Not sure if this takes you on a side quest; but have you ever heard of the idea of The Protestant Work Ethic (PWE)?

It's a theory by sociologist Max Weber who looked at the idea of a divergence in the idea of work between Catholics and Protestants.

Weber conceived that Catholics saw that their way of serving God was to perform charitable works - whilst he saw Protestants served God by 'hard work'.

Weber suggested that the PWE hailed the true birth of modern capitalism.

In his theory, Weber saw that people with this ethic felt that hard work (and the material benefits of this) was due to their religiosity. This caused believers to become more and more religious and expecting greater wealth on earth (as opposed to Catholics, who expected their own reward in the eternal 'next life').

It's an interesting concept, and one that I've wanted to expand on with a Bitcoin angle, but have yet to do so...

I guess what I'm saying, in relation to your post, is that people saw God 'talking' to them by themselves becoming wealthy.