Hi, Chris Valaltin here. Welcome to my podcast where I hope to inspire you to walk in your royal identity in Christ and develop you in the art of thinking like God.

One of the best ways you can do this is by reading my newest book, Spiritual Intelligence, which is available for purchase everywhere you love to buy your books.

Check out my new book, Spiritual Intelligence, and let me know what you think about it. I hope you enjoy this message today.

Well, before I start, I'd just love to pray. Father, thank you for what you're doing all over the world. And we thank you that you're on the throne and that you are the leader of nations.

Lord, you're the king of every king. You're the Lord of every Lord. And you have everything in control. And not only that, God, but you said that all things work together for those who love God and who are called according to His purposes.

So we thank you, Lord, that even when we are daily trusting you and can't see the future, that the future is already worked out for the benefit of everyone who loves you. Amen.

We have a series going, and this is the God of Reformation. We want to talk about Reformation. And I want to talk about the beginnings of Reformation and the core values, if you will, the way that Bethel sees the world and the way that it's came to this place, at least my journey.

I think my journey will explain some of our journey about exactly like what is it we're doing? What is the vision and how do we become a part of it? We, Bill and I and many of our team, God saved in the Jesus movement, which was a beautiful movement.

I saved in 1973 in June of 1973. I was 18 years old and I so loved the Jesus movement. As a matter of fact, I didn't even know it was a Jesus movement until 15 years later. And someone said, you were saved in the Jesus movement. I'm like, I was.

And the motto of the Jesus movement was actually in 2nd Corinthians 617 where Paul says, come out from the mist of them and be separate. Do not touch what is clean, unclean, and I will welcome you. That was our model. Like our model right now, we've talked more about it is on earth as it is in heaven. Well, the motto of the Jesus movement was come out of the mist of them. Be separate.

Do not touch what is on clean. And we were very much all about the rapture. We went to conferences that talked about the rapture. And by the way, if you went to prophetic conferences in the Jesus movement, they weren't talking about how to prophesy.

It was about charts. And I remember going to many prophetic conferences where the back wall would be this long chart that, of course, we didn't have all this technology in those days. And it would be a chart about when Jesus was returning.

And you were identified by a pre-trib meaning you were the rapture. You believe the rapture was going to happen before the tribulation. Or you were mid-trib meaning that the rapture would happen in the middle of the 7-year tribulation. Or you were post-trib that you meaning that you believe that the rapture would happen after the great tribulation.

And basically, the whole emphasis of the Jesus movement, I don't want to say the whole emphasis, because the emphasis was on loving Jesus. But our eschatology and the way affected our daily lives was very much wrapped around the rapture and the tribulation.

I remember reading the book, The Lake Great Planet Earth by Halenzi, and talking about that Jesus was going to come back in a certain amount of time. And that course that book was edited several times. So Jesus came back several different times.

Kind of the ongoing joke. But I remember receiving a cassette series in those days we listened to cassettes. And I remember I think it was a 6 or 8 message cassette series. And I remember that one of the tapes cassettes was, I think it was entitled, How to Not Take the Mark of the Beast.

That's true story. How to not take the Mark of the Beast. And I listened to that whole series and that whole tape message was about the Mark of the Beast and how you weren't going to be able to buy or sell courses is all in the book of Revelation.

And how to convince your children to die and live eternally rather than take the Mark of the Beast and live in domination. And I mean that the core feeling of the Jesus movement was love for people very deep. That was, I have to say, that was a hallmark of the Jesus movement.

But also a lot of fear. There was a lot of fear. And so many things were happening around the Jesus movement in the world. Then if you, if you think about it, the foundation of the information age was blossoming at the same time as the Jesus movement.

And I think that it's important to understand how the mentality of the rapture, I call it the rapture mentality was affecting our daily lives. For example, obviously I graduated from high school in 1973, the same year that I received Christ.

I never went on to college or university because we thought the rapture is going to happen any time. And what you believe about the end has everything to do with how you behave in the middle.

And so we were looking up and we had bumper stickers that said in the case of a rapture, you can take this car. There was all kinds of like this was not like relegated to one group of people or just the Jesus people. It's actually the entire most of the church embraced this mentality.

...