How can I read iMessages that weren't delivered to my iPhone?

vornonthecob wrote:

For the last few months I've had my iMessages on my iPhone 5 turned off. I realised the other day that people had been sending me iMessages during this period of time that weren't appearing on my phone. I have now turned iMessages on however I want to know if there is anyway I can read the iMessages that were sent to me during the period of time I had iMessages turned off?

No. Once you turned iMessage back on, you would get any messages that were pending for delivery. Any that you didn't get have been deleted from the system after failing to deliver.

You can't. The sender should have gotten a notice that the message was not delivered if you had iMessage off, unless you had it turned on on another iOS device or MAC and the message was instead delivered to that device.

Was your iMessage account active on another device during this time? If not, there is nothing to recover. With iMessage disabled on your device, the server simply does not accept messages coming in. It's a bit like having your old landline answering machine unplugged - there's nothing to receive and save the message. The iMessage service is not a permanent storage system. It merely processes and then temporarily caches messages for delivery to the activated end device or devices. If an account has been disabled on all connected devices, the messages are not saved.