“If we had more sleepless nights in prayer, there would be fewer souls to have a sleepless eternal night in hell.” 
― Leonard Ravenhill, Revival God’s Way

THE SEVEN WAVES OF REVIVAL

The  Revival history was done by writer and scholar, Dr J Edwin Orr, for his painstaking research into the history of revivals. The revivals happen from 1727, 1792, 1830, 1857,1882, 1904 and 1995.

These  Revival started as MEN & WOMEN started praying, getting together in a group with a deep desire to pray or revival FIRE.  Each of the revivals brings fresh outpouring and manifestations of the Holy spirit it lasted not days but months and years.

The result, it does not shake the local area but the city, state and country and spread like wildfire across the borders.

First Great Awakening of 1727

The Great Awakening was the first mentioned revival when Holy Spirit poured across different nations traced to the Moravian community, God visited after a period of prayer, repentance. One major one during that time was lead by Nikolas Count Ludwig Von Zinzendorf, a German. The movement began when people were hungry and desperate for HIS move it started with 24 hours a -day prayer meeting, which lasted the next 100 years.  After the mighty move, 300 radical missionaries sent across.

During these time Griffith Jones a young Anglican clergyman, Gilbert Tennant whose father William founded the famous “Log College” which now is Princeton University.

Jonathan Edwards & George Whitefield led the revival in Britain and America.

Two young men George Whitefield and John Wesley began massive revival movement. Both are the member of Holy Club in Oxford, while they were a student.  By this time Wesley went to America to preach the Indians in  1736 and returned back in 1738.

The height of Whitefield’s ministry was at the Cambuslang  Awakening in 1742, when 20,000 and 30,000 gathered to hear him preach, followed by mass weeping and repentance.

Whitefield’s preached in every town in England, Scotland and Wales, crossing the Atlantic seven times, winning countless souls in Boston, New York and Philadelphia.

Whitefield’s friend, John Wesley goes down as architect of 18th-century evangelical revival. Converted in 1738, at the well- known Aldersgate Street prayer meeting,  in 1739 at Whitefield’s request,  John Wesley preached in the open air at Bristol. There began unusual manifestations which periodically attended his and Whitefield’s ministry, falling crying out, fainting, convulsions etc.

Wesley wisely began small societies designed for mutual encouragement and support. These became forerunners of the class- meeting and then of the Methodist Church. Wesley preached for 65 years. He travelled and estimated 250,000 miles on horseback to preach 40,000 sermons. He wrote 233 books he wrote 9,000 hymns. His practices and theology have affected Holiness, Revivalist, Pentecostal and Charismatic groups right down to the present day.

Surely this was the truly Great Awakening.

THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING 1792

This “Great Awakening” lasted 30 years. It impacted the world to a large extent.

The awakening began as a PRAYER MOVEMENT in 1784, when John Erskine of Edinburgh re-published Jonathan Edward’s earnest plea for revival prayer. Denomination after denomination devoted a monthly Monday evening to prayer, first in Britain, then in the U.S.

The barriers were great. There was moral decline following the war of independence in America. Churches in Wales became packed again and thousands gathered in the open air. Phenomenal awakenings started in Scotland, Ireland, especially among Methodists.

The remarkable results were UK revivals was the founding the British and Foreign Bible Society, The Religious Tract Society, The Baptist Missionary Society, The London Missionary Society, The Church Missionary Society and many other evangelistic agencies.  Sunday school began during that time.

Scandinavia and Switzerland sparked revivals, German experienced revival and achieved lasting reforms and missionary fervour.

In the US the concept of prayer was very widespread from 1794 and by 1798 the awakening had broken out everywhere. Every state and every evangelical denomination were affected. Timothy Dwight, a grandson of Jonathan Edwards, took over Yale College in 1795 and saw over half the students converted in just one year. It was a time when camp- meeting started for 6 days and more and astounding revival happened, the move of God was so powerful that thousands, repent, tears, trembling, fainting and shouting.

It was in North – East India. In the state of Assam.