It really did expire according to the whois record. It may take a day or so for everyone to be able to get back on, it will depend on who they use for DNS resolution, and how often they update their DNS records from the root servers.
Even though technically the renewal was not paid, the URL did not expire. We have something like 30 or 60 days to renew without our domain registrar releasing the name for sale. So there really was no possibility of losing the name due to this issue.
Hopefully everyone will be back in and properly jawboning full-time by tomorrow AM.
Hakim, I understand, and I'm certainly glad that TBN got it re-established so quickly. I just meant that I initially thought that there was a scam or hijacking, but then found that the expiration date had actually passed, as one of mine did recently. I too was able to renew right away, well before the name was released. Redirecting the web traffic certainly has a way of getting ones attention .