Many people today laugh at the idea.
After all, they suppose, students on American campuses in the 1980s are far too sophisticated to want religion. And besides, they have adopted a new set of materialistic values that leave no room for God or the Bible. Students at Yale College in the late 1700s also scoffed at the idea of Christian revival. Students even called each other by the names of French intellectuals. God's instrument was Timothy Dwight, a grandson of the great preacher Jonathan Edwards.