(An excellent book by Winkie Pratney, Revival: Its Principles and Personalities, details the various revivals from ancient to modern times. It is available at Amazon.com.)
The Ruach Ha'Kadosh is constantly working, striving with mankind all across the globe to bring them to a state of repentance and eventual Torah observance through faith in Messiah.
The first revival since YahShua's first coming occurred, of course, in the first century among the early believers. Primarily Jews, these first century Nazarenes carried the living Torah, YahShua, throughout the Roman empire and beyond, bringing both riots and revivals to cities. Often these believers were stoned, tortured, crucified and exiled. But the power of the Ruach was evident as miracles, healings and convincing powers accompanied the apostles. Their message was simple: Repent, for the kingdom of YHVH is at hand. They preached YahShua as the Jewish Messiah, and that through him both Jew and Gentile can enter the commonwealth of Israel and the protection of Torah.
As the leaven of sin, tradition and sloth crept into the early congregations, by the third century, Christianity became both legalized and defiled. Constantine stripped away the Jewish depth to Christianity, mixed it with paganism and thus began the Roman Catholic Church.
Although small revivals would occur over the next one thousand years of the Catholic church's dominance, often the Whore would crush any move the Ruach would inspire. She became bathed in the blood of the saints as her corrupt power brought a truly dark age across the western worlds.
With the invention of the Gutenberg press, bibles soon became distributed and a new revival began to sweep across Europe. Men rose up to throw off the shackles of Roman Catholicism and the Reformation took shape, tearing away many of the unrighteous traditions.
Unfortunately, the Protestant Reformation never truly reformed anything. They continued in many of the Catholics ways, profaning the Sabbath by continuing to keep Sun-day, and replacing the priest with a pastor. While they had discovered that "grace" freed them from following man's traditions, they made this grace of none effect by continuing to ignore Torah. The Scriptures were now in the hands of the laymen, but the Truth found therein was consistently overlooked. The Reformation breathed by the Ruach soon died as Protestant tradition joined with Catholicism as further bulwark to the Truth.
Two hundred years later, the First and Second Great Awakenings shook the Western world. Men like John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney and D.L. Moody began to preach righteousness again, smashing the traditions of both the Protestants and the Catholics. Although many of them were thrown out of the mainline Protestant churches, they would at times take to the streets, bringing multitudes to YahShua.
Such as mass of paganistic tradition and sin had clogged the churches it can hardly be expected that even two Great Awakenings would be enough to bring back the entire Truth. And so it was, that though these men walked in all the Truth they knew, Torah obedience and the Jewish heritage still remained lost to Christendom. These men were powerfully anointed by the Ruach ha Kadosh, and brought back a simple obedience and sinlessness that had been lost to most of the church. But this was merely the barest of beginnings.
A hundreds years after the Second Great Awakening, the 20th century was drawing to a close. But in the midst of all the wars, political upheavals and church denomination building, a seemingly insignificant thing had happened: Israel had been restored. In 1967, Israel took back her capitol, Jerusalem, after 1900 years in Gentile hands. The same year, almost as equally unnoticed, Jews began converting to YahShua. These Messianic Jews began to bring back the lost teachings of Torah through their faith in Mashiach.
Forty years later, at the dawn of the 21st century, Messianic Jewish congregations are popping up across the West. After nearly 1900 years of false teaching and doctrinal error, the love of Torah has finally reawakened among believers in YahShua.
Many, many Christians decry the Torah-observant believers as trying to impose a yoke of bondage. They shout out "saved by grace ALONE", clinging to Luther and other Jew haters. They subvert Paul's teachings to demonstrate that Torah is no longer needed and YahShua replaced the "old law". But these enemies of the gospel will be unable to stop this last, great revival the Ruach has brought to bring believers back to their roots.
