This was particularly evident when he said that “most scholars we talked to think these stories [the miracles] were invented by the Gospel writers as advertisement for Christianity in its early years. Christianity, after all, was competing for followers with Judaism and with Greek and Roman pagan religions.” It is not respectful to present Christianity as a story devised by con men, ignoring the historical fact that all of the apostles except John signed their testimony in blood, so to speak, by suffering the death of martyrdom for the veracity of what they preached and wrote. Con men do not die for stories they contrived.

(Excerpt from How Christianity Changed the World by Alvin J. Schmidt, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, e-book, 2009, 20)