If someone comes up with new ideas and starts making claims about a new philosophy, how do you assess whether those claims are true? History shows that there are three major ways of dealing with this sort of situation: 1. Accept the claims; 2. Resist the claims and try to repress them; or 3. Ignore the claims and see what happens. The option of resisting and repressing has its advantages, but the result can be counterproductive. The people who subscribe to the claims can see themselves as martyrs, and the persecution which they suffer can elicit sympathy from others which supports their cause. So the best approach to take is often the wait-and-see approach.
This was the approach advocated by the Rabbi Gamaliel in Acts chapter 5. When the council was debating what they should do with the followers of Jesus, he said, “I advise you to stay away from these men, and leave them alone. If this mission or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail. But if it comes from God, you will not be able to stop it, and you will even find yourselves fighting against God!”
Depending on where you stand, history either proved him right or wrong. From that point onwards, Christianity grew and spread like wildfire. What had started out with just twelve untrained men grew until it became the dominant religion in the Roman world. While in recent years Christianity seems to have been receding in Europe and much of the Western world, the number of Christians has been increasing very rapidly in Africa and China.