Charisma Magazine

The son of a Hamas founder who converted to Christianity and spied for Israel can stay in the U.S. pending fingerprinting and a routine background check, a U.S. immigration judge said Wednesday.

 

Mosab Hassan Yousef, 32, had been denied political asylum in February 2009 because the Department of Homeland Security said he posed a terrorist threat. Yousef, who came to the U.S. in 2007, has said he feared assassination if he returned to the Middle East because he spied for Israel and abandoned Islam.

A 5-4 Supreme Court decision Monday requiring Christian campus groups on public universities to accept gay students as members and leaders may signal the beginning of religious persecution in the U.S., says prayer leader Lou Engle.

“This is the first time in U.S. history where the Supreme Court has actually ruled that gender rights now trump religious rights, which means this is the beginning of the possible coming harassment and persecution of the church because it’s going to be clear that the true church will take a stand only on the Word of God,” Engle, founder of TheCall prayer movement, said today. “So these campuses will find out who the real Christians are, who is willing to take a stand and risk their status with the school as a club.”

Promise Keepers (PK) has sustained "substantial" losses after a fire broke out at its ministry headquarters in Denver Sunday.

No one was hurt in the blaze that firefighters say started in a closet around 10:30 p.m., Denver's CBS affiliate reported. The fire may have been electrical, firefighters said.

A charismatic pastor says Muslims in Dearborn, Mich., a heavily Islamic Detroit suburb, are showing a surprising openness to the gospel, with more than a dozen coming to Christ during a recent evangelistic event.

 

Barbara J. Yoder, senior pastor of Shekinah Christian Church in Ann Arbor, Mich., said roughly 150 Muslim men and women packed into the Arab-American Friendship Center (AAFC) in Dearborn to hear her testimony recently. The crowd, including women wearing burqas, allowed her to pray with them afterward and 16 people accepted Christ.

Leaders of the Gulf Coast states have designated Sunday a day of prayer for the regions affected by the oil spill that has sent millions of gallons of crude gushing into the Gulf of Mexico for the last 66 days.

The governors of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, and the Lt. Governor of Florida issued proclamations this week calling their citizens to pray for a solution that stops the leak and for the recovery of the coastline and the fish and wildlife industries devastated by the April 20 BP oil rig explosion that killed 11 workers.

"Throughout our history, Alabamians have humbly turned to God to ask for His blessings and to hold us steady during times of struggle," Alabama Gov. Bob Riley stated in a proclamation issued Wednesday. "This is certainly one of those times."