Alright.
Early Christianity was structurally and behaviorally a textbook apocalyptic cult, and one of many messianic cults active at the time. Jesus was the cult leader, the 12 apostles were the original members.
This is a very old routine people were pulling well before Jesus came along and which people still pull today (David Koresh, Wayne Bent, Jim Jones, Marshall Applewhite, etc) Jesus was one of the few whose cult outlived his death.
Christians commonly recognize this is the origin of Mormonism, Islam and Scientology but to the best of my knowledge do not recognize it is also true of Christianity. They may argue Mormonism and Islam descended from Christianity, but Christianity descended from Judaism in the same fashion.
From the outside, you can objectively see that Mormonism and Islam began as cults, forming around Muhammad and Joseph Smith respectively. Because you're not in those religions. But from the inside, it simply feels like self-evident reality to them. Fish who do not see the water they're in. Try turning that understanding back on Christianity.
The observant might notice that this sort of thing works very much like a chain letter, multilevel marketing or a computer virus. All examples of information structured in such a way as to motivate patterns of behavior which reinforce, defend and spread it to as many hosts as possible for as long as possible.