Galatians 1:6-8, “I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.”
On April 12, 2022 Pastor John Wilkerson of the First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana met for a cup of coffee with Missionary David W. Cloud (born 1949). Afterwards Mr. Cloud wrote an article on his ministry website to bad mouth Pastor Wilkerson for not agreeing with his damnable heresies, vindictive spirit and hatred against Dr. Jack Hyles.
To be quite frank, I am surprised that Brother Wilkerson took the time to meet with a known slanderer of the brethren. Satan is “the accuser of the brethren” (Revelation 12:10b). I humbly suppose that Dr. Wilkerson thought it might calm the waters if he met with the enemy to hear him out. Unfortunately it didn't. Proverbs 29:9, “If a wise man contendeth with a foolish man, whether he rage or laugh, there is no rest.” As you will see for yourself if you read the preceding article, David Cloud is a hateful bitter man.
Kindly said, David Cloud is a hardcore heretic who preaches Lordship Salvation and wrong repentance. He absolutely hates Dr. Jack Hyles and the First Baptist Church of Hammond (FBCH) family. It agree with Pastor Wilkerson that the sins of First Baptist Church of Hammond (FBCH) in the past are grieving to hear. But dear reader, we are all sinners and sin is everywhere. Psalms 130:3, “If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?” You are as much a dirty rotten sinner as the next guy that you tear down. There are no perfect churches. Proverbs 10:12, "Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins." Mr. Cloud is filled with hatred, jealous of Dr. Hyles' massive success and wants to stir up strife against anybody associated with Dr. Hyles or his ministry. That is what Satan does!
I'm surprised that Pastor Wilkerson bothered to meet with David Cloud, considering that the internet is filled with his hateful rants against Pastor Hyles, easy-believism, FBCH and Hyles-Anderson College. Cloud slanders Dr. Hyles, calling him: "The King Of Shallow Soulwinning." On the Day of Pentecost there were 3,000 could saved. They simply heard the Gospel that Peter preached and "gladly received" it (Acts 2:41). Those 3,000 people weren't put on probation, monitored to see if their lives changed to prove they had been saved. They just believed the GOOD NEWS of Jesus Christ crucified, buried and risen and they were saved. Eternal life is a free gift, you don't earn it!
In his ungodly article slandering Dr. Hyles, David Cloud states:
Pastor [Courtney] Lewis and I shared with Wilkerson some of our personal experiences with the Hyles’ style “quick prayerism” that has spread throughout the world from First Baptist. (Afterward, Pastor Lewis wrote to me as follows: “I want your readers to know that I wasn’t just ‘along for the ride’ with the meeting with Pastor Wilkerson. I wholeheartedly reject easy prayerism and believe that the things I have seen in the past need to be exposed now more than ever.”) [emphasis added] —David W. Cloud, 'David Cloud Has Coffee With John Wilkerson'
Wow unto pastors' David Cloud and Courtney Lewis! Dear reader, David Cloud is very crafty in his words. When he belittles “quick prayerism,” he also means that you cannot merely put your faith in Christ to be saved.
David Cloud Is Wrong On Bible Repentance For Salvation
Read what Mr. Cloud foolishly says, criticizing easy-believism:
First Baptist Church’s statement of faith on “Salvation” says, “We believe that God in His love provided salvation by sending His Son to become sin for us, taking the penalty of death upon Himself, dying in our place, shedding His own blood as the only acceptable atonement for our sin. Christ was buried and rose again the third day. This salvation is available as a free gift of God’s grace to all who will receive Him by faith. At the moment one stops trusting in his own way and places his trust rather in Christ and His finished work, he is born of God and granted eternal life.”
That sounds fine to a generation steeped in a no-repentance gospel. Yet the New Testament mentions “repent” and “repentance” at least 66 times. It is preached and demanded by John the Baptist, Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul, and the apostle Peter. —David W. Cloud, 'David Cloud Has Coffee With John Wilkerson'
Kindly said, David Cloud is a darn fool! The New Testament mentions the word “repent” 60 times, but what David Cloud doesn't tell you is that you won't find the word “repent” mentioned even one time in the Gospel of John (which is the book that God authored to show humanity how to get to Heaven - John 20:31). The reason why is because the man who believes has repented! The word “believe” appears 85 times in the Gospel of John!!!
The Word “Repent” Is Not Found In The Gospel Of John
Something else that David Cloud doesn't bother to mention is that the Greek noun for “repent” (metanoia) in the New Testament means “a change of mind,” or the verb form (metanoeo) which means “to think differently.”
David Cloud has thousands of preachers who follow him, poisoning their minds with a false plan of salvation of partial faith in Christ plus works. I carry a hardcopy of Michael Bowen's book, "I Never Knew You" with me to church. While listening to the offertory song, I read these words in church today about Billy Graham's false gospel...
Billy says that we must repent of our sins and attempts to provide examples from the bible that suggest we are supposed to repent of our sins in order to be born again; however, his examples are weak and hold no truth at all because the bible “never” tells us to quit sinning in order to be saved; in fact, the phrase “repent of sin” does not even occur in the bible. Billy often refers to the Greek word for repent which is metanoia, which he erroneously defines as turning away from our sins, to feel sorry for our sins, that we should change our minds about sin and walk away from it altogether as a “requirement” for our being born again. Very often, as a way of telling us that we have to quit willfully and deliberately sinning in order to be born again, he will refer to where Jesus said in Luke 13:3 that we must repent or perish, yet in the original Greek manuscript, the word for repent means to change your mind and has nothing at all to do with turning from sins. —Michael P. Bowen, “I Never Knew You,” p. 137The same exact truthful rebuttal could be applied to David Cloud, Ray Comfort and PCC, who pervert the Gospel.
Pastor Wilkerson asked me what I would suggest that he do. I emphasized to him that First Baptist, Hammond, has been ground zero for the promotion of some really wrong, truly evil, things. First Baptist Church has sinned against the whole world. Multitudes have been given false assurance by the Hyles methodology. This was taught and promoted through Hyles’ books, conferences, tapes, the college, and the annual Pastors School. Hyles was the king of Quick Prayerism. As far as I have been able to discover, Hyles invented the “do you want to go to heaven when you die, then pray this prayer after me” methodology, and the Sword of the Lord gave him a large forum to promote it, starting in the 1960s (“Let’s Go Soul Winning,” 1962). First Baptist was ground zero for the promotion of this horrible practice. Multitudes of people around the world have been abused with an unscriptural method of soul winning. They have been left with the false idea that they are “saved” and “going to heaven” just because they responded to a cheap salesmanship program. Much of the fault lies at the feet of First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana.
Public sin requires public repentance. The church needs to publicly repent for what was formerly taught, practiced, and countenanced. [boldness his]
Pastor Wilkinson was non-committal. —David W. Cloud, 'David Cloud Has Coffee With John Wilkerson'
I praise God for Pastor Wilkerson, that he didn't succumb under ecclesiastical pressure to unjustly destroy the legacy and name of Pastor Jack Hyles! Dr. Hyles was 100% correct on the Gospel of free grace!!! It is David Cloud who is in error, not knowing the Scriptures!!! Salvation is a free gift that you simply receive by faith, in a moment of time. The new birth (justification) is NOT a process, but becoming Christlike (sanctification) is a lifetime process. The former is SALVATION (Galatians 3:26), the latter is SERVICE (Romans 12:1). I absolutely love what Pilgrim's Progress author, John Bunyan (1628-1688) said:
“If you do not put a difference between justification wrought by the man Christ without and sanctification wrought by the Spirit of Christ within, you are not able to divide the Word aright; but contrariwise, you corrupt the Word of God, and cast stumbling blocks before the people.” [emphasis added] —Evangelist John Bunyan
David Cloud is caught between grace and works! He fails to put a difference between justification and sanctification. One of my favorite preachers, Pastor M.R. DeHaan (1891-1965) wrote these helpful doctrinally sound words:
"There is a vast difference between coming to Jesus for salvation and coming after Jesus for service. Coming to Christ makes one a believer, while coming after Christ makes one a disciple. All believers are not disciples. To become a believer one accepts the invitation of the Gospel, to be a disciple one obeys the challenge to a life of dedicated service and separation. Salvation comes through the sacrifice of Christ; discipleship comes only by sacrifice of self and surrender to His call for devoted service. Salvation is free, but discipleship involves paying the price of a separated walk. Salvation can't be lost because it depends upon God's faithfulness, but discipleship can be lost because it depends upon our faithfulness." —Pastor M.R. DeHaan, “Hebrews”; Zondervan Publishing House; 1959 (p. 117)
Another one of my favorite preachers is Pastor Harry Ironside (1876-1951), who wrote this beautiful accurate tract titled, “What Is The Gospel?” Here is an excerpt from Pastor Ironside's tract. I love these beautiful words! ...
“The Gospel is not a call to repentance, or to amendment of our ways, to make restitution for past sins, or to promise to do better in the future. These things are proper in their place, but they do not constitute the Gospel; for the Gospel is not good advice to be obeyed, it is good news to be believed. Do not make the mistake then of thinking that the Gospel is a call to duty or a call to reformation, a call to better your condition, to behave yourself in a more perfect way than you have been doing in the past …ALL of the neo-evangelical lying false prophets today who insist that you cannot be saved without turning away from your sinful ways—they are wickedly ASSUMING, that the word “repent” in the Bible means to turn from your sin, but as I showed you earlier, that is NOT what it means to repent in the Word of God. Repentance is a change of mind unto the Gospel itself.
Nor is the Gospel a demand that you give up the world, that you give up your sins, that you break off bad habits, and try to cultivate good ones. You may do all these things, and yet never believe the Gospel and consequently never be saved at all.”
SOURCE: Harry A. Ironside, from the sermon: What Is The Gospel?
As further evidence that repentance doesn't mean to turn from your sinful ways, please read Jonah 3:10, “And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.” Did you see that? God called turning from their evil way, “works.”
And also, please notice in that same preceding verse that “God repented.” If to repent means to turn from your sins, then how could God repent since He is incapable of committing evil? (James 1:13-14). Obviously, God does not repent of His sins, and neither do we to be born-again. The only thing that can send a man to Hell is his unbelief. No amount of sins can prevent a man who believes the Gospel from going to Heaven, because a saved man's sins have all been washed away by the precious blood of Jesus (1st Corinthians 6:11; 1st John 1:7; Revelation 1:5; 1st Peter 1:18-19).
Repentance is not a separate act from faith, although they are not the same thing. Here is the best quote that I've found on repentance, by Dr. Harry Ironside:
“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)
Repentance does NOT mean to turn away from your sinning. It doesn't mean to submit to follow and obey God's will instead of your self-serving sins (which is the damnable heresy taught at Pensacola Christian College today). To repent simply means that you agree with God that you are a guilty sinner, and thus believing the Gospel you are saved.
Jesus Lives The Christian Life Through Us As Believers
Please don't miss what I am about to say. Sanctification is the Holy Spirit's work, not yours! Here is how the Christian life works.
Galatians 2:20-21, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.”
What you just read is 100% proof that Lordship Salvation is a lie of the Devil. What you just read 100% proves that turning from your sins to be saved is a fallacy of Satan. All of these corrupt lying preachers today—David W. Cloud, James R. White, John F. MacArthur, Ray Comfort, Steve Pettit, Marty Herron, John Piper, Adrian Rogers, Sam Adams, Kirk Cameron, Ken Ham, Pensacola Christian College, Bob Jones University, Keith Gomez, to name but just a few heretics—all place the burden of change upon the sinner!!! They ALL require that a person commit to turn away from their sinful bad habits as a prerequisite to be saved.
I hope you see the fallacy of David Cloud and all these lying false prophets who focus on YOU, instead of focusing on CHRIST to be saved. They all errantly teach that if your behavior doesn't change after you profess faith in Jesus Christ, that you've never repented of your sins and are not really saved. They are embellishing God's simple plan of salvation, adding works to grace! They are perverting the Gospel of free grace!!! Galatians 1:7b, “...but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.”
The following is how the Christian life works. You come to God as a guilty sinner, just as you are without any changes nor willingness to change, and God saves you the moment that you place your childlike trust in Jesus Christ as your Savior—receiving His sacrifice on the cross as payment for your sins, believing that He died and was buried, and then three days later He physically resurrected from the dead—that's it, that's all, no more!
And then after you are saved, now in Christ (2nd Corinthians 5:17), you are now indwelt and sealed with God's Holy Spirit (Romans 8:9; Ephesians 1:13-14). The blessed Holy Spirit convicts us as believers when we sin. He comforts us. He rebukes and chastises us. He guides and teaches us with the inspired Holy Bible. As we yield in obedience to the Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit lives the Christian life through us. This is the fruit of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18-19). But we have a choice as a child of God, to either Walk in the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-25), or by default to Walk in the Flesh (Galatians 5:19-21). If a Christian does not intentionally Walk in the Spirit, then we will languish in worldliness, lack of soulwinning, carnality and sin. I want to quote Galatians 2:20 again, because this Scripture passage teaches the exact opposite of Lordship Salvation. ...
Galatians 2:20-21, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.”
In the Devil's fraud of Lordship Salvation, a lost person is told that their faith is not enough to be saved, but in addition, they must turn away from the act of sinning and submit to follow and obey God's will instead of their own will. This is human reformation, not the new birth! Lordship Salvation demands a manmade change, or requires you to be “willing” to change, as a prerequisite to be saved.
When I attended the Harvest Baptist Church on Guam in 2013 to 2014, I was shocked to learn that their pastors were preaching Lordship Salvation. I stuck around and as a true friend does, I shared THE TRUTH with their pastors. I spent over a thousand dollars of my own money to purchase hardcopies of books authored by fundamentalist Baptist preachers, and for 50 copies of Alexander Scourby DVD's of him reading the King James Bible. I gave the DVD's to the church office to distribute as they please. I personally handed the books to their pastors. Sadly, they rejected THE TRUTH which I gave to them (Hosea 4:6).
I witnessed to a staff member at Harvest, one of their school teachers. I asked him if he believed you could come to God as a sinner and believe the Gospel to be saved. He frowned and replied, “Ah, I think a little bit more is required.” I knew immediately that he is not saved. There is no way! No one is saved who thinks that more than an admitted guilty sinner placing his or her childlike trust in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, His burial and bodily resurrection, is necessary to get to Heaven.
You and I are SINNERS and Jesus is the blessed SAVIOR. If you agree with God that you are a guilty sinner who deserves to be punished in Hell forever, and you agree with God that Jesus is His only begotten (biological) Son, the Christ, and you simply believe that Jesus has already done it all for you through the cross of Calvary—then you are saved. Nothing more is required or allowed by God. Faith is the only righteous thing that I can do.
David Cloud Needs To Repent Of His Wrong Repentance To Get Saved
Mr. Cloud is wickedly filled with resentment, bitterness and hatred toward Pastor Jack Hyles, First Baptist Church of Hammond, and graduates of Hyles-Anderson College. The truth is that he is a jealous old man, who has never built a hotdog stand. Nearly everything that David Cloud says horribly takes Dr. Hyles' words, life and ministry out of context, twisting and distorting the truth to fit his agenda to destroy God's man.
In 1989 Pastor Hyles preached a sermon in defense of his family, friends and ministry, titled: 'Weathering The Storm.' In this sermon you can hear Brother Hyles deny the allegations against him. Only a wicked person takes unfounded rumors and slander against someone and assumes it is 100% true! David Cloud is an ungodly sinner who is unjustly condemning Dr. Hyles on the basis of rumors. It used to be in America that a man was deemed innocent until proven guilty. Sadly, that is just not the case anymore; today you are deemed guilty until you can prove your innocence. That is as wicked as the Devil (Revelation 12:10).
Mr. Cloud has also unjustly condemned Dr. Curtis Hutson (1934-1995), falsely accusing him of preaching another gospel. Mr. Cloud foolishly states:
Dr. Hutson also reasoned that saying that repentance will result in turning from sin is a works salvation. That is nonsense. The Thessalonians turned from the sin of idolatry (1 Thess. 1:9). Obviously, that does not mean they thought that their works had a part in their salvation. It was the product of turning to God. The fact that God requires that we turn from sin does not mean that salvation is by works. We know that the works are the fruit of genuine salvation, not the cause of it. Repentance, defined as turning to God from sin, is not a works salvation, as Dr. Hutson falsely claimed. It is the sinner’s obedient response to the Holy Spirit’s conviction (John 16:8). Dr. Hutson’s entire line of reasoning about repentance was unscriptural and dangerous. —David W. Cloud, 'Repentance And Lordship Salvation'
David Cloud is very wrong. In fact, biblically, works are not the fruit of genuine repentance. The Bible doesn't teach that lie. The fruit of genuine repentance is to BELIEVE the Gospel (Mark 1:15). Matthew 21:32, “For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him.” Do you see that the object of repentance in this verse is believing? The fruit of genuine repentance is to BELIEVE.
Furthermore, the Thessalonians repented of their idols, that is, their dead works! They turned from their false religion to trust Jesus Christ instead. That is true repentance!!! What David Cloud, Ray Comfort, John MacArthur, Pensacola Christian College and other damnable false teachers today is not the free grace Gospel taught in 1st Corinthians 15:1-4.
David Cloud also misrepresents Dr. John R. Rice. As do all false teachers, Mr. Cloud takes famous preacher's words out of context to distort what they really believed and taught, to bolster his strawman of heresy. Dr. Rice refuted Lordship Salvation.
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]As you just read for yourself, Dr. Rice taught that the way a man turns from his sin is to TRUST JESUS CHRIST. This is totally different from what infidels like David Cloud are teaching! They require that you give up your sinful bad habits. Dear reader, Christ came into the world and died on a cross to pay your debt of sin, He does not demand that you forsake your sinful behavior to seal the deal, which would be a trade or an exchange of sorts instead of a free gift (Romans 5:15-18). To be saved, you simply take it by faith alone in Jesus Christ.
SOURCE: Evangelist John R. Rice, “Acts: Filled With The Spirit,” pp. 251-252; Sword Of The Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee; ©1963
Oh dear friend, please don't miss it! I have heard Missionary David W. Cloud and other false teachers, attempt to portray Dr. Rice as a proponent of Lordship Salvation, falsely saying that he taught that people must turn away from a lifestyle of sin to be saved. Dr. Rice did NOT preach that garbage! David Cloud even goes as far as to pitch Dr. John R. Rice against his successor at the Sword Of The Lord, Pastor Curtis Hutson (1934-1995). Mr. Cloud claims that Curtis Hutson leaves off repentance, but nothing could be further from the truth.
To be saved, you must think differently to believe the Good News (i.e., Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins, He was buried and physically resurrected three days later). We are saved by believing, not by repenting; but repentance makes believing possible. If you didn't change your mind about whatever it is that has been preventing you from believing, then you wouldn't have come to Christ to be forgiven and saved.
The only thing you need to change your mind about is whatever has been hindering you from believing. The only change of mind which you need to have concerning sin is to admit you are a guilty sinner in the sight of a holy God. That is, you need to know what you are being saved from, and why you need to be saved. You are a guilty sinner, and so am I, the consequences (wages) of which is that we deserve to be punished in the fires of Hell forever (Romans 6:23; Revelation 21:8). 1st Thessalonians 1:10, “And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.”
David Cloud denounces Lordship Salvation as being a heresy; yet, what he is teaching is in fact a form of Lordship Salvation, since he says you are not saved unless your behavior has changed to some degree. That is works, even though Cloud attempts to dismiss it as not being works. According to Mr. Cloud we are saved by faith alone without works, but you must have works to prove that you are really saved. He attributes this change to genuine repentance. The Holy Bible strongly disagrees with Cloud and instead teaches that it is the indwelling Holy Spirit who produces a changed life, but only if we yield to Him in obedience to God's Word. John 17:17 teaches that we are sanctified by the truth of God's Word. There is no guarantee that a born-again child of God will walk in the Spirit (e.g., Lot, Samson, Solomon, Demas).
Pastor Ralph Yankee Arnold provides these helpful words to define Lordship Salvation...
“Lordship Salvation is the unsupportable and unbiblical belief that the performance of good works, the promise of good works, or the evidence of good works, must accompany faith in Christ to establish or provide evidence that such faith has resulted in eternal life.” —Pastor Ralph Yankee Arnold, “Jesus Versus John MacArthur”
Clearly, David Cloud does in fact preach the Devil's abomination of Lordship Salvation. As you can clearly see, Mr. Cloud's counterfeit plan of salvation mandates that you experience manmade reformation as part of sealing the deal to be saved. The big flaw in his corrupt theology is that he attributes the power to change to YOU repenting, and not to Jesus Christ living through us. Galatians 2:20, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” The change in my life after I got saved at age 13 was Jesus' Holy Spirit working in me, which had absolutely NOTHING to do with me repenting of my sins. I didn't repent of my sins to be saved, I believing on the Lord Jesus Christ and God saved me (Acts 16:30-31). Repentance was automatic.
Unbelief is the only thing that keeps a person from believing. To require that someone commit to turning away from living a lifestyle of sin to get to Heaven, has absolutely nothing to do with receiving God's free gift of eternal life. The true Gospel always points you to CHRIST; a false gospel always points to YOU. Salvation is not a reward for the righteous, it is a gift for the guilty! Salvation is not doing your best, it is having Christ's best put to your account through receiving Him by faith. Turning away from sinful ways would be a work. Faith puts all of the merit where it belongs, on the object of our faith, Jesus and His work.
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