It has happened before. We pray it happens again.

John Christian Arulappan and the Christianpettah revival

One of the earliest pentecostal revivals of the nineteenth century of which we have any knowledge came through the Tamil evangelist John Christian Arulappan. Its marks were confession of sin and an emphasis on holiness — and, unusually for the century, the remarkable use of women in leadership.

I am thankful to the Lord, who is pleased to pour His Spirit upon poor sinners without distinction of white or black, and rich or poor.

John Christian Arulappan, March 1860

Praying Hyde and the Sialkot convention

John Hyde arrived in India in 1892 and set his life on prayer. In a region with almost no Christians he prayed for revival for twelve years, often through whole nights. In April 1904 he formed the Punjab Prayer Union; at the 1905 Sialkot convention the revival began, and spread through districts such as Fatehpur and Fategarh.

A monthly day of prayer for revival

From 1895 the first Saturday of each month was set aside in Bombay for prayer for revival, and other centres followed the same pattern. Revival came ten years later.

The great revival at Mukti Mission

In answer to continuous prayer, about twelve hundred were baptized in the winter of 1901. The workers kept crying to the Lord for a deeper work; the following July meetings grew daily for nearly three weeks until some six hundred were led out into the joy of the Lord.

Famine, and news from Wales

Distress caused by the famine of 1904 drove Christians to pray all across India. As news of the Welsh revival reached the country and returning missionaries told of God's move there, expectation and prayer grew.

A young Sikh sees Jesus

On 18 December 1904 a young Sikh named Sundar Singh had a vision of Jesus and was converted. He became a Christian sadhu, mystic and evangelist across India and Tibet.

Pandita Ramabai's prayer circles

Hearing of revival elsewhere, Pandita Ramabai began special prayer circles with hundreds of her helpers and friends. The movement spread first among the girls and women, then into the community, then to Poona forty miles away. Churches in Bombay were revived and filled with new vigour.

Our work will bear lasting fruit if we pray more and work less.

Pandita Ramabai

Seventeen thousand praying at once

The awakening among Anglicans and Mar Thoma Christians produced simultaneous audible prayer, alien to their normal traditions. At one convention seventeen thousand broke into simultaneous audible prayer.

Ten thousand in three months

Tamil David and L. M. Wardsworth held meetings in Kerala and ten thousand people were converted in three months. Rev. Thomas Walker of Tirunelveli went to Kerala, and under his ministry people grew hungry and began praying for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Town after town

Revival was reported at Coimbatore, Madurai and Nagercoil in Tamil Nadu; Chittoor, Kurnool, Secunderabad and Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh; and the Kolar Gold Fields, Bellary and Belgaum in Karnataka.

Nightly prayer until God came

Hearing of Wales, the Khasi people began praying for revival in their churches, in the chapel and in their homes, resolving to meet every night until God sent what they asked. In March 1906, in a Bible learning session, an unusual sense of the Spirit's presence came and people began weeping, praying and praising.

From head hunters to churches

Revival spread through the Assam centres at Nowgong, Golaghat, Sibsagar and North Lakhimpur, then north of the Brahmaputra into the tribal North East. As ten people sang a farewell song for departing missionaries, the Holy Spirit was suddenly poured out, and revival spread in all directions through the Naga hills.

Opposition, and a second wave

In 1908 an anti-revival movement drove people from their homes into the jungles. In 1913 revival broke out again in the same area. A region once known for head hunting saw more than five lakh people brought into the knowledge of deliverance through the blood of Jesus Christ.

The First Great Awakening

A revival that swept Protestant Europe and British America, born of preaching that gave listeners a deep personal sense of their need of salvation. It moved away from ritual and ceremony towards conviction, introspection and a new standard of personal morality.

Jonathan Edwards

Edwards oversaw some of the first revivals in 1733–35 at his church in Northampton, and in 1741 preached "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" during another revival, following George Whitefield's tour of the Thirteen Colonies.

The Second Great Awakening

Where the first awakening reached those already in the church, the second reached the un-churched. Preachers sought to include every person in conversion regardless of gender, race or status, and membership rose rapidly among Baptist and Methodist congregations.

The Third Great Awakening

Marked by religious activism with a strong element of social reform, it gave force to the worldwide missionary movement and to new groupings such as the Holiness movement.

The Welsh Revival

Beginning in the autumn of 1904 under Evan Roberts, a twenty-six-year-old former collier, the revival lasted less than a year and saw a hundred thousand converts. It swept the rest of Britain, Scandinavia, parts of Europe, North America, the mission fields of India and the Orient, Africa and Latin America — and kept the churches of Wales full for years afterwards.

Billy Graham

Graham preached to live audiences of nearly 215 million people in more than 185 countries and territories, and reached hundreds of millions more by radio, television and film.

The Lewis Awakening

The call to Duncan Campbell came at the prompting of two Gaelic-speaking sisters in their eighties who had been praying for revival. It was only at the third invitation that he accepted. Village after village was gripped with a new awareness of God.

The Brownsville Revival

Beginning on Father's Day, 18 June 1995, at Brownsville Assembly of God, the meetings were marked by repentance and a call to holiness. More than four million people are reported to have attended in five years.