As a reward for their efforts, however, those early Christians were beaten, stoned to death, thrown to the lions, tortured and crucified. Every conceivable method was used to stop them from talking.

McDowell’s line invokes the traditional narrative of early Christian persecution—public violence, judicial execution, and spectacle punishments—to emphasize the cost borne by the first generations of believers. The rhetorical point is evidential: if witnesses persisted in proclaiming their message despite severe reprisals, their persistence is presented as a sign of sincerity and conviction. The catalog of punishments also frames evangelism as speech under coercion, highlighting the clash between imperial/social pressure and a movement defined by testimony. In apologetic contexts, this often functions to argue that people may die for a belief, but they are unlikely to die for what they know to be a deliberate falsehood.