Biblical Revivals and Awakenings

So far in our series we’ve looked at thirty-four examples of revival in the Bible:

  1. Seth
  2. Noah
  3. Job
  4. Abram
  5. Joseph
  6. Moses
  7. Joshua
  8. Judges
  9. Naomi
  10. Ruth
  11. Hannah
  12. Samuel
  13. David
  14. Solomon
  15. Jehu
  16. Elijah
  17. Elisha
  18. Jonah
  19. Amos
  20. Hosea
  21. Isaiah
  22. Hezekiah
  23. Micah
  24. Nahum
  25. Zephaniah
  26. Josiah
  27. Jeremiah
  28. Daniel
  29. Ezekiel
  30. Zechariah
  31. Haggai
  32. Ezra
  33. Nehemiah
  34. Malachi

Malachi was the last prophet in the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament). He prophesied to Judah toward the end of the 5th century BC. God did not speak to His people again until the early part of the 1st century AD, through the prophet John the Baptist. Those 400+ years are often called the “Silent Years” and the “Intertestamental Period.”

Even though God did not speak through a prophet during those “silent” years, the people of Judah had the Hebrew Bible. They had the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings. All they had to do was read and obey. Did they? Did the people of Judah experience revival during those centuries between prophets? Let’s see what we can learn from the history of Judah. Keep in mind that the history of Israel, the Northern Kingdom, ended when the Assyrian king and his army removed the Israelites from the land and replaced them with Gentiles from pagan nations.

Between Prophets

Even though the biblical history of Judah ends with Ezra, Nehemiah and Malachi, we know something of what happened in Judah because of a group of writings known as the Apocrypha. You won’t find those writings in the Hebrew Bible or many English translations of the Old Testament, but you will find them in the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible), the Latin Vulgate, and many other Bibles available to read today. Even the original King James Version included a section that included the books of the Apocrypha.

I’ve dealt with the question of whether any of the writings of the Apocrypha should be part of the official canon of Scripture in other places, so I won’t deal with that here. If you’re interested in reading about that, you can visit these studies on our website –

One thing I’ve learned from studying the Apocrypha is some of Judah’s history between prophets. 1 Maccabees is one example. It demonstrates that the people of Judah who lived after Nehemiah and Malachi’s time knew there were no prophets in the land. These are the only verses in 1 Maccabees that mention a prophet.

“They thought it best to pull it down, lest it should be a reproach to them, because the heathen had defiled it: wherefore they pulled it down, And laid up the stones in the mountain of the temple in a convenient place, until there should come a prophet to shew what should be done with them.” 1 Maccabees 4:45-46

“So was there a great affliction in Israel, the like whereof was not since the time that a prophet was not seen among them.” 1 Maccabees 9:27

“Also that the Jews and priests were well pleased that Simon should be their governor and high priest for ever, until there should arise a faithful prophet.” 1 Maccabees 14:41

The Old Testament makes it clear that God only speaks to His people through prophets (e.g. Amos 3:7; Hebrews 1:1). Read through the Apocryphal writings and you won’t find a true prophet speaking the oracles of God. God was “silent” for centuries. The last thing God said through a prophet was that He was going to send His “messenger” who would prepare the way before Him –

Behold, I send My messenger, And he will prepare the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, Will suddenly come to His temple, Even the Messenger of the covenant, In whom you delight. Behold, He is coming, ‘Says the Lord of hosts.’ Malachi 3:1

We will meet the messenger and the Messenger in the New Testament Gospels.

Revival or Reversal?

When we last saw the people of Judah in the Book of Nehemiah, they were under the watchful care of a governor (Nehemiah) who was in the service of King Artexerxes of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. The king had given Nehemiah almost complete control over what happened to Judah and its people. However, Nehemiah and King Artexerxes eventually died. So, what happened to Judah?

We know what happened for at least a few reasons. There are some historical documents within the Apocrypha. There are also secular historical records, including archaeology about the land of Judah during the Intertestamental Period. Then, there are the prophetic writings of the Hebrew Bible concerning the future of Judah. One of those is the Book of Daniel.

Daniel was a youth of noble background in Judah. He and some of his friends were taken captive by the Babylonians about 605 BC. Daniel successfully interpreted a dream that bothered the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar. The dream concerned the future of several earthly kingdoms, including Babylonia, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, and an everlasting Kingdom. Here’s part of Daniel’s interpretation –

You, O king, are a king of kings. For the God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power, strength, and glory; and wherever the children of men dwell, or the beasts of the field and the birds of the heaven, He has given them into your hand, and has made you ruler over them all—you are this head of gold But after you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours; then another, a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. And the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron, inasmuch as iron breaks in pieces and shatters everything; and like iron that crushes, that kingdom will break in pieces and crush all the others. Whereas you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; yet the strength of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay. And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile. As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay. And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. Inasmuch as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold—the great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure. Daniel 2:37-45

Daniel served the kings of the first two of those kingdoms: Babylonia and Medo-Persia. King Cyrus of Persia gave his support to Jews who wanted to return to Judah and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. Cyrus was the first king of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. King Artexerxes was the sixth king of that empire. He died about 425 BC. Nehemiah’s year of death is not known for sure, but it was probably in that same time period.

As Daniel had prophesied, the second kingdom (Medo-Persia) was replaced by a third kingdom (Greece). Alexander the Great defeated King Darius III in 332 BC and ruled over a large portion of the world. Alexander died several years later without leaving an heir, so four of his generals fought over Alexander’s kingdom and divided it into four parts. That was another prophecy of Daniel’s hundreds of years before it happened –

Then a mighty king shall arise, who shall rule with great dominion, and do according to his will. And when he has arisen, his kingdom shall be broken up and divided toward the four winds of heaven, but not among his posterity nor according to his dominion with which he ruled; for his kingdom shall be uprooted, even for others besides these. Daniel 11:3-4

The four new kingdoms that were ruled by Alexander’s generals were Egypt (Ptolemies), Syria (Seleucids), Macedonia (Antigonids), and Pergamum (Attalids). The two kingdoms that affected Judah most were the Ptolemies to their south and the Seleucids to their north. The Jews in Judah were under the rule of one of those kingdoms for more than 150 years. You can read Daniel 11 and compare it to secular history to see the accuracy of his prophetic visions.

A Seleucid ruler named Antiochus IV Epiphanes was especially cruel to the Jews, and desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem. A Jewish priest named Judas Maccabeus led a revolt against the Seleucids and won about164 BC. He had the Temple cleansed and started what became known as the Hasmonean Dynasty. Judah was under self rule for almost a hundred years until the Roman Republic conquered Judea (as Judah was known) about 63 BC. Rome installed an Idumean named Herod as king in about 37 BC. Herod married a Hasmonean princess to give Jews an impression of legitimacy. He ruled until his death between 4 and 1 BC.

So, would you call any of that revival or reversal? Were the people of Judah better off after the revivals of Ezra and Nehemiah or the failed attempt at re-establishing a Jewish kingdom? I see no revival during the years that God was “silent.” The prophets foretold what would happen and it would include the reversal of Judah’s fortunes.

Old Testament Revival Summary

I hope you have enjoyed our series about revivals in the Old Testament. God loves His people. He wants to revive them – give life to them again. However, God’s chosen people in the Old Testament days were sinful. We saw that all the way back to Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Seth and Enosh, and all their descendants.

God warns His people about judgment for their sins because He loves them. He wants them to respond to His love for them with love for Him. God also wants His people to obey Him, worship Him, and serve Him. That’s clear from what God said through the prophets. However, because of sinful hearts and minds the people of God did not respond to Him in the way He required. God suffered (in a sense) through centuries of disobedience and wickedness before finally destroying every person on earth, except for Noah and his family and starting again. God suffered through more centuries of disobedience and wickedness before calling Abram (Abraham) and making him the father of many nations. God suffered through even more centuries of disobedience and wickedness as the descendants of Abraham disobeyed God and were continually wicked in His sight.

However, and this is important to understand, God has an eternal plan that is working out according to the pleasure of His will. Part of that plan is reviving His people, giving them life again. We see many small and large revivals in the Old Testament, but they are not the final reviving of God’s people. That’s what God proclaimed through His prophets. The day is soon coming when the Seed of the woman who will destroy the seed of the serpent.

The Old Testament is the first part of God revealing Himself to His people. We learn that God is loving and kind. He is gracious and compassionate. He is longsuffering and forgiving. We also learn that God is holy and just. He is righteous and sovereign. He is good and true.

God talked with Moses “face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (Exodus 33:11). When Moses asked God to show him His glory, God said – ‘I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.’ Exodus 33:19).

God wants to revive His people, but revival comes only one way – the way God declares. We cannot invent revival. We cannot conjure up revival. We cannot pretend revival. Revival is real when God gives it to His people. However, we must do what God says, exactly as He says, when He says.

I hope you will use this series to remind yourself and your fellow believers of the greatness of our God and how He revives His people. May God be loved, praised, glorified, worshiped, and obeyed!

Next Time

We will begin looking at the great revivals of the New Testament period as our series continues.

Free eBooks

You can download a free eBook of the first six parts of this series to share with family and friends. Please click here for the PDF eBook.

Here is the eBook for the parts seven through twelve of this series. Please click here for the PDF eBook.

Here is the eBook for the parts thirteen through sixteen of this series. Please click here for the PDF eBook.

Here is the eBook for the parts seventeen through twenty-one of this series. Please click here for the PDF eBook.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

© Faith and Self Defense, 2025

Faith&SelfDefense