Charisma News Service

News Service Briefs

The following reports were released during the last month by Charisma News Service. Go to our Web site at www.charismanews.com to access full-length versions of each day’s stories. The site also includes a search engine so you can access archived news.

BENNY HINN INVITED TO STAGE CRUSADE IN CHINA Healing evangelist Benny Hinn has been invited to stage a rally by the Chinese government, following an agreement with the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) to begin broadcasting Christian programs on cable in the country. Hinn’s This Is Your Day! will be the first daily Christian show to be broadcast on government-run TV in China under the agreement with TBN, finalized last month, that places no restrictions on religious content. Hinn called the
development “the most awesome news in 25 years of ministry.” Broadcasts translated into Mandarin could start as early as next month.

LEE UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR MURDERED IN TENNESSEE An English professor who had taught at the Pentecostal school for 23 years was murdered in her home near Cleveland, Tenn. Dr. Janet Rahamut, 52, was stabbed to death June 3 by a relative of her ex-husband. Police told the Cleveland Daily Banner that Roger Joseph, 33, stabbed Rahamut with a hunting knife. Joseph was apparently experiencing psychotic episodes and “had a desire to kill” after he saw someone at a local church who reminded him of Rahamut’s
ex-husband, authorities said. “We are shocked

and unspeakably saddened by the loss of such a wonderful colleague,” said Dr. Paul Conn, president of Lee, which is affiliated with the Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.).

VERDICT BRINGS CLOSURE TO O’HAIR CASE In June a jury in Austin, Texas, convicted the only man charged in the 1995 disappearance of Madalyn Murray O’Hair, founder of American Atheists, Inc. Investigators believe she was killed and dismembered after being kidnapped and robbed of $500,000 in gold coins. She was 77 at the time she vanished. Gary Paul Karr, 52, was found guilty on charges that he extorted money from the O’Hairs. He faces life in prison because of prior convictions. The bodies of O’Hair, her son, Jon Garth Murray, and her granddaughter, Robin Murray O’Hair, have never been found. But a suspect in the case, Danny Fry, was found beheaded in 1995 shortly after their disappearance.

COLUMBINE VICTIM’S CARING SPARKS ‘KINDNESS’ CAMPAIGN A campaign of “guerrilla kindness” by teen-agers has been sparked by the writings of 17-year-old Rachel Scott, one of the Christian students killed in the Columbine High School shootings in April 1999. Chain Reaction is being launched by Rachel’s father, Darrell Scott, who discovered in his daughter’s diary that a month before the shootings she had written about her dream of starting a positive chain reaction with individual acts of kindness. Scott said the new initiative would be “a call for young people to sign a creed to become part of a national movement to do acts of kindness in their schools, to reach out to the handicapped, those that are picked on, to stand up to bullying.”

LATEST ‘LEFT BEHIND’ TITLE TOPS BEST SELLERS

The latest book in the wildly successful Left Behind
fiction series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins became the first Christian novel ever to be listed at No. 1 in the prestigious New York Times Bestseller List. The Indwelling: The Beast Takes Possession also held the top spot in the Amazon.com best-seller list in April. In the last five years the seven-part series
fictionalizing the world after the rapture has sold 17 million copies in the United States.

CHARLES STANLEY DIVORCED, STAYS ON AS SENIOR PASTOR

TV and radio Bible teacher Charles Stanley ended his 44-year marriage in a Georgia court in early May. Anna Stanley had filed for divorce on the grounds that the marriage was “irretrievably broken,”The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The 67-year-old In Touch broadcaster will remain as senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Atlanta–a position he has held since 1972.

Other stories featured on the Charisma News Service Web site:

John and Patsy Ramsey Turn to

Psychic to Find JonBenet’s Killer

Declaration Defends Christians’
Right to Evangelize Other Faiths

Charismatic Churches Pose Threat to

Hindus in Trinidad

Royalties From Church Shootings

Book Will Support Missionaries

’Toronto Blessing’ Church

Starts Bible School

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