Question

According to Charles Finney in What a Revival of Religion Is, what does Finney claim makes a revival and what are its purposes?

Answer 1

Since the early 17th century, when the English colonies were first planted in the New World, many Christians on both sides of the ocean were considered to be part of the same family. Thousands of letters literally flowed back and forth across the Atlantic— many carrying news of revival activity. Despite the enormous difficulties involved, individuals too made the long and dangerous crossing aboard the relatively small ships that gave them passage.
Many of the notable revival leaders of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were among these courageous travellers. One of the first had been George Whitefield, the great minister of the Church of England. The religious revivals that had broken out in the 1720s spread rapidly throughout the American colonies under his powerful preaching— combining ultimately in what historians have come to call The Great Awakening.

Revival of Religion "assumes a decline. Revivals have produced almost every religion in the world. God found it necessary to take advantage of mankind's excitability, to produce powerful excitations among them, before He could lead them to obedience. Men are so sluggish, there are so many things that lead their minds away from religion and oppose the influence of the Gospel, that it is necessary to elevate an excitement among them until the tide rises so high that the opposing obstacles are swept away. They have to be so excited that they break these counteracting influences before they obey God.