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#240 Awakenings on Campus: Revivals Reshaping a Generation · The OneCry Podcast

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  God is moving right now across our nation, and literally, you could argue, across the
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  world.
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  Welcome to the One Cry Podcast, a nationwide call for spiritual awakening.
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  The goal, accelerating the movement of God through sharing revival truth, stories, and
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  reports.
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  Hey, well, welcome to the One Cry Podcast.
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  I'm Kyle Reno with the main man, Bill Eliff.
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  How you doing, brother?
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  All right.
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  I'm doing good.
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  I'm doing good.
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  You've got books laid out.
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  I know we've got listeners.
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  I've got stuff, man.
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  I've got material.
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  I've got books.
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  I'd like to take a moment here to tell our listeners, you better be ready, because my
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  man's got three, if not four, devices laid out for this episode.
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  He is ready to roll.
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  As always to our listeners, man, we are honored, humbled, actually, that you would give us
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  some time.
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  We're willing to be stirred together for revival and awakening, and what God's doing in our
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  nation and among the nations, honestly, right now.
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  Here's the thing.
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  You've heard me say this, Bill, before.
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  Some of the best theology that I ever received was not necessarily from seminary, grateful
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  for seminary, grateful for study, but from people that's just walked with God for a long
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  time.
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  I'll never forget.
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  It was at my brother's church when he was in Arlie, Alabama, backwoods Alabama, brother.
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  We were talking and testifying to something God had just done in our family.
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  Honestly, we were both standing a little surprised.
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  He actually did it.
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  He actually took, and this old coal miner looked at us and said, Bill, those are some
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  of the best theology.
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  He goes, boys, y'all do realize he's been doing this a long time.
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  I thought, man, that's a really good theology.
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  God has been doing this a long time.
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  It really has.
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  What's fascinating, God could do anything, any time, any way he wants to, and he surprises
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  us at times, but Kyle, we get so wrapped up in our little world and our little history
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  and our days that we think everything revolves around my home, my family, my community.
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  The reality is that God has been marching through human history with an agenda, and
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  to accomplish that agenda, and that is to create ultimately a new kingdom and new heavens
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  and a new earth that will be a part of that, and that we get to be, all those who know
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  Christ get to be a part of that, and he's out to save people from every tongue and tribe
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  and nation.
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  So there's this great mission, go and make disciples of all the nations and baptize them
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  and teach them, and I'm going to be walking right with you in that great enterprise.
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  So there's this great movement, and if we don't understand that, we don't jump in, and
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  we live a very small life that is very provincial.
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  It's just our little area, our little things, and we miss the great movement of God.
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  And also, I would say that one of the things that does is it causes our faith to be weak
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  and our prayers to be small.
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  So when you're hearing this, we are coming up once again when this program is going to
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  be aired here in, is being aired here in February of 2026.
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  You may hear it later as you listen to this podcast, but we're airing it right before
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  a very strategic moment.
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  It's the Collegiate Day of Prayer.
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  And the Collegiate Day of Prayer, just a history of that, started during the Second Great Awakening
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  in the early 1800s, I think around 1815 or something like that.
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  Just a movement of college students and college leaders who had come together, and it has
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  fallen out to happen on the last Thursday of February every year.
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  And that movement of concerted prayer has been going on for a long time.
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  There was a little hiatus during the war, but then it was revived, and it's still going
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  on today.
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  And it's become bigger and bigger and bigger.
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  And particularly in the last few years, the Collegiate Day of Prayer has a broadcast that
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  happens on that final, on that night of the last day, last Thursday in February every
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  year.
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  And many people help with that.
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  One Cry helps to produce that and help with that, which is our great joy and privilege.
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  And because there's a reason for that, and that is people live, and they grow up, and
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  then they get older, and then they die.
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  That's the way of God, right?
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  I mean, it's appointed today to man all the days that are ordained for him, and then we
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  die, and we go into eternity.
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  And so you have to keep, you have to keep working to reach the next generation that's
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  coming behind you to advance the kingdom, right?
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  I mean, I remember, I think it was Bill Bright said that, you know, we're one, as Christians,
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  we're one generation away from extinction.
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  Well, that's true and not true.
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  It's not true in the sense that Christ is building his church, and the gates of hell
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  are not going to stop it, right?
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  It's going to keep happening.
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  It happens in different parts of the world in greater measure in different times.
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  But God has, another of the ways of God is he has sent great movements of revival and
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  spiritual awakening that most often start with a young, that begin with a young.
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  You know, we think of George Whitefield, there's a marvelous movie that's coming out about
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  him and the first great awakening called A Great Awakening that's coming out this spring.
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  You must go see it and take people with you.
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  There'll be a companion guide, a teaching tool that you can use it in your small groups
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  for six weeks or just by yourself.
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  But it talks about, it centers on Whitefield.
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  And you know, Whitefield, when he came from the great awakening in Britain, really as
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  a missionary to the United States, because revival always stimulates missions, he was
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  21, 22 years old.
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  I mean, he was what we would consider a college student.
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  The great 1904 revival began, was the catalyst of that was Evan Roberts, who was a 26-year-old
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  Bible college student.
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  So God uses the young.
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  And there are reasons for that.
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  Part of it is that students are, they're early adopters, they have tender hearts.
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  But the main reason is that God has an agenda to raise up the next generation of leaders
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  that will carry us for the next 40 years.
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  It's fascinating.
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  I was at the Asbury Revival three years ago in 2023 when it broke.
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  My wife and I went over there immediately.
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  We were there for many days and came back to help with the Collegiate Day of Prayer
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  broadcast on the last night.
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  And I was standing there in Hughes Auditorium watching this extraordinary movement of God
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  that everybody ought to have the privilege of being in that environment at least once
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  in their lifetime.
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  And I was hearing the testimonies of students who'd been raped, who'd been abused, who were
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  filled with fear, who had gender confusion, they didn't know if they're a boy or a girl,
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  and all these things.
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  And all of a sudden, God had come in this sweeping revival in Asbury in 16 days, and
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  they were instantly transformed.
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  Not five years of counseling, not 10 years of trying to get over this, they were just
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  transformed in the presence of God and fully transformed.
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  And that has proven true in the days that have followed.
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  And I just sat there and I thought, God, what are you doing?
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  And I thought, God's transforming a generation.
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  I mean, because all of us that are older have been looking at this next generation coming
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  up in America, the Gen Z, particularly, generation.
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  And I've never seen, I've lived 74 years, I've never seen a generation so confused in
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  my life.
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  They're so confused, they didn't even know if they're a boy or a girl.
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  And Satan, of course, seizes every opportunity.
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  He's just working it, taking it as far as he can.
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  And I realized standing there in Hughes Auditorium, the only thing that could change this generation
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  is a sweeping, supernatural, miraculous movement of God that would touch college students and
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  high school students and transform them quickly by the glory of God.
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  And that is exactly what's happening right now.
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  And I realized, standing there in Hughes Auditorium, because I have studied revival
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  all my life, that God has sent five nationwide awakenings in American history.
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  This current one would be the sixth, however you categorize it.
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  And they've come every 30, 40 to 60 years.
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  What do you call 40 years?
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  Well, you call it a generation.
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  And what happens is that every 30 to 40 years or so, God, in His mercy in America, has sent
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  a great awakening that has reversed the course.
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  It's turned the tide, particularly in the next generation.
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  And it's raised up the next generation of leaders for the next 40 years.
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  Paul Reno has often told me, he said, Bill, all the men who really discipled me were all
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  products of the Jesus movement.
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  They understood the activity of God in revival and spiritual awakening.
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  They understood how the Lord moves, and they had experienced it.
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  And they taught me.
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  And then he said to me, when he was telling me this several years ago, he said, I worry.
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  I said, about what?
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  He said, where's the next generation who've been through the fires of revival and can
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  train us for the next 40 years?
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  Wow, that's a profound insight.
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  So mercifully, we have seen, since the catalytic moment at Asbury three years ago, we've seen
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  the continuing movement and the rising tide of revival coming off of the desperation of
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  COVID and the resurgence of United Prayer.
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  And it's happening not just in America, it's happening around the world.
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  What God is doing in Great Britain and many places is just absolutely extraordinary.
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  Now, I want to illustrate this to you today.
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  I'm not super prepared at this, but I've been rereading recently J. Edwin Orr's little book.
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  J. Edwin Orr was our greatest revival historian.
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  He was a phenomenal evangelist and was used to see thousands of people come to Christ.
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  He was also a brilliant world-recognized historian, even by secular historians.
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  He was certainly our greatest revival historian.
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  And he wrote this little book, Campus Aflame.
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  You need to get it.
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  I don't know that there's current copies, but you can find used copies everywhere now.
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  And it's just the recounting from the beginning of our nation all the way up to the 1950s
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  or so of the movement of God in great movements of revival.
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  Now, I'm just going to do something that I don't normally do, but let me just read you
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  a few things, okay?
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  Let me just read you a few things.
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  First of all, this is in the 1860s.
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  Coming off of the great revival that happened in 1858 and 59, 1857, 58, and 59, the prayer
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  revival, Jeremiah Landfear, where a million of the people in a population of 30 million
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  came to faith in Christ, and it pushed for the abolition of slavery, which led to the
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  Civil War.
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  In the Civil War, though, there was a great movement of revival, particularly in the Confederate
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  troops.
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  And coming out of that, Robert E. Lee, who was, as you know, the commander of the Confederate
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  Army and a devout Christian, he accepted the presidency of Washington College, it's
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  now Washington and Lee, and listen to this statement by Robert E. Lee, he dreaded the
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  thought of any student going away from the college without becoming a sincere Christian,
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  a sincere Christian.
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  That was his passion.
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  And they were just in the throes of coming out of the war.
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  Listen to this little statement.
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  These are just random statements.
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  The student awakening at Oxford and Cambridge that happened in 1877 was a small part of
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  a general awakening brought about in Great Britain by the evangelistic ministry of D.
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  L. Moody.
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  And Moody came to England, to Liverpool, in 1873.
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  After modest beginnings at York, they moved north, and in Edinburgh and Glasgow they made
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  a far-reaching impact on the life of Scotland.
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  Their meetings in London, and listen to this, lasted 20 weeks, that's five months, almost
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  a half a year, lasted 20 weeks and attracted a total of 2.5 million people.
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  This is a movement of God to accomplish His mission.
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  Now let's speed it up, and I want to go into the early 1900s, or the late 1800s, another
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  movement in the 1880s that started with evangelical awakenings that generally, this is what Orr
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  says, developed in four phases, reviving, evangelizing, missionary advance, and then
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  cultural change, social change.
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  The student movement of 1858 was primarily the work of reviving the work of God among
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  students.
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  Then it was evangelistic, Moody's ministry at Princeton and Cambridge and illustration,
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  and then it led to great missionary advance, one of the most remarkable in human history.
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  And an outcome of this was the student volunteer movement.
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  There were people that were passionate about missions coming out of the revival.
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  So two of these men, Robert Wilder and John Foreman, they tried to get Moody to turn his
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  energies, because he was so popular, towards students and towards missionary advance, and
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  he did.
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  He began to speak about it and speak at conferences about it.
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  Robert Wilder and John Foreman toured the universities and succeeded in enlisting 2,000
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  volunteers for missionary service.
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  McCosh of Princeton asked, has any such offering of living men and women been presented in
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  our age?
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  One man replied that the movement was of larger proportions than anything of its kind in modern
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  times.
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  At first, Moody was cautious about the overflowing enthusiasm of the students, that's happened
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  before, but he continued to help them, and the volunteers increased their own numbers
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  to about 3,000 in the academic year 1887 and 1888.
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  This became the great student volunteer movement.
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  Others came to help, some came from England to help.
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  Professor Henry Drummond crossed the Atlantic and began to address students, received all
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  kinds of invitations.
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  He spoke at Williams College, which was stirred in revival, Dartmouth, which suspended all
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  classes, Princeton, which preempted its time from morning till night, Yale gave him one
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  of the busiest weeks of his life, even Harvard heard him graciously.
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  It was a movement of God in those Ivy League colleges.
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  In 1893, a conference was called at Keswick, attended by 100 delegates from 20 universities,
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  and from it came the InterVarsity Christian Union, or InterVarsity Fellowship we know
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  it as now.
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  The student volunteer movement, which was growing, sought to enlist every Christian
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  in the objective of evangelizing the world.
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  Their watchword was the evangelization of the world in this generation.
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  In their main objective, they were highly successful, for in half a century, now listen
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  to this, more than 20,000 students reached the foreign fields of the church, an astounding
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  and amazing achievement.
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  This comes on the heels of revival, because what happens in revival and spiritual awakening
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  is that God, our heart begins to beat in unison with the heart of God, and we start caring
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  about what God cares about, and dying to ourself, and God's heart is all about reaching every
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  tongue and tribe and nation and people, and accomplishing his mission.
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  So this work just goes on.
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  Let me just, again, I'm doing this real quickly, but let me speed up into the 1930s.
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  In the 1930s, Robert McQuilkin, who returned to Columbia University, alerted all of his
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  students about the possibility of a spiritual awakening, and urged prayer and expectation.
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  He requested prayer for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the spring conference.
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  And here's a quote, for some time, our students, this was in their paper, our students have
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  been praying for spiritual quickening, and there were evidence of God's working, so we
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  were prepared for the visit of a young Irish evangelist who's touring the world when he
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  came on February 24th.
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  The Irishman came from a preaching engagement in the city of Atlanta with Peter Marshall,
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  who later became the chaplain of the U.S. Senate.
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  And McQuilkin reported, here's a quote, there was an atmosphere of spiritual power in the
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  morning meeting.
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  At night, the tabernacle on the Bible College was filled.
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  Following the message, confession of sin and prayer began and continued until 10 p.m.
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  Several hundred remained.
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  This meeting continued until midnight with an evident presence and power of the Spirit.
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  Until the next morning, we got at night and went through classes in Spirit-guided prayers
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  until the closing message at 1130.
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  Just a movement of God.
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  There's so many of these I could read, and I'm not going to read, get the book, okay?
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  But let me just, a couple more.
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  On February 3, Wheaton College experienced an awakening during the visit of a Michigan
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  pastor who spoke.
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  All classes were suspended for a day of prayer requested by the president.
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  The president of the student council, get this, was a young North Carolinian named William
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  Franklin Graham.
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  We know him as Billy Graham.
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  He recalled many years afterwards being deeply moved and surrendering his life.
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  Student teams carried the challenge to other communities.
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  Here's a direct report.
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  Sunday morning, a packed house listened to Billy, Billy Graham, as he put aside his sermon
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  notes and talked about the revival.
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  Before the meeting was over, many made public confession of sin in their lives.
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  Even more listeners thronged the evangelistic service to hear more special music and evangelistic
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  message from Graham.
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  More than 40 seniors went from Wheaton's 1943 revival to the mission field.
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  In 1943, an Irish-American chaplain experienced a kind of campus awakening among the men of
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  the military.
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  The chaplain was so full that 100% of the men on the base were in attendance, not mandatory,
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  they just came with a subject of wonderment, and they saw mighty movement of God in revival
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  among the military.
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  And let me just carry it on up to 1949.
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  There's Claude Jenkins, the executive secretary of the Christ for Greater Los Angeles Committee,
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  an organization of laymen of all denomination.
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  It was entitled First Signs of Revival, Unusual Stirrings in California.
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  And it talked about the significant ways that God was moving.
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  He described a most unusual pastor's prayer conference held the first week of March, directed
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  by Armand Gueswine, who was a great Christian man.
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  And they flew in J. Edwin Orr, who is the writer of this book.
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  More than 400 ministers and their wives attended.
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  Half of these continued in penitence and prayer into the early hours of the morning.
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  There's a great moving of the spirit, with the spirit of revival being carried out from
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  the conference to many areas.
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  As a result of this conference, the tide of expectancy began to rise in Southern California.
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  Many churches reported an increased attendance at midweek services for prayer, then in many
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  cases to the adoption of double and triple hours of worship to accommodate the crowds
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  or the building of new sanctuaries.
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  J. Edwin Orr continued to minister throughout the area in churches of every denomination,
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  urging them to expect another awakening.
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  And out of this came a mighty movement of God, and Billy Graham began his first crusade
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  there in Los Angeles, which was an unbelievable movement of God.
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  I could just go on and on.
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  I'm not doing a good job of it, because I'm just not as prepared as I should be.
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  But here's what I would tell you.
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  If I had the time to do a good job of it, we could trace from the beginning of human
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  history until today the movements of God, the extraordinary movements of God in his
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  manifest presence that we call spiritual revival among his people and spiritual awakening among
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  the lost, particularly targeting the next generation.
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  Now, you say, Bill, why are you rambling on about all this?
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  And I'll tell you, and then we're going to pray together.
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  God is moving right now across our nation, and literally, you could argue, across the
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  world.
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  COVID affected the whole world and brought us to desperation.
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  It brought a new level of desperate prayer unparalleled in our generation.
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  And out of that, we are seeing a movement of revival and spiritual awakening happen
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  right this very minute.
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  It's happening on college campuses.
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  I remember as Asbury was going on, and I was in the midst of it, and I was sitting every
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  day and every night all day in Hughes Auditorium, and just listening and watching the movement
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  of God among thousands of students, I went out one day, and I saw a report of a very
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  extremely well-known pastor.
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  And he said, well, somebody asked him about Asbury, what was happening.
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  He said, well, just take away all the singing, and you've got nothing.
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  And I'm telling you, I cannot tell you how it grieved my heart.
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  The story of Asbury was going around the world.
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  There were one billion references to the movement at Asbury on TikTok.
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  One billion across the nations.
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  And God was making Himself known.
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  And here this, you know, this critic of the revival was saying, oh, it's just a bunch
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  of singing, repetitive singing, and there's nothing to it.
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  Well, you don't understand your history, and you don't understand the ways of God, and
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  you don't understand that God is always trying to redeem the next generation.
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  And even in their enthusiasm, even in things they might do that you may not particularly
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  agree with or like, God is building the next generation of leaders.
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  And I would just tell us, don't stand there and take potshots if you haven't seen it.
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  I was sitting in it.
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  I'm a pretty reasonable guy, a pretty conservative biblical man with 55 years of pastoring God's
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  churches.
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  And I want to tell you, what has happened, what is happening, is real.
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  It's real.
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  And we need to cooperate with it, and we need to encourage it.
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  And that's why I really want to encourage you to pray for the Collegiate Day of Prayer.
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  It's coming up, if you're receiving this broadcast in February here and listening to it, the
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  last Thursday of February.
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  You can go on the internet and just Google Collegiate Day of Prayer.
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  It will take you to a site where you can adopt one of the college campuses in our nation
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  and take a special time on that day to pray.
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  Last year, every single college campus in America was adopted, and we now are working
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  on college campuses overseas.
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  So let's just cooperate with God, amen, and see God do more and more and more in raising
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  up a generation that just may raise up the next gospel army, that just may usher in the
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  finishing of the missionary task, and then Christ will come.
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  So Father, I thank you for these wonderful historical reports of what you have done all
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  through history, and that you have been gracious, Lord.
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  Some countries have not known this, but you have been gracious in America, I think because
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  we were founded this way, to keep bringing us back to yourself and back to our great
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  missionary purpose.
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  And Lord, that's why we exist as a nation, I believe, ultimately.
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  And I pray, Father, for all of us who are listening, that we would cooperate, that we
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  would encourage the next generation, that we would spur them on, that we would pray
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  for them every day, and that we would take every opportunity to help them become great
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  men and women and leaders, because Lord, they're the ones that are going to carry us the next
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  50 years in your work in our day.
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  So we love you, and we thank you, and we pray all this in your precious name.
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  Amen.
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  Well, thanks again for joining us on One Cry, and next week, we're going to continue this
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  theme, and it's going to be really good.
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  I hope that you'll join with us next week on One Cry.