After a while it just gets embarrassing. David Cloud is a fellow I had commended for having the guts to stand up and criticize Gail Riplinger, bringing her wrath upon him many years ago. But since he has joined the anti-Calvinism sniping brigade he has shown himself just as willing to engage in the most egregious forms of false argumentation as any of the others.
A while back Cloud began attacking Calvinism on his website and in his writings, even listing it as the “hot” sermon on his website. At some point I took the time to play just a few clips from hiw woefully bad “response” to Calvinism on the air. We have invited him to debate the issue, even when he was here in the US (a fact he makes note of in the sermon on his site). In fact, I was speaking at a church in the Midwest, as I recall, around the same time Cloud was going to be addressing the issue in the same area. Our challenge to him to debate has been documented on this blog numerous times. I even noted I believe last week that he had sent out an e-mail in which he reproduced numerous folks congratulating him on refusing to defend his position in public debate.
So I get an e-mail from Cloud a few days ago. It reads:
Hello, James. Did you correct the gross error contained in the following statement in your little post of November?
“Today I pointed out to him that if he was consistent, he and his fellow KJV Only writers would have a literal cow over Hunt’s handling of Acts 13:48 in both What Love is This? as well as in Debating Calvinism.”
I had written about that matter two years earlier and it was located in the very place one would expect to find it, in my review of Hunt’s book, so there is no excuse for such a gross mistake on your part.
Is that still at your web site, error and all? Or did you merely remove it from the web site without as much as acknowledging your error?
I realize you are too busy huffing and puffing and boasting to listen humbly to another man, so I do not expect you to read my writings carefully; but you need to correct this gross error.
In Christ, David Cloud
Wow, a gross error! Let’s see. Even if we ignore the fact that I was referring to a wider range of folks than just Cloud (“and his fellow KJV Only writers”), it is quite true that Cloud did mention Acts 13:48. So, I am guilty of a gross error! I confess! Well, let’s see how “gross” it really was. I mean, Cloud is reviewing Hunt’s book which, as we have documented many times, is filled with egregious exegetical and historical errors. For example, Cloud knows Spurgeon was a Calvinist, but he doesn’t mention Hunt’s utter misuse of Spurgeon. Instead, the only complaint he lodges is in reference to his comments about the KJV on Acts 13:48, and that in the mildest words possible. And it doesn’t seem Cloud is “up to speed” on Hunt’s newest way around the proper rendering of Acts 13:48, either. I wonder if he will voice his opposition to Hunt’s “prophetically predicted Hebrew originals of Acts 1-15” theory as well? So, if the only “victory” David Cloud can score is saying, “Hey, I did note my mild disagreement on Acts 13:48…but I still recommended the book strongly, despite that,” then I will gladly let him have it. However, I must note the gratuitous slap about “just removing” the “error.” “No, Brother Cloud, that’s what Dave Hunt does in his second edition…haven’t you kept up with that?”
In the meantime, Cloud’s e-mail prompted me to throw his sermon on Calvinism on my mp3 player as I headed to California. I imagine the folks waiting for the flight to LA gave me some odd looks as I rolled my eyes and groaned at the continuous stream of misrepresentation, simple error, and tradition-encrusted eisegesis thundered forth in stereotypical “KJV Only, Fundamentalist, Independent Baptist” tones. I was going to try to count up all the errors I heard, but it was an impossible task. David Cloud is as accurate in his understanding and response to Calvinism as Gail Riplinger is on KJV Onlyism. Well, that’s not saying much, I guess. In any case, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Anyone who can promote Hunt’s work as a work of substance must not know much about the issue at hand.
Since “Brother Cloud” remains willing to promote his errors in public without answering for them, and since he identifies Calvinism as “the enemy” in his presentation, I shall take the time to go through his sermon, listed as “hot” on his website, and demonstrate yet once again that the issue is simple when you are dealing with conservative, non-Reformed critics of “Calvinism”: they are servants of their traditions, and when it comes right down to it, refuse to allow those traditions to be examined in the light of the very Scripture they say they believe so strongly.