Follow Up on Liberty University and Benny Hinn

In last week’s Friday Church News Notes we reported on a video clip posted at Benny Hinn’s web site featuring Hinn and two men identified with Liberty University: Dan Reber, Director of Liberty University Institute of Biblical Studies, and Ronald Godwin, Liberty University Provost. The three men announced an alliance between Liberty University Institute of Biblical Studies and Hinn’s World Healing Fellowship. I wrote a report about the alliance, queued it up to go out last week, and then left on a two-week preaching trip to the States. The day we published the report, Liberty University’s President, Jerry Falwell, Jr., posted a statement denying that the school is partnering with Hinn. The statement says that Dr. Godwin made a mistake in appearing with Hinn and that though Liberty “transferred the operations of Liberty Home Bible Institute ... to Mr. Dan Reber in 2011,” he wasn't authorized to form an alliance with Hinn. I find this move by Liberty curious for a number of reasons. Reber and Godwin are long-time employees of Liberty, going back to the time of Liberty’s founder, Jerry Falwell, Sr., and they learned their compromise directly from him. Is Jerry Falwell, Jr., now renouncing what his father did when he tried to rescue Jim Baker’s PTL Club? Or what Falwell, Sr., did in 2004 when he praised Pat Robertson and Rod Parsley as “courageous and brilliant evangelical mega-leaders” (fundraiser mailer for the Faith and Values Coalition, “a 21st Century Moral Majority,” Nov. 16, 2004). These men are as heretical as Benny Hinn. In fact, does this mean that Falwell, Jr., is renouncing Falwell, Sr.’s close association with Roman Catholics and Mormons and with cult leader Sun Myung Moon who helped rescue Liberty University from bankruptcy in the early 1990s? (“The GOP’s Own Asian Connection,” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 16, 1997, articles.latimes.com/1997/nov/16/opinion/op-54375). Why draw the line with Benny Hinn, Liberty? (For further documentation of Liberty’s compromise see “Jerry Falwell: Should We Warn or Praise” at the Way of Life web site.)

(Friday Church News Notes, April 18, 2014, www.wayoflife.org, [email protected], 866-295-4143)

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