I suppose in Christ's time, all the prophets that failed to connect with the people and generate a following thought, "Wow, so in order to get people to listen to my message I have to perform miracles and be killed?"

There are lots of "religions" derivative of Catholicism trying to spread their version of Christ's message, and they're all failing.  The Church recognized that to get people to pay attention you have to do more than just babble about Christ's message of peace (that's the easy part); you also have to talk about evil and sin, and, yes, create a ceremony worthy of the greatness of the teachings.  Jesus spent lots of time in the Jewish Temple.