David W. Cloud

David Cloud was born in 1949 and grew up in a Christian home in Florida. However, he turned away from Christianity during his teenage years, becoming a heavy drinker and served in the Vietnam war from 1969 to 1970. In 1973, he became a born-again Christian and attended Tennessee Temple University. {{Cite journal |last=Straub |first=Jeffrey P. |date=2011 |title=Fundamentalism And The King James Version: How A Venerable English Translation Became A Litmus Test For Orthodoxy |url=https://www.galaxie.com/article/sbjt15-4-06 |journal=Southern Baptist Journal of Theology |volume=15 |issue=4 |quote=An article by another well-known fundamentalist defender of the KJV, David Cloud (b. 1949), appeared in the Bible Believer’s Bulletin. Cloud had grown up in a Christian home but turned away from God as a teenager. He started to drink and served in Vietnam, becoming a drug user there. Cloud returned home, and ater briely considering Hinduism, was converted in 1973. He enrolled in Tennessee Temple University and soon started the Way of Life Literature ministry. Part of Cloud’s testimony appeared in Ruckman’s paper, along with his condemnation of rock and roll music}}

David Cloud graduated from Tennessee Temple Bible School in 1977, where he started his ministry, and eventually became involved with missionary work in Nepal.{{Cite web |last=College |first=Fairhaven Baptist |title=David Cloud Module {{!}} Fairhaven Baptist College |url=https://www.fairhavenbaptistcollege.org/news/david-cloud-module/ |access-date=January 14, 2025 |language=en-US}}

Cloud has criticized Baptist churches abandoning their denominational label in favor of being nondenominational. He is a strong advocate of separationism and teaches secondary separation.{{Cite web |title=The Collapse of Separatism |url=https://www.wayoflife.org/publications/books/collapse_of_separatism.php |access-date=January 14, 2025 |website=Way of Life}} He has criticized Highland Park Baptist Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Paul Chappell's church for not being strict enough on separation.{{Cite web |title=Paul Chappell's Pragmatism |url=https://www.wayoflife.org/database/paul_chappells_pragmatism_and_dangerous_associations.html |access-date=May 8, 2013 |website=Way of Life}} In 2003, when fundamentalist Baptists formed the International Baptist Network, attempting to unite Independent Baptists, David Cloud alongside other strict separationists strongly criticized the idea.{{Cite book |last=Jonas |first=William Glenn |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=p_d6wT7lTw8C&dq=David+Cloud+Baptist&pg=PA123 |title=The Baptist River: Essays on Many Tributaries of a Diverse Tradition |date=2008 |publisher=Mercer University Press |isbn=978-0-88146-120-6 |pages=123–124 |language=en}} Cloud has also critiqued Clarence Sexton's Independent Baptist Friends International for its ecumenism between Independent Baptists and Southern Baptists.{{Cite web |title=An Open Letter to Clarence Sexton about the Friendship Conference |url=https://www.wayoflife.org/reports/an_open_letter_to_clarence_sexton.html |access-date=March 3, 2010 |website=Way of Life}}

Cloud has criticized Jack Hyles, a prominent Independent Baptist pastor, for creating a cultic church and supported Robert Sumner’s reports of sexual scandals against Hyles.{{Cite book |last=Cloud |first=David W. |url=https://www.wayoflife.org/free_ebooks/hyles_effect.php |title=The Hyles Effect |publisher=Way of Life Literature}}

Cloud has strongly criticized Neo-Evangelicalism, the Charismatic movement,{{Cite book |last=Scott |first=Benjamin G. McNair |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lvXkDwAAQBAJ&dq=david+cloud&pg=PA19 |title=Apostles Today: Making Sense of Contemporary Charismatic Apostolates: A Historical and Theological Approach |date=2014-12-25 |publisher=Lutterworth Press |isbn=978-0-7188-4267-3 |pages=19 |language=en}} Contemporary Christian Music,{{Cite journal |last=Hartje |first=Gesa F. |date=2009 |title=Keeping in Tune with the Times—Praise & Worship Music as Today's Evangelical Hymnody in North America |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1540-6385.2009.00485.x |journal=Dialog |language=en |volume=48 |issue=4 |pages=364–373 |doi=10.1111/j.1540-6385.2009.00485.x |issn=1540-6385|url-access=subscription }} and Calvinism.{{Cite book |last1=Hyde |first1=Daniel R. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_rG9P7bdsuEC&dq=david+cloud+baptist&pg=PT71 |title=Planting, Watering, Growing: Planting Confessionally Reformed Churches in the 21st Century |last2=Lems |first2=Shane |date=2011-01-04 |publisher=Reformation Heritage Books |isbn=978-1-60178-200-7 |language=en}}

Cloud has also critiqued the Left Behind series for perceived ecumenism.{{Cite book |last1=Hitchcock |first1=Mark |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mlFZL-jT_j0C&dq=David+Cloud&pg=PA211 |title=The Truth Behind Left Behind: A Biblical View of the End Times |last2=Ice |first2=Thomas |date=2011-08-24 |publisher=PRH Christian Publishing |isbn=978-0-307-56402-3 |pages=211 |language=en}}{{Cite book |last=Isaac |first=Gordon L. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MQPraH9Y74UC&dq=David+Cloud&pg=PA10 |title=Left Behind Or Left Befuddled: The Subtle Dangers of Popularizing the End Times |date=2008 |publisher=Liturgical Press |isbn=978-0-8146-2420-3 |pages=10–11 |language=en}}

David Cloud is King James only, often drawing on the arguments of Edward F. Hills, and asserts that the King James Bible should not be viewed simply as a translation of the Greek and Hebrew texts, instead he regards it as an independent variation of the Textus Receptus, rendered in English rather than Greek, and providentially preserved as the purest form of the Textus Receptus.{{Cite book |last1=Beacham |first1=Roy E. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uQWTxDdIO6IC&dq=%22David+W.+Cloud%22&pg=PA7 |title=One Bible Only?: Examining Exclusive Claims for the King James Bible |last2=Bauder |first2=Kevin T. |publisher=Kregel Publications |isbn=978-0-8254-9703-2 |pages=48 |language=en}}

Cloud has criticized the Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, Bob Jones University, and Central Baptist Theological Seminary of Minneapolis for convincing some Independent Baptist groups to adopt modern Bible translations.

Nevertheless, he has critiqued the more extreme positions of Gail Riplinger and Peter Ruckman,{{Cite journal |last=Combs |first=William W. |date=1996 |title=The Preface To The King James Version And The King James-Only Position |url=https://www.galaxie.com/article/dbsj01-2-04 |journal=Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal |volume=1 |issue=2 |quote=Many of those who hold the King James-only position attempt to disassociate themselves from Ruckman and his beliefs. For example, David W. Cloud, who holds the King James-only position, has written against both Ruckman and Riplinger (What About Ruckman? 2nd ed. [Oak Harbor, WA: Way of Life Literature, 1995] and New Age Bible Versions: A Critique [Oak Harbor, WA: Way of Life Literature, 1994]).}} rejecting their claims that even the smallest change on the spelling of the King James would change a God-ordained illustration.{{Cite journal |last=Straub |first=Jeffrey P. |date=2011 |title=Fundamentalism And The King James Version: How A Venerable English Translation Became A Litmus Test For Orthodoxy |url=https://www.galaxie.com/article/sbjt15-4-06 |journal=Southern Baptist Journal of Theology |volume=15 |issue=4 |quote=She is also among the most mystical, suggesting that even the spelling of the KJV words themselves cannot be changed lest one tampers with some divinely appointed illustration. David Cloud tries to strike a more sane approach, rejecting the excesses, the shrill voices, and many of the doctrinal aberrations}} Riplinger attempted to respond to him in her book Blind Guides.{{Cite book |last=Riplinger |first=Gail |title=Blind Guides |publisher=A.V. Publishers |isbn=978-0-9794117-5-5}}

David Cloud has criticized mystical and contemplative prayer practices, seeing them as Catholic and contradicting the sufficiency of scripture.{{Cite book |last=Keefe-Perry |first=L. Callid |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kWi1EAAAQBAJ&dq=david+cloud&pg=PA176 |title=Sense of the Possible: An Introduction to Theology and Imagination |date=2023-03-16 |publisher=Wipf and Stock Publishers |isbn=978-1-4982-8037-2 |pages=176 |language=en}}

Cloud has also critiqued the Sinner's prayer as unscriptural and calling it "quick prayerism".{{Cite web |title=Quick Prayerism Summarized |url=//www.wayoflife.org/reports/quick-prayerism-summarized.php |access-date=June 13, 2024 |website=Way of Life}}

David Cloud is a Trinitarian, arguing against the doctrines of Modalism and Arianism among others. However, he rejects the usage of verses such as Psalm 2:7 to establish the doctrine of eternal generation of the Son, and has argued that each of the persons of the Trinity have their own center of consciousness and voltion. He also affirms the doctrine of the eternal subordination of the Son.{{Cite book |last=Cloud |first=David W. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HFpFzgEACAAJ |title=God the Trinity |date=2021 |publisher=Way of Life Literature Incorporated |isbn=978-1-58318-296-3 |language=en}}

David Cloud holds to a dispensational approach to the Bible and is thus premillennial and pretribulational in his eschatology and rejects replacement theology, the notion of the Church replacing Israel.{{Cite web |title=The Fundamental Doctrine of the Pre-Tribulation Rapture |url=//www.wayoflife.org/reports/fundamental_doctrine_of_the_pre-tribulatino_rapture.php |access-date=April 19, 2024 |website=Way of Life}}{{Cite web |title=A Refutation of Replacement Theology |url=//www.wayoflife.org/reports/a_refutation_of_replacement_theology.php |access-date=May 11, 2022 |website=Way of Life}}

He adheres to the doctrine of the eternal security of the believer{{Cite web |title=Eternal Security and Problem Passages |url=//www.wayoflife.org/database/eternal_security_and_problem_passages.html |access-date=December 18, 2001 |website=Way of Life}}

He is a young earth creationist and opposes evolution.

He holds to the tenets of Baptist successionism but rejects Baptist Brider theology or “Landmarkism”.{{Cite web |title=Are You a Baptist Brider or Local Church Only? |url=//www.wayoflife.org/database/are_you_a_baptist_brider.html |access-date=September 27, 2014 |website=Way of Life}}

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Category:1949 births

Category:Living people

Category:21st-century American male writers

Category:21st-century American non-fiction writers

Category:21st-century Baptist ministers from the United States