Missionary David W. Cloud Is Wrong On Salvation

John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

There is an enemy of soulwinning lurking on the internet named Evangelist David W. Cloud. I enjoy reading many of his informative articles, when he's not bashing Dr. Curtis Hutson and Pastor Jack Hyles. Mr. Cloud wrongly calls Dr. Hyles: “The King Of Shallow Soulwinners.” Nothing could be further from the truth. May I say, I was saved under the influence of Pastor Hyles' ministry. Hundreds of thousands of sinners came to Christ to be saved in one of Brother Hyles' five churches that he pastored for 55 years of ministry. Millions more have come to Christ in hundreds of churches influenced by Dr. Jack Hyles. Who is David Cloud to condemn all those hundreds of preachers and churches?

Someone sent me a message today on Facebook claiming that I misunderstand David Cloud, wrongly accusing him of preaching Lordship Salvation. We'll get into that later. David W. Cloud lives and works in south Asia as a missionary. In the following article authored by Cloud titled: “Sword Of The Lord's Smokescreen About Repentance,” he plainly preaches another gospel that is contrary to the Scriptures, insisting that a person turn away from a lifestyle of sinning to be saved. David Cloud detests Curtis Hutson and Jack Hyles, falsely accusing those men of perverting the true meaning of repentance. According to Cloud, Dr. John R. Rice taught that to be saved people must “turn from their sin.” But in fact, here is what Dr. Rice taught:

There are those hyper-dispensationalists who think that John the Baptist preached a different Gospel from Christ when he commanded repentance (Matt. 3:2). But it is the same repentance Jesus commanded in Matthew 4:17, in Luke 13:3 and 5, and the same repentance that Paul preached in Athens that God “now commandeth all men every where to repent” (Acts 17:30 31). Repentance is not a different plan of salvation from having faith: it is part of the same plan of salvation. Or rather repentance is simply another way of describing or looking at the plan of salvation. One who turns from sin to God has done so by trusting in Jesus Christ. A change of mind toward sin is necessarily involved in saving faith. [emphasis added]

SOURCE: Evangelist John R. Rice, “Acts: Filled With The Spirit,” pp. 251-252; Sword Of The Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee; ©1963

From the preceding words directly from Dr. Rice himself, we see that he believed the way a man repents is to trust Jesus Christ. Brother Rice saw repentance and faith as being two separate parts of just ONE ACT of trusting Jesus Christ. He makes that clear in the preceding quote. That is why in the Gospel of John we find the word “believe” mentioned 85 times, but the word “repent” is not mentioned even once. The man who believes has repented, and the man who repents believes! Repentance and faith are simply two sides of the same coin of salvation. 

Anyone who teaches that repentance means to “turn away from sin” has perverted the grace of God. If you are familiar with David Cloud's attacks against the Sword Of The Lord, he continually refers to the words of John R. Rice, trying to pitch his words against Dr. Shelton Smith (current editor at the Sword) and Dr. Curtis Hutson (former editor). As I have just shown you from Dr. Rice's own writings, he did not believe that repentance from sin was a separate act from trusting Christ for salvation. Yet, Mr. Cloud has a big problem with the Gospel as preached by Curtis Hutson, Jack Hyles, Shelton Smith and Carl Hatch. Mr. Cloud attacks Dr. Hyles in a book he is selling titled: “The Hyles Effect: A Spreading Blight.” He disparagingly labels Jack Hyles as being “King Of Shallow Soulwinning.”

 In his book titled: Fundamentalists And Quick Prayerism, Cloud says:

“Quick prayerism” reached it’s apex on May 3, 1998, when Jack Hyles claimed that more people were saved and baptized at his church on that day than were saved and baptized on the day of Pentecost or on any other day in church history. Hyles estimated that around 15,000 people were saved on that day and 5,112 were baptized. When the events at Hyles’ church are compared with those of Acts chapter two, though, five serious discrepancies appear. 

First, Peter preached the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, whereas Hyles preached on Heaven. In his invitation, Hyles told the people that even if they had the slightest interest in going to heaven, to come forward. Well, who doesn’t want to go to heaven? 

Second, Peter demanded repentance, whereas Hyles did not even mention repentance or even hint that it might be necessary for salvation. 

Third, those saved on the day of Pentecost were added to the church, whereas those who prayed on Hylescost were not allowed to join the church. 

Fourth, the only “methodology” used at Pentecost was prayer, the preaching of the Word of God, personal testimony, and the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit; whereas Hyles used a multiplicity of man-made promotions and gimmicks to attract people to his meetings and to manipulate people into making “decisions” and submitting to baptism. 

Fifth, those saved at Pentecost “continued stedfastly in doctrine, fellowship, and prayer,” whereas very few of those who were counted in Hyles salvation statistics exhibited such plain evidence of salvation. 

SOURCE: Fundamentalists And Quick Prayerism, Hylescost: The Zenith Of Quick Prayerism, by David W. Cloud, p. 20; Way Of Life Literature

David Cloud is such a liar! He has his facts all wrong. I was there on Pentecost Sunday. Here are Jack Hyles' own words concerning the number of people saved:

The First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, began to work and pray as I've never seen a church work and pray. We were asking God to give us 3000 people saved on, as it were, another Pentecost. On that special Sunday, 5195 people walked the aisles of the First Baptist Church of Hammond receiving Christ as Saviour! The next year we had a second Pentecost Sunday, and over 3300 people were saved! Then the next year we had another Pentecost Sunday, and over 4900 people were saved, as Dr. Curtis Hutson was our guest speaker.

SOURCE: Ultra-Dispensationalism—An Enemy Of Soul Winning

So each year the church used promotions to compel as many people as possible to come to church. Cloud says Dr. Hyles claimed to have won 15,000 people to Christ in just one day (and it could be possible certainly). But kindly said, Mr. Cloud is a liar, as I just showed you! I mean, let's get our facts straight. I just shared with you Pastor Hyles' own words, in which he says these big days of soulwinning were held annually, and the number 15,000 was achieved over a few years.

David Cloud criticizes promotions to get people to church and what he calls “gimmicks.” What saith the Scripture? Luke 14:21b-23, “...Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.” The Great King in Heaven isn't interested in David Cloud's empty pews! The Lord wants His house full at the Great Marriage Supper Of The Lamb in Heaven, when all the saints shall gather on the other shore!

David Cloud is a wicked man, slandering and tearing down the good names of godly soulwinners. Who can fault a pastor for being too zealous about soulwinning? In his horrible book, Cloud actually makes an issue that First Baptist Church Of Hammond failed to deal one-on-one to share the Gospel personally with each individual, as if that is a bad method of soulwinning. Dear reader, the Apostle Peter preached alone to thousands of people on the Day Of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, and 3,000 souls were saved as a result (Acts 2:41). That is a 3,000 to 1 ratio. Cloud criticizes Pastor Hyles for having an alleged 30 to 1 ratio (that is 1 preacher sharing the Gospel with 30 people), as quoted by some knucklehead bitter pastor who says he was there on Pentecost Sunday. I was there too! Who cares if it was one person sharing the Gospel one-on-one, or to 5,000 people, as long as the truth was being preached?

That brings me to my next rebuttal of Mr. Cloud's rantings in his horrible book. In point number 2 Cloud claims that Peter “demanded repentance.” He is referring to Acts 2:38, “Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” Carefully notice that there is no mention of “believing” here! That is because as I showed you earlier from Dr. Rice's beautiful quote, and the fact that the Gospel of John mentions the word “believe” 85 times without ever mentioning the word “repent” even once, that the man who repents has believed. A good rule to follow when interpreting the Bible is to never use an obscure passage to contradict a clear one. David Cloud ignores the entire Gospel of John, which never requires repentance as a separate act to be saved. Cloud still insists that Pastor Hyles preached a false gospel that left off repentance. I hope you see Biblically and ethically how wrong David Cloud is.

In Mr. Cloud's third point he claims that on the Day Of Pentecost that 3,000 people were added to the church (Acts 2:41), but falsely claims that Dr. Hyles wouldn't let those people saved join the church. David Cloud is a liar! I attended First Baptist Church Of Hammond (FBCH) and Hyles-Anderson Colleges (HAC) from 1985 to 1993, and I know for a fact that anyone who got saved in the church was automatically counted as a member. That is why Pastor Hyles said the church had a membership of 125,000 people! David Cloud is speaking garbage!

In his fourth slander, Cloud accuses Pastor Hyles of using manmade tactics instead of prayer, the Word of God, and the Power of the Holy Spirit, to lead all those thousands of people to Jesus Christ. It is absolutely absurdity, the things that David Cloud is alleging. Cloud sounds like an envious bitter man who lives in Asia, and gets his kicks out of tearing down men much greater than he could ever hope to be in a hundred lifetimes for Christ. Here is exactly what Dr. Jack Hyles believed about repentance, directly from his own writings.

In his fifth slander, Cloud speaks of things he doesn't know. How does Mr. Cloud know how many of those converts continued going to church or not? He ASS-U-MEs his claims. Furthermore, what does continuing in prayer and going to church have to do with the gift of eternal life? It appears that Cloud is teaching a form of Calvinism, aka, the perseverance of the saints heresy. It doesn't matter if none of those people ever went to church again, just so long as their faith is in the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. David Cloud is heretically merging discipleship with salvation, which is a false Gospel.

According to Mr. Cloud, if a person genuinely gets saved there should be a radical change of lifestyle, but that is not required for salvation. As do most false teachers today, since Mr. Cloud cannot cite the Bible to support his heresy, he quotes from preachers of centuries past as a secondary authority. Dear reader, the inspired Word of God is our ONLY authority in all matters of faith, morals and life. It doesn't matter what Baptists believed traditionally. That is using herd mentality as a means to justify a desired end. Proverbs 14:12, “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”

Missionary David W. Cloud has wrongly demonized Pastor Jack Hyles time and time again, and I am sick and tired of him doing it. Revelation 12:10 says that Satan is the accuser of the brethren. If Mr. Cloud made valid points I would agree with him, but he keeps telling lies, distorting facts and telling whoppers! Please dear friend, don't listen to David Cloud's foolish rants, why not let Jack Hyles speak for himself? In the following excellent sermon titled: “FUNDAMENTALIST HERESY,” Dr. Hyles preached against thinking a person can be saved just by praying without understanding the Gospel. This one sermon exposes David Cloud as a big liar! Dr. Hyles would have been the first person to confess that you cannot be saved by merely praying some prayer. In the sermon Brother Hyles rightly says that not one verse in the Bible teaches someone to pray a prayer to be saved. So enough of this garbage of accusing Dr. Hyles of using “Quick Prayerism”!

Anybody Can Be Saved In An Instant

What should concern you greatly friend is what David Cloud thinks “Quick Prayerism” means. He thinks to be saved you must be willing to to turn away from living in sin, and if you continue living in sin, David Cloud says you've never been saved because you didn't repent. That is a perversion of God's grace! Mr. Cloud is distorting the facts of the history of repentance. In his ungodly book his attacks Pastor Bob Gray Sr. and other great soulwinning preachers, falsely accusing them of redefining the traditional Baptist position on repentance. The truth is that Mr. Cloud went back into history and only found the Baptist preachers WHO AGREED WITH HIM, and then painted a false picture that turning from sin is the traditional Baptist position. David Cloud is a deceiver! 

The truth is that there has always been a raging battle between the free grace Gospel crowd, and the Wrong Repentance crowd. For example: One of my favorite preachers is Alexander Marshall (1846-1928) who refuted the idea that repentance means “to turn from sin.” If we were to name the most popular preachers today in the world, we would hear names; such as, Billy Graham, Franklin Graham, Joel Osteen, Rick Warren, Benny Hinn, Ray Comfort, John MacArthur, Kenneth Copeland and Pat Robertson. All of these men preach a false gospel of partial faith plus works.

I didn't write this blog to attack David Cloud, God forbid. I am not that kind of person. I wrote this article to defend the simplicity that is in Christ, which is the Gospel. Anybody who comes to Christ as a needy sinner, receiving by faith in Christ's sacrifice on the cross as payment for their sins, believing that Jesus was buried and resurrected from the dead the third day, is saved. It is that simple. Repentance is simply the acknowledgment that you are as guilty a sinner as God hath declared you to be in His word.

Repentance is not a separate event from faith, although they are not the same thing. Here is the best quote that I've found on repentance, by Pastor Harry A. Ironside (1876-1951):

“Which comes first, repentance or faith? In Scripture we read, 'Repent ye, and believe the gospel.' Yet we find true believers exhorted to 'repent, and do the first works.' So intimately are the two related that you cannot have one without the other. The man who believes God repents; the repentant soul puts his trust in the Lord when the Gospel is revealed to him. Theologians may wrangle over this, but the fact is, no man repents until the Holy Spirit produces repentance in his soul through the truth. No man believes the Gospel and rests in it for his own salvation until he has judged himself as a needy sinner before God. And this is repentance.” (Except Ye Repent, p. 16)

The only thing that we need to repent from to be saved is UNBELIEF. Do we have to realize our sinful condition to be saved? Of course, yes! But there is not one verse in the entire Bible which requires a person to forsake sin to be saved. Nor does the Bible give anyone God's permission to commit sin just because they are saved (Romans 3:31). Every time Jesus forgave someone and healed them, it was only AFTERWARDS that He said... “Go and sin no more.” John 5:14, "Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee." 

Repentance simply means “a change of mind.” Believers change our minds every day about all kinds of things, including the sins in our life. Repenting of sins throughout one's Christian life is solely a matter of DISCIPLESHIP, not SALVATION. It is a matter of growing in the Lord's strength (1st Peter 2:2), as we yield to the Holy Spirit's leading in obedience to the Holy Scriptures (2nd Corinthians 10:5). Kindly said, David Cloud is a fool. Read what he says:

Shallow, unscriptural soul winning and neglect of repentance have produced incredibly weak churches. It has produced churches that are mixed multitudes instead of churches of disciples. If professing Christians are rebels against God’s Word and refuse to obey the preaching, refuse to be faithful, refuse to separate from the world, are insubordinate to pastoral authority, it is probably because they aren’t saved. As we have seen, the Bible is very clear on this point. See, for example, John 8:47; 10:27; Titus 1:16; 1 John 2:3-4. Most churches are far too careless about salvation. They pronounce people, including children, saved on a mere profession with no regard for biblical evidence.

SOURCE: Fundamentalists And Quick Prayerism, Hylescost: The Zenith Of Quick Prayerism, by David W. Cloud, p. 65; Way Of Life Literature

That is some very dangerous talk folks. So according to Mr. Cloud, we cannot know if a person is really saved when they profess Christ, until we have time to examine their life to see if they have changed. This is not the Gospel of free grace! God promised us eternal life, not probationary or temporal life. The truth dear friend is that an unsaved person CAN do “many wonderful works” (Matthew 7:21-23). Jesus said that He didn't even know these people in Matthew 7. They said they had done these many wonderful works in Jesus' name. They preached in Jesus' name. They followed Him as Lord, saying: “Lord, Lord.” Anyone examining their lives would have assuredly concluded that these people were indeed saved, but they were lost and went to Hell forever.

In Acts 10:1-4 we read about a man named Cornelius, who feared God, gave alms to the poor, fasted and prayed; yet, he was a lost man, still under the condemnation of God's law for his sins. Dear reader, any “proof” of salvation must be something that an unsaved person cannot imitate. An unsaved person can love. An unsaved person can do good deeds. An unsaved person can serve in a church, sing hymns, carry a Bible, tithe, be helpful, preach in Jesus' name, and even cast out devils (Matthew 7:21-23). 1st John 3:24 teaches that only a believer has the indwelling Holy Spirit, and that is something that only an individual person can determine and know (1st John 5:13). I simply cannot determine is another person is saved or not. So what David Cloud is teaching is utter heresy! You cannot determine how much fuel is in a car's gas tank by the color of the car. Likewise, I cannot know if you are a child of God merely by examining your life. If that were the case, we would think most Mormons are saved.

By the way, David Cloud likes to parade and pitch Dr. John R. Rice against soulwinning Christians today; such as, Dr. Bob Gray Sr. Pastor Jack Hyles, and Dr. Curtis Hutson. But read for yourself what Dr. Rice had to say about judging a person's salvation based upon behavior. Dr. Rice is absolutely right, that the only way we can truly know if somebody is saved is from the direct testimony of their own mouth concerning Jesus Christ. What I just showed you exposes David Cloud's wickedness, that he continues to falsely accuse soulwinners today of incompetence and producing false conversions.

In Acts chapter 10 Peter was sent to preach the Good News to Cornelius and others. As these dear people listened to Peter preach, the apostle never once told them to do anything. Peter simply gave them the Good News, and as they heard and believed they were instantly saved and filled with the indwelling Holy Spirit (Acts 10:43-44). There was no probationary period to watch their lives, to verify their conversion. David Cloud is an unsaved false teacher, a tare who has crept his way into many churches today, confusing and contaminating the Gospel.

In Galatians 3:1-3 we read, “O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?” That is what David Cloud is guilty of, as were the Galatians, of trying to be made perfect in the flesh. Salvation is by faith alone; We don't finish or verify it in the flesh. The churches of Galatia had started out by being taught faith in Christ, but then a cult crept into their midst, which required keeping the law to be saved. They fell for it, showing that they were never saved to begin with. Those who were saved were saved by faith alone!

What a heavy burden for anyone to bear, worrying from day to day if they are proving their salvation by their works. In true salvation, you can KNOW immediately that you have God's salvation. Why is that? It is because eternal life is a PROMISE from God (Titus 1:2). God promised “TO SAVE THEM THAT BELIEVE” (1st Corinthians 1:21b). But Mr. Cloud says faith is insufficient, that you must ALSO turn away from your sins to be saved. Cloud wrongly accuses Jack Hyles, Bob Gray Sr. and Curtis Hutson of only preaching faith (quick salvation) without repentance from sins.

When Cloud foolishly denounces “Quick Prayism,” he means there is no “Quick Salvation.” That is exactly what he means! But he is oh so wrong! Salvation is instant! There is no probationary period to see if faith stuck! Samson chased harlots his whole life (Judges 16:2). Solomon's life was a mess (Ecclesiastes 2:17). Ananias and Sapphira were killed by God for their sin, but they were saved (Acts 5:1-11). The Bible is full of sinful saints! The idea that hundreds or even thousands of people cannot be saved in one day is heresy. We saw it in Acts 2:41. Yet David Cloud leads people to think such great events are not possible today.

Admittedly, there are some idiots and theological ignoramuses lurking in churches everywhere today, but that is not the norm as Cloud portrays all soulwinners. As I showed you earlier in Pastor Hyles' sermon on “FUNDAMENTALIST HERESY,” Dr. Hyles preaches against thinking a person can be saved just by praying without understanding the Gospel.