I don't intend to harp on this matter, but . . .

Getting back to the Todd Bentley thing.

The reason it's important, and the reason that we as Christians ought to take a good hard look at ourselves, is that the whole episode reveals just how wanting in intelligence and discernment we are. It is with good reason that Jared Wilson says I told you so. Folks, we need to be embarrassed at ourselves!

The whole matter has exposed the pitifully soft underbelly of charismatic Christianity. We are simply not satisfied with Jesus Christ! Bentley would not have fleeced tens of thousands as he did, had we not eagerly played the easy mark to this shell-game charlatan. The bride of Christ is sullied, mud-spattered, demeaned, and we allowed it to happen because we are perhaps the most Biblically illiterate generation since the dawn of the Reformation.

The reason I so like what Nate has to say about this over at The Jesus Paradigm is that he points out there there truly is a revival going on in this country, but folks it's not showing on so-called GodTV (pardon me while I heave). It's a revival among Christians deeply dissatisfied with the path of cultural compromise that the American church has taken. Christians who long not for yet another "blessing," but instead long for a church that will, like Paul, fill up in its body -- in its "bodies" -- what was lacking in the afflictions of Christ on the cross (Col 1:24).

And its happening. It's small. It's counter-cultural in the truest sense of that poorly understood term. As Nate says:

People in grassroots movements like the Simple Way, whose website begins with "Dream Big, Live Small," are being transformed and ceasing to obey the masters of hype, wealth, empire, advertising, celebrity, and crowd opinion in favor of the red-letter Jesus.

So perhaps this will be my last post on Bentley and that whole sorry episode of delusion called the Lakeland revival. Maybe instead I'll keep my eyes pealed for the real revival going on quietly in the body of Christ. I commit myself to reporting on these signs of life with regularity here at In the Clearing.