"If any man come to me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."
-Luke 14:26
Christians do not love Jesus enough! Indeed, based on his observation of this matter for over fifty years as a born-again Christian, the author has concluded that on a scale of one to ten, the average Christian's love for Jesus scores no more than two. That is the startling message of Lloyd Elcock's first volume of a forthcoming series of scriptural expositions. The foundation upon which he has built that series includes the following two cornerstones:
- After the control and direction of Biblical Christianity was passed from Jewish to Gentile hands at the beginning of the second century, the Gentiles comprehensively deformed it, and 1,200 years later, partially reformed it.
- The recovery of Biblical/Jewish Christianity that began 500 years ago by Luther, Calvin, and the other Gentile Protestant Reformers, is only about fifty percent completed. In particular, a number of the most important doctrines are yet to be recovered, and their absence from today's Evangelical Church is the principal cause of the endemic and widespread carnality and stunted spiritual growth that characterize the lives and lifestyles of the vast majority of today's born-again Christians.
- In this first volume, the author puts forward the view that one of those unretrieved fundamental doctrines is the major key to the Spirit-filled life of love, faith, and power that is the ultimate goal of Biblical Christianity. That key, he contends, is hidden (in plain view), in the pages of the fourteenth chapter of John's gospel.