The founder of the movement, David Brandt Berg (1919–1994), was a former Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor.
Berg started in 1968 as an evangelical preacher with a following of "born-again hippies" who gathered at a coffeehouse in Huntington Beach, in Orange County, California.
In 1969, after having a revelation "that California would be hit by a major earthquake", he left Huntington Beach and "took his followers on the road".
