Richard Carrier asks the question: "Why on earth would a God, who wanted to save all mankind, only appear to a few hundred, most unnamed, people and then give up? Wouldn't it be much more efficient and effective...to bypass the apostolate and just appear to everyone?" (Carrier, "The Spiritual Body of Christ," in Price and Lowder, Empty Tomb, 195).

Mike Licona responds, "Whatever reason God had for doing it that way, it worked. Nearly a third of the people of the world today claims to be Christian. And I think it's just like the Christian God to use the weak to trump the strong, and the fools to shame the wise. It would be just like that God to take the few and the obscure to influence the masses. Now, because of that, the world has been turned upside down." (Lee Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus, 153).