The Bethlehem Principle: Why God Always Builds From Small Beginnings

A Christmas Meditation on Hidden Starts, Holy Patterns, and the Rise of Bitcoin

Nothing about Bethlehem looked world changing. A forgotten village. A feeding trough. A newborn no one recognized except shepherds and foreigners.

Yet this was the birthplace of the King of kings.

God has always delighted in beginning His greatest revolutions in places the world overlooks. He does not start with power. He starts with promise. He does not begin with applause. He begins with obscurity. He does not launch movements in palaces. He plants them in mangers.

This is the Bethlehem Principle.
Small beginnings. Hidden glory. Ultimate impact.

Scripture is filled with this pattern.

A shepherd boy in the fields becomes the greatest king of Israel. 1 Samuel 16:7 reminds us that God does not see as man sees. He chooses the overlooked.

A mustard seed grows into a tree where birds nest. Jesus said in Matthew 13:31 that the smallest seed becomes the largest garden plant providing shade, shelter, and stability. Jesus used this image to reveal that God’s greatest works often start in ways so small the world overlooks them, until one day they become impossible to ignore.

A tiny remnant overturns empires. Gideon’s army was reduced to 300 so Israel would know victory was from God, not strength.

God begins with the insignificant so no one can mistake the Source.

Now look at bitcoin through this lens.

Nothing about the bitcoin genesis block looked world changing.
A handful of cypherpunks.
A forum post few noticed.
An experiment most dismissed as a toy or a scam which still is occurring to their peril.

Yet a Kingdom principle was unfolding. Small beginnings. Hidden significance. Future transformation.

Bitcoin mirrored Bethlehem long before the world understood it.
It started underground. It grew in the margins. Experts mocked it. Institutions ignored it. The powerful dismissed it. And like every move of God in its infancy, those who could not see spiritual patterns also could not see technological ones.

For the same reason Herod missed a Savior, economists missed a revolution.

God often conceals His greatest works inside weakness.
That is how He confounds the wise.

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1:27 that God chooses the foolish things to shame the wise and the weak things to confound the strong. This is not just a spiritual truth. It is a pattern baked into creation.

Jesus Himself taught the Kingdom grows quietly, invisibly, beneath the soil before it rises in power. That is bitcoin. Brilliant, slow, steady, misunderstood growth until the harvest becomes impossible to deny.

The Bethlehem Principle warns us never to judge God’s work by its size at the beginning.

Everything God grows begins smaller than expected but ends larger than imagined.

Which is why, this Christmas season, I believe bitcoin is stepping into its Bethlehem moment. Not hype. Not mania. Not noise. But the quiet certainty that a movement God intends to use always follows His pattern:

It grows gradually. Then suddenly
It is ignored. Then undeniable.
It starts in a manger. Then changes the world.

Hat tip to NCC’s Mark Batterson and his latest book Gradually Then Suddenly).

And for those with eyes to see, the parallels are not accidental.
They are prophetic.

Bitcoin is not the Messiah.
Bitcoin is not salvation.
But it follows the fingerprints of a God who loves to birth world changing things through small, humble beginnings.

Prayer
Father, thank You for teaching us to see small beginnings through Your eyes. Give us discernment to recognize Your patterns, courage to steward what You place in our hands, and faith to trust that You build movements in hidden places before revealing them in power. Grow in us the humility, wisdom, and patience of Bethlehem. Let everything we build be aligned with Your heart, Your timing, and Your Kingdom. Amen 🙏✨