The only difference between some lone 'nut' and a large organized religion, is one was lucky to happen to be in the right place at the right time and caught on. A century later, they have millions of followers but fundamentally it's the same nonsense, one isn't more inspired or correct or wrong than the other. As long as you reach a certain size, it becomes pretty self-sustaining unless the leadership really messes up.
Leave it a millennium and you may have grown to billions of followers. Same shit, more bureaucracy built up around it. More tentacles into government and society to feed itself.