"'Oberlin' was an idea before it was a place." It began in revelation and dreams: Yankees' motives to emigrate west, attempting to be perfect in God's eyes, "educating a missionary army of Christian soldiers to save the world and inaugurate God's government on earth, and the radical notion that slavery was America's most horrendous sin that should be instantly repented of and immediately brought to an end." Its immediate background was the great wave of Christian revivals in western New York State, in which Charles Finney was very much involved. "Oberlin was the offspring of the revivals of 1830 '31 and '32." Oberlin founder John Jay Shipherd was an admirer of Finney, and when en route to Ohio for the first time, visited him in Rochester, New York. Finney tried to get Shipherd to stay with him as an assistant, but Shipherd "felt that he had his own important part to play in bringing on the millennium, God's triumphant reign on Earth. Finney's desires were one thing, but Shipherd believed that the Lord's work for him lay farther west." Shipherd tried to get Finney to accompany him west, which he did, but not until 1835.