Christianity is absolutely 100% genuine. God has been faithful to me and answering my prayers, guiding my life for more than 50 years.
Did Messiah call Himself Christian, or was He called The Living Torah? I found this article about the origins of the word Christian, and how it was used in the past as a derogatory word to describe a "cretin." No offense to anyone, I am learning the same as you.
Yahusha Messiah As ‘The Way’
Think about how radical to the Jewish mind it was when Jesus of Nazareth stated, “I am
the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him” (Jn 14:6-7). Messiah was putting himself on the same level as Torah. He asserted that only as one accessed Yahuah the Father
through the person of His Son Yahusha could one expect to have a relationship with the Father. He daringly maintained that our human flourishing could only be realized by coming in contact with him.
You see, this is one primary way in which He differentiates himself from other religious leaders/thinkers (Krishna, Buddha, Muhammad, Moses, etc.). Such religious icons claim to be “way-showers” or “signposts.” That is, they point
away from themselves and
to the end or goal of human flourishing. But none claims to actually
be “the way”, in and of himself. As John Stott writes in his classic book “Basic Christianity,” “Messiah was not just another signpost, but the destination to which the signposts had led.” So, in the midst of the common “way-shower” model of religious leading, Messiah comes along and boasts quite dramatically that, (1) all human sins are, at their root, a sin against himself (Mk 2:1-12; Lk 7:36-50), and that (2) he will return at the end of time to be the final judge of all human beings, and that the nature of their judgment will be dependent on how people have responded to himself (Jn 5:22, 28, 29; Mt 25:31-46). It can’t easily be doubted then that Messiah Yahusha saw himself as ‘the Way’ to The Father, and therefore, the way to human flourishing.
Messiahs’ Apprentices as Followers of ‘The Way’
These first Jewish “Christians” then, understood Messiah to be equal with, even superior to, in function, Torah—Yahuah Alahim's (G_D) self-revelation to humanity. This is what prompts Messiahs’ closest follower, John, in his Gospel to write, “In the beginning was the Word [Greek
logos], and the Word was with Alahim (G_D), and the Word was Alahim (G_D). . . .The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” (Jn 1:1, 14). Messiah Yahusha is the divine logos, the true Torah, who makes G-d the Father known not just in his words or declarations, but in his very personal presence. He is “the radiance of G-d’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Heb 1:3), only because “G-d was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him [Messiah], and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the stake” (Col 1:19, 20). Shalom!