It's not at all like those people who follow the god Serapis. Why when they throw a dinner party you have to call out the fire brigades. We're nothing like that. But indeed the very point that he has to make suggests that in the eyes of a lot of people that's exactly how they looked. When Christians talked about salvation we have to understand how a pagan would have heard that term.
Salvation actually is a term of healing.
It's medical, and it apparently was understood to mean deliverance from disease and death. One of the most prominent scenes in all the catacombs is of Jesus as healer. Jesus as magician. This is really something very important within the Roman culture, and apparently health and disease were very important issues all around. It's often suggested that the mortality rate among members of Roman cities might have been as high as fifty percent of all children born died within the first five years of life.