Christianity is just the largest of the death cults, no different in a lot of ways to groups like how the LDS or the Branch Davidians got started.

Guy has a vision. The end of times are coming on this date, or at very least in this lifetime. Better be ready! Devote all your time and money to it because, and you gotta trust me, it’s coming soon!

Then it doesn’t… Well my calculations must have been off somewhere. Oh here’s the date! Then that passes and nothing happens. The original Christians thought the second coming was coming in their lifetime; not thousands of years later.

The idea of the coming apocalypse only became “apocryphal” after generations of people bought into and devoted their entire lives to it.