25 years ago this week the Wheaton College Revival of 1995 transpired on campus. The following historical account was transcribed from the Wheaton College Alumni Magazine, Spring 1995.

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by Dr. Stephen B. Kellough ’70, Chaplain

Our Lord has poured out his love in a dramatic way.

Throughout the history of Wheaton College, God has chosen to he present and active in this place. There have been times of spiritual awakening, and during the week of March 19-24, we received another special visitation of God.

It would be incorrect to say that it all began at 7:30 P.M. on Sunday, March 19, in Pierce Chapel at the weekly meeting of the World Christian Fellowship. There had been a significant stirring of the Spirit in the lives of individuals and in groups on campus several weeks before that, throughout the semester, and well before that.

But something unique and important happened on that Sunday evening when James Hahn and Brandi Maguire, students from Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, described a recent “revival” on their campus. Following their presentation, the microphones were open for students to share their burdens and confess their sins.

Confessions were heard throughout the night. There were tears and there were smiles. There was crying and there was singing. People confessed their sins to God and to each other, and there was healing. It was biblical. It was Christian, It was orderly. It was sincere. It honored out Lord. Finally, at 6:00 A.M., we adjourned the meeting, with students still in line who had waited hours to speak.

We reconvened on Monday in Pierce Chapel with about 900 students and adjourned at 2:00 A.M. with 400 students listening to the last confession. Still, many were unable to reach the microphone. Tuesday’s meeting was held at the College Church, a larger facility which accommodated the 1,350 people who arrived at 9:30 P.M. Because lines still remained at the microphones at 2:00 AM., another meeting was set for 9:30 P.M. on Wednesday.

That night a capacity crowd of about 1,500 assembled. The program included worship and testimony along with some specific instruction and direction concerning the biblical method of dealing with temptation and sin. The group was addressed by President Duane Litfin, and Professors Lyle Dorsett and Tim Beougher. The confessional stage of the week’s meetings ended at 2:00 A.M.

The final plenary session was held on Thursday evening at 9:30 P.M. at the College Church, the largest assembly of the week with many faculty, staff, and members of the community attending. The theme of the evening was praise and testimony. It was a dynamic celebration.

The challenge was issued to move on to new levels of commitment to loving and serving God. The closing moments included an invitation for people who were sensing the call of God to Christian ministry to come forward for a prayer of dedication. Many knelt at the front of the sanctuary to commit themselves to bringing the gospel to the world.

Is this something that has been humanly contrived or manufactured? The personal sharing within the body of Christ here at Wheaton College has been spiritually sensitive and biblically grounded. The depth and breadth of the confession, repentance, and reconciliation point to a divine initiative. Every factor seems to confirm that we are experiencing an authentic work of the Sovereign Lord.

As President Litfin has said, “God has prompted a wonderful surge of conviction and confession sin, genuine repentance and forgiveness, and the restoration of broken hearts and relationships.

“Our challenge now is to see the results of this renewal tilled into the soil of our lives. Our desire is to move from this mountain top to a new plateau of obedience and fellowship with the Lord, and renewed relationships with one another.”

We trust that this incredible movement of God’s Spirit will continue on our campus and beyond. We believe that what we have seen here at Wheaton is only a small piece of what God is doing worldwide.

Twenty-five years ago, the Wheaton Alumni magazine began a series of articles in which Wheaton faculty told about their thinking, their research, or their favorite books and people. Professor of Physics Stewart Desoto (who taught at Wheaton from 2003-2017) was featured in the Autumn 2009 issue.

Are you scientifically literate? A key goal of the Nature cluster in the general education program at Wheaton is to ensure that our graduates leave with an appreciation of nature and a solid grasp of what we can learn about the universe via the scientific method. But how much science do our students really learn during their education at Wheaton? To test your knowledge, answer the following true/false questions, then read on:

1. Sufficient experimental evidence can demonstrate that a scientific theory is true.
2. Science is partly based on beliefs, assumptions, values, and the non-observable.

Understanding both the extraordinary possibilities of what science can do (likely a lot more than we often think), and what it can never rightly do for us (perhaps even more important), lies at the heart of true scientific literacy.

Today, Wheaton grads enter a world that is more saturated with scientific and technological twitterings than ever before. As a result, it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate the possible from the impossible, let alone the ethical from the dangerous, or the wise from the shortsighted.

“Cold fusion,” for example, initially promised infinite, clean energy in a big media splash in 1989. It was quickly debunked as fraud and pseudoscience, but has now recently made a scientific comeback. And though it might seem like science fiction, physicists have actually made cloaking devices from exotic meta-materials that can bend light around objects, rendering them invisible.

Of course, with science’s power comes the potential to do more harm than good. Environmental activists warn of the dangers of genetically modified foods, and of the threat of a “grey goo” of self-replicating nanobots multiplying out of control and consuming the biosphere. In movies, we contemplate a future in which our machines become super—intelligent, and condemn us to lives of slavery or annihilation. Alternatively, some science utopians envision a nano-bio-technology–based future in which the human body and mind are fused with machines to create a new; improved, transhuman species, called H+.

With such fantastic possibilities, many find it hard to discern what’s legitimate, and more importantly, what is worth pursuing. For some Christians, science presents an added challenge, as scientific truth can appear to be at odds with closely held religious beliefs. Biological macroevolution is often assumed as an explanation for the origin and development of life on earth, with no apparent necessity of a Creator. A large number of planets orbiting stars other than our own have recently been discovered, raising the possible consideration of life beyond earth. Finally, mathematical “Theories of Everything” like String Theory purport to be the ultimate description of our existence.

Getting back to the test questions–number one is false. Science operates by falsification; no theory can ever strictly be proven true, only false. Number two is true, as it is inevitable for any activity performed by humans. If you answered both questions correctly, you are more literate than the average citizen.

Unfortunately there is no shortcut to true scientific literacy, but the need is clear for a well-informed Christian dialog, for scientists and lay people, to help guide society toward a bold new future.

On November 23, 1859, the minutes of the Board of Trustees of the Illinois Institute, the precursor to Wheaton College, record that the Rev. Jonathan Blanchard opened the meeting in prayer and that seven new members joined the board.  Among these founding Trustees of the soon-to-be-established college was Owen Lovejoy, the younger brother of martyred abolitionist Elijah P. Lovejoy.  Owen was also a sitting U.S. Congressman from Illinois (who later introduced the bill to outlaw slavery in the United States) and an intimate friend of Abraham Lincoln.

Several years later during the annual trustee meeting of June 1864, Rev. Blanchard, now President of Wheaton College, proposed a new scholarship to honor Owen who had passed away the previous March. The Lovejoy Scholarships would support the education of students of color, and in his remarks about the fund, President Blanchard praised the work and character of his dear friend:

“As it has pleased our Heavenly Father during the last year to remove by death the Rev. & Hon. Owen Lovejoy, a member of this Board, we desire hereby to express our loyal and cheerful submission to the ordering of our Sovereign, infinitely wise and good, while we record our affectionate sorrow and our appreciation of the Christian, the philanthropist, the patriot, who has been removed from us in the meridian of his powers of his influence of his success.

As the life long champion of the despised slave he was worthy of our admiration and our affection. But to his principles of sympathy with everything, with everything that tended to abate from the spirit of caste and to promote a healthy public sentiment, he was willing to cast in his name and influence with this Institution, even when political honors, that had begun to rest upon him, might have tempted him to decline such a relation.

We will ever cherish the memory of his virtues, while we believe that the savor of his self-sacrificing life will be preserved as one of the rich legacies of our nation.

Whereas the Trustees of the Lovejoy Monument Association have proposed the endowment of Lovejoy Scholarships for the education of colored persons [sic] in such of our literary and professional Institutions as will receive the recipients of those funds to equal privileges and on the same terms with the white students.

Resolved, that this Board highly approve the proposed plan of perpetuating the memory of that Christian patriot, that true philanthropist Owen Lovejoy and that we proceed to the endowment of a scholarship of 1000 dollars upon the conditions required by the Monument Association and to be called the Lovejoy Scholarship.”

Over four decades ago in February 1974, Senator Mark O. Hatfield spoke on Wheaton’s campus during the height of the Watergate scandal and merely six months prior to the resignation of President Nixon.  Although having visited campus before as governor and later as senator, the Oregon Republican stirred strong feelings from students and administrators alike due to his opposition to America’s involvement in Vietnam, as well as his support for politically liberal students whom some on campus characterized as “anti-war, anti-capitalist, anti-American.”

The following article from the Wheaton Record, 2/15/1974 (vol.96, no.14) contains excerpts from a floor statement given by Senator Hatfield.  The speech was given during a discussion on the Military Procurement Bill, but the underlying issues are particularly relevant even in a predominantly civilian liberal arts college and amazingly trenchant nearly a half-century later.  His death in 2011 was marked by tributes by both Special Collections, Buswell Library and the Billy Graham Center Archives.

There is no doubt that people feel threatened today, and feel insecure.  But the threats they feel are not those that are supposedly met by our military power.

People feel that their liberty is threatened, but not from any invading foreign army.  Rather, that liberty is seen threatened by our own domestic institutions, and even by our government.

I can think of no more fundamental threat to our security today than the cumulative loss of confidence in our government felt by the people.  The truth is that our citizens are no longer believing that our government and its representatives actually function as their servants.  Government has become an institution of domination, losing the trust of those who are to be governed.

There is nothing more fundamental to our “security” that that.  Yet we continue to believe that the most fundamental threats to that security come somehow from the outside.

We are misled, we are deluded to believe so.

When people’s confidence in their government is lost, when people’s human needs are going unmet, and when the nation’s life-supporting environment is in deterioration, then our nation is utterly insecure and will remain so regardless of how many billions we may spend elsewhere.  The place to start in building a true security is with these internal needs, not with a continued obsession about the readiness to fight any foe any place around the globe.

We must recognize how victimized we are by our whole national psychology about our power.

We believe, first of all that our power is always good, and only used for righteous purposes.  The belief is that if the good guys have the power, then that power is justifiable.  And of course, we inevitably look at ourselves as the good guys in virtually any situation.

Power tends to make individuals, or a nation, self-righteous.  That is an axiom that holds true as much for us as for any other people.

We suppose that our security comes through an inherent belief in our nation’s self-righteousness.  So we create a civil religion that baptizes our established powers of government and creates an idolatry of the Presidency, and forget the truth that power corrupts.

In a very real way, restoring the strength of our people can only begin with a spirit of repentance.  It is only by recognizing our errors, our wrongs, and our false gods that we can come to a proper understanding of ourselves.  That is the beginning of any true security.

In the end, it will not be the power of our military might that will usher in greater reconciliation between the people of the world.  Rather, that will only come from the power of spiritual love.

Such spiritual love must take root first in each one of us — and then extend out to our neighbor, to our communities, through our nation, and to the world — even to our enemies.

That is our only hope for security.

As the words of the prophet say, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of Hosts.”