have anything against me. If Paul the Apostle made his defense and saying, where are your witnesses in reality? Let them stand before me. Let me hear it then how much more so can we not accuse one another or accept evidence from an anonymous source? The tragedy of all of this is that even in the crucifixion of our Messiah, the chief priests and the elders who were trying to murder him, they even understood that they need to get witnesses actually out there to accuse Yeshua. Even if they were set up, even if they were false, they understood the need for witnesses. It says in Matthew 26:59. Now the chief priests and the whole council were seeking false testimony against Jesus, that they might put him to death. But they found none. Though many false witnesses came forward. The burden to be a witness is great. It means that you're putting your life and reputation on the line for what you are saying. For it is important. So important that what you are saying is true, that there is a necessity, that there would be a consequence if you were lying. The law of God warns witnesses that if they bear false witness, then they will receive the punishment that the accused would have received in Deuteronomy 19:19. There must be actionable consequences for false witnesses. Anonymous or hearsay witnesses have no accountability for any falsehood they may be spreading. Because to keep someone accountable, first of all you need to know who they are. If their reputation cannot be placed on the line for the claim they are making, then their witness have no value. If there is no accountability, their witness has no value. Otherwise, anyone can say anything about anyone else. Because there is no accountability towards them. Their reputation would not be harmed regardless. Regardless of what they say. And we will be destroying one another. And we will allow destruction of one another without any recompense. But I completely understand why we have come to a place like this. It's because we have completely neglected the law of God. Even though we profess to keep it just like those of the first century, we do not take his law seriously. If we even know it. We do not understand, therefore his judgment. Nor do we fear God deeply regarding this whole matter. And as for those who are accused, they must be able to defend themselves. We read in Matthew 26:60. Regarding the accusation towards Yeshua, at last two came forward and said, this man said, I am able to destroy the temple of God and to rebuke, build it in three days. And the High Priest stood up and said, have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you? Even though the High Priest was a murderer even of the Christ and that his intentions were indeed evil, in the very least he attempted to present a higher morality than some Christians today and a higher sense of justice than some Christians today. Whilst the High Priest asked Yeshua, have you no answer to make? Tell us what you say about these charges. How many believers today ask that when they hear of a charge being made about a fellow brother or sister, how often do we go to the person being accused and ask, brother or sister? I heard this. What do you say about these things? No, instead what we do is we go to our little Facebook page and says, have you heard? We make a YouTube video and said, have you heard? We go far and wide to destroy the reputation with our feet that are so quick to run to evil. But now consider what they had come to accuse him of. Remember that this is the accusation that they used to justify his crucifixion. They said that Jesus said, I am able to destroy the temple of God and to rebuild it in three days. And if you remember what he actually said in John 2, he did say something like this. For he said, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. But they did not understand what he meant. They accused him according to their lack of revelation, for he spoke of his own body. Do you see that? Even if you see someone say something but you misunderstand what they said and you share that misunderstanding of what they actually meant, you become a false witness just because you don't understand what they actually meant, because you lack revelation doesn't get you off the hook of bearing false witness. For the false witness that took him to the cross came from a lack of revelation of the Holy Spirit of what he actually meant. Why what he said? Your witness, by repeating a misunderstanding, is a false witness. It is your job to ensure that you understand someone before becoming a witness of what they are or are not saying. It's not their responsibility to ensure that everyone understands them perfectly. For not everyone understood Yeshua perfectly. And it wasn't his fault they lacked revelation. And that is exactly why it is so essential for us to ask the accused for their defense, for them to get an opportunity to explain what they actually meant. See, when you speak of the accused on the Internet, and they have no voice to defend themselves, for they do not even know about your gossips. You desecrate the temple of God just as they desecrated the temple of Yeshua when he spoke of his body. See, we are the temple of God, living stones. And when we come and speak evil of another, do we do not exactly the same? Do we not crucify them the same way? And if Yeshua lives in them, what are we doing to the Messiah when we crucify them? Yeshua said, they will persecute you, for they persecuted me first. When we are persecuting fellow believers, we are persecuting Yeshua. When Paul was persecuting believers, Yeshua came to him and said, why are you persecuting me? See, some of you are so busy persecuting Yeshua and you do not even know it. You stand condemned before God like Paul was, and you don't even know it. And Paul had the mercy of seeing Yeshua appear to him in a light. Some of you will not see that mercy. This is your mercy. This is your warning. See, when Yeshua was accused, we see In Luke 23:20, Pilate addressed the crowd once more, desiring to release Jesus. But they kept shouting, crucify him. Crucify him. And a third time he said to them, why? What evil has he done? I have found in him no guilt deserving of death. I will therefore punish and release him. But they were urgent, demanding with loud cries that he should be crucified. And their voices prevailed. You know what is the most tragic thing about this? Is that Israel, the nation, who the Father trusted the Messiah to, a pagan secular judge like Pilate, a man with what morals, what God does he serve? And yet he is the one who is defending Yeshua more than his own people. He is the one who has a better sense of justice than the religious who say they love the law. And today, brothers and sisters, hear me out. The secular courts do a better job of upholding justice than believers. They demand witnesses. They ask for the person being accused to give a defense. And they do not consider a man guilty until they are proven as guilty. But we do. Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try even trivial cases? Brothers and sisters, I see religious leaders today who say they follow Jesus, who are unable to apply these basic principles when they come to those cases of people being accused. We prejudge people. They've done so many things so we just assume that they must be guilty of this thing that we've heard about them. But there is a principle that God teaches us through Paul regarding prejudging. And he says in 1 Timothy 5:19, do not a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two to three witnesses. And as for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all so that the rest may stand in fear in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of the elect angels. I charge you to keep these rules without prejudging, doing nothing from partiality. I cannot tell you how often I have seen people on the Internet especially swarm around some accusation that one person has over another, and they say, yes, I knew it. Yes, I knew it. Yes, I knew it. Because that person is in a camp that they don't like already and they just wanted a reason to condemn them. And that's exactly what Israel was primed for. Yeshua was saying a whole bunch of stuff that was kind of weird, slapping mud on people's faces, telling them that they need to drink his blood and eat his flesh. They were kind of uncomfortable with a whole lot of things. He was a pretty strict guy at times. And so when the opportunity came and they heard this one thing that he apparently said, oh, yes, crucify him. Let's crucify him. That's exactly what we do today, brothers and sisters. To prejudge someone means that you show favoritism towards one person over another. As for Israel, it was Barabbas that they chose to show favoritism towards a criminal. But as for today, we show favoritism to those in our camp, those people who we like, who have similar thoughts as we do, similar theologies as we do, so we defend them no matter what, even if they are charged as guilty, all the evidence shows that all the witnesses are there, will still defend them, will show favoritism. And then when the there's someone on the other camp and there isn't evidence, there's just a whole bunch of rumors, we'll just crucify them. I will defend to my dying breath those who have been accused without evidence, whether I feel like I like them or not, whether I feel like they're in my camp or not, that has got nothing to do with whether they are guilty of the charge that has been brought about them. The sooner that we as a people can be a just people, the sooner we can actually be taken seriously by the witness that we are to carry for our Messiah. Brothers and sisters, have we forgotten that our Entire faith rests on this fact of witnesses, because the resurrection and the true nature of the resurrection of our Messiah is established by the 500 witnesses that saw him and that got. If we desecrate the value of witnesses today, then we desecrate the testimony of the resurrection and our faith is in vain. That is why this is important. And so believing a charge without the evidence that is biblically required is sin before God. It's not just about spreading it. You become a false witness when you believe it yourself and you allow the false witness to change your heart. For when it changes your heart and your perspective of a person, then you now become a false witness of who that person truly is. But, brothers and sisters, the reality is that crowds have always been so easy to persuade. People are easily tossed from one opinion to another, especially when their emotions are involved. After all, the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to destroy Jesus. And today, social media has made it even more accessible, more cool and lucrative for even ministries and religious leaders to profit off of this act of murder. The algorithms of social media, they just pump up the videos where there is controversy, where there is accusation, where there is this unity. And many are not ignorant of this fact. They understand that this is a great way to gather a lot of people on your video, to get your attention, because people love it, because we're so affected and attracted by controversy. And these gossip channels, websites, and social media accounts, they spend more time criticizing others than spreading the gospel. And to this I say, repent. And when they bear witness without evidence, not only are they destroying themselves, but they harm the hearer and the accused. You may look at this and say, well, Petey, you're being way too serious about justice and setting way too high of a bar. First of all, it doesn't really matter what we think, because Scripture establishes what the bar for justice is. And we will look at some scriptures now. Secondly, justice is supposed to be a high bar, because at the end of the day, if we just accepted any accusation that anyone said about anyone, we would be tearing one another apart. If someone said something about you to someone else, you would hope for that person to actually inquire and look for the truth, for evidence. And to hear your perspective, if those basic parameters are not there, we have lost everything. We have lost every relationship. And like the wind, we will change our mind about one another. And we can have no trust for one another at all. See, when Paul was accused, let's look at what he demanded and how that procedure went Acts 24:5. For we have found this man, a plague, one who stirs up riots among all the Jews throughout the world, and is a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes. He even tried to profane the temple, but we seized him. By examining him yourself, you will be able to find out from him about everything of which we accuse him. The Jews also joined in the charge, affirming that all these things were so. And when the governor had nodded to him to speak, Paul replied, knowing that for many years you have been a judge over this nation, I cheerfully make my defense. You can verify that it is not more than 12 days since I went up to worship in Jerusalem, and they did not find me disputing with anyone or stirring up a crowd, either in the Temple, or in the synagogues, or in the city. Neither can they prove to you what they now bring up against me. The accusers of Paul is no small number. It is written that the Jews, the crowd, even said this all is true that he is being accused of. But Paul points out their lack of proof. Because to bear witness is not just to say something. It is to prove that what you're saying is actually the truth. Even a pagan governor that is looking over Paul's case have more sense of justice than some believers today. And we see this over and over in the Bible, Paul was allowed to make a defense. Paul was allowed to point out that even though there's many accusing him, that they have no real proof. John 7:24 tells us, do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment. Just like today, as in the first century, there are many false witnesses running around, including people who you may trust. They trusted the religious leaders in the first century who crucified their Messiah because they went along and they didn't ask for the evidence, even from those who they trusted. Trusting a leader is not enough. Where's the evidence? Because many accuse out of jealousies and selfish gain, for views, for likes, for shares. I know how this game works and I'm not going to be playing it. For they dance with the devil while singing to Jesus. I'm not going to do that. Every false witness who falsely exposes others for their own gain will stand before God and be exposed. If this message was speaking about you, I urge of you to stop, to repent, to go to the person you have bore witness about falsely, whether you knew it at the time or not. Because this is what it means to cleanse your home of leaven. This is the message from God. If you do not repent, from bearing false witness against your brother. In this season, death will come into your midst, just as death has been left in your wake. Because of your words, death will come for you next. Our Father has had mercy. But judgment begins with the household of God. And if we truly understand this saying, we will fear how we bear witness of others. Am I alone in saying all of this? Or does the Scriptures not warn you of the same? Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body, body and blood of the Lord. That is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died. But if we judged ourselves, truly, we would not be judged. But many do not judge themselves but by appearances. And that's why they judge others only, but by appearances. Not with sound, righteous, just judgment, but by appearances. Bearing false witness is something that has gone on so long because people have taken it so casually, because you can do it while seeming clean on the outside. The religious leader who crucified Yeshua seemed clean. The people had no idea that they had death inside of them and they were doing the work of their father, the devil. You do not need to literally shed blood. You can simply murder with your mouth, just as today you do not need to shed blood. You don't need to get your hands dirty. You just murder by your mouth by bearing a false witness. It's very clinical. It has a holy appearance on the outside. For you just are so good at pointing out what everyone else is doing wrong while inside you are dead. And the worst of all is they thought that they themselves were good with God, doing His ministry and good work. What is more terrifying than thinking that you are good with God while actually not standing a chance to inherit his kingdom, being dead even whilst you are still living? Brothers and sisters, this has been a hard message. But this sin will come to an end. Other people will repent or the Lord will bring them to an end himself. I assure you that they will not be false witnesses in the kingdom to come. I assure you there will not be a murderer or a liar or a thief. Yeshua has come to save us, but he has come for a holy people. And if we have seen his righteousness and his love and his sacrifice, yet we continue to destroy his temple that he has come to build upon the earth which is his people, then what kind of a man or what kind of a woman are we to say that we are a believer? I speak directly because I want you to understand the fear of God and I don't want blood on my hands because I didn't warn you of what I so clearly see. Turn. Repent. And he will have mercy on you. My Father, I thank you that you convict us of sin, of righteousness and judgment. Holy Spirit, I ask that you would come and lead us into all that is holy and righteous, and empower us to turn from these sins. Lord, I ask that we would not be a people who just gets rid of bread while holding onto our sin. Father, a time is coming when you will revisit this earth like a lion. You will come and separate sheep from goats. And I ask that we would be found to be a part of your flock. I ask, Lord, that you would help us to be a holy nation. A priesthood not known as the priesthood of the first century, who bore false witness, but a holy priesthood. A holy priesthood who do not crucify you yet again, but who professes your work and who defends those who have no voice, while at the same time keeping accountable those who are truly guilty. We thank you, Lord, for being our Passover lamb. In the name of Yeshua, I pray. Amen. Thank you for joining me for the Feast of Unleavened Bread. May the Father bless and keep your hands. Shalom Sa.