Revival on the campus of Wheaton College in the spring of 1995 was a "God-centered and God-honoring, biblical, very orderly" model all believers should pursue in seeking spiritual renewal, as one of the professors there observed it.
Timothy Beougher, assistant professor of evangelism at Wheaton Graduate School and associate director of the Institute of Evangelism at the Billy Graham Center of the Illinois college, voiced his assessment at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, Missouri, during a Dec. 5 chapel service.
Beougher, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, also serves as co-pastor of New Hope Community Church, a Southern Baptist congregation he helped plant this spring. He has published numerous materials related to evangelism, including "Accounts of a Campus Revival: Wheaton 1995."
The Wheaton revival, he recounted, was triggered by the testimony of two Howard Payne University students, James Hahn and Brandi Maguire, as they told of the revival which swept the Brownwood, Texas, campus in February and moved into the surrounding community's churches.
The Howard Payne students spoke at the March 19 Sunday evening meeting of the student group, World Christian Fellowship. Instead of ending at the scheduled time of 9 p.m., students were moved by the Holy Spirit and the meeting didn't break up until 6 a.m. the following morning. The all-night session prompted
more services throughout the rest of the week, culminating in a Thursday evening praise service. In the nightly services, students confessed their sin to God and to one another, Beougher said.
Describing revival as a "gift of his grace, nothing we deserve," Beougher preached from Isaiah 6:1-8, referring to the passage as a "paradigm for revival."
The Isaiah passage teaches "our need for a fresh touch from God," he said. "Isaiah's vision was prompted by a crisis," the death of King Uzziah. This uncertainty, he said, "drove Isaiah to seek God."
"This sense of desperation can be seen in the movement of God's Spirit in the past," Beougher said. "Many students who shared this past spring testified of this great burden for a visitation from God."
He noted that the previous year some 300 students held an all-night prayer meeting beseeching God for revival for their campus.
In order to experience revival, "we need to see God as he really is,"Beougher said. "Isaiah saw the Lord 'high and lifted up.'"
Two important aspects of Isaiah's vision in chapter 6 are the sovereignty of God and the holiness of God, Beougher said.
"It's easy to lose sight of God and his holiness in the midst of our busyness," he said. "Like the proverbial 'frog in the kettle,' our spiritual vigor can slip away gradually, little by little," often without one noticing.
"It was this overwhelming sense of God's holiness that marked those touched by the revival at Wheaton," he said. Noting that he went into the Sunday evening meeting believing he was right with God, Beougher said, "... all of us found ourselves on our knees and on our face before God."
"When we see God as he is, then we come face-to-face with the reality of our sinfulness and need for cleansing," he said.
Quoting the "great historian of revival," J. Edwin Orr, Beougher said, ". when people pray for revival, most don't have a clue what they are praying for. They think they are praying for ecstasy, and yes, joy is a byproduct. But revival does not begin in ecstasy; it begins in agony."
It is characterized by "tears, not laughter," Beougher added. "We are overcome with a sense of our sinfulness, especially our pride."
Although Isaiah, in his role as a prophet, had pronounced woes on other people six times in the previous chapter, in chapter six "now all he can say is 'woe is me!'" Beougher said.
At the Wheaton revival, "we saw this in abundance," he said.
"Students confessed all different aspects of sin. Sins of the spirit as well as sins of the flesh were confessed. Several relationships were restored as bitterness was laid aside to allow God to bring spiritual and emotional healing."
At the end of the week of revival services, "five garbage bags of stuff were collected as students brought things to the chapel that were causing them to stumble in their spiritual lives," Beougher reported. The "stuff" included books, magazines, alcohol and drugs, he said.
"When God moves in our midst, we begin to see sin in a new light -- we see our need for cleansing."
In addition to seeing God for who he and seeing sin for what it is, Isaiah also teaches about "God's gracious provision," Beougher said.
"God does not reveal himself to destroy us, but to redeem us -- to make us clean," he said. God convicts of sin "to take the misery away, not to cause misery."
This truth was illustrated through the Wheaton revival, he said. Rather than an "emotional high" that only lasted for a day, "person after person this past spring testified of a newfound joy in his or her spiritual life."
Beougher told about a student who had made straight A's throughout her college years but also was "cynical and sarcastic." As a result of the revival, she publicly confessed that while she was academically sound, she earned an "F" on her relationships with others and an "F- minus" on her relationship with God. The student committed to making things right with God and her fellow students before graduating in a few weeks.
Encountering the student two weeks later, Beougher found her "face radiated joy; she almost needed a veil!"
In response to his cleansing from God, Isaiah could then respond to God's call to service, Beougher said. "The realization that your sins are forgiven will make you eager to respond in gratitude to the Lord's call, 'Here am I, send me!'"
Isaiah's willingness to serve was in spite of the fact that he didn't know anything about the mission -- the "who, what, when, where why or how. But none of that matters," Beougher said. Isaiah is available, "entrusting his life to the sovereign God."
At the final evening of revival services at Wheaton, Beougher said, more than 200 students committed themselves to full-time Christian service. In the previous year at the college, only nine students had done so.
Copyright (c) 1995 Baptist Press
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