When someone starts teaching that God has a physical body and that the Trinity is really three separate gods, they don’t stop there. These errors are like dominoes—knock one down, and the rest start falling too. Finis Dake’s wrong ideas about God’s nature led him to attack nearly every attribute that makes God truly God. In this chapter, we’ll look at how Dake’s teachings destroy our understanding of God’s unchanging nature (immutability), His simplicity, His eternal existence, and His perfect holiness. When you add up all these errors, you end up with a completely different god—one that the Bible doesn’t teach about at all.
Dake, Finis Jennings. Dake Annotated Reference Bible. Lawrenceville, GA: Dake Bible Sales, 1963.
—. God’s Plan for Man. Lawrenceville, GA: Dake Bible Sales, 1949.
—. Revelation Expounded. Lawrenceville, GA: Dake Bible Sales, 1950.
Why These Attributes Matter
Before we dive into Dake’s errors, let’s understand why these attributes are so important. God’s attributes aren’t like accessories you can add or remove. They’re not optional features. God’s attributes are who He is. When you change what you believe about God’s attributes, you’re changing what you believe about God Himself. You end up worshiping a different god altogether.
Think of it like this: If someone told your your best friend was actually mean, dishonest, and unreliable, they wouldn’t be describing your friend anymore—they’d be describing someone completely different. The same is true with God. When we change His essential attributes, we’re not talking about the God of the Bible anymore.
God’s Immutability Questioned: The God Who Changes?
One of the most important things the Bible teaches about God is that He never changes. The fancy theological word for this is “immutability.” It means God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He doesn’t get better or worse. He doesn’t learn new things. He doesn’t change His mind like we do. This is incredibly important because it means we can trust God completely. His promises won’t expire. His love won’t run out. His character won’t shift.
The Bible is crystal clear about this. Malachi 3:6 says, “For I am the LORD, I change not.” James 1:17 tells us that with God there is “no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” Hebrews 13:8 declares, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.” These verses aren’t suggestions—they’re stating fundamental facts about who God is.
Dake’s Attack on God’s Unchanging Nature
But Dake’s hyperliteral reading of Scripture led him to conclude that God actually does change. How did he come to this shocking conclusion? By taking certain Bible passages that use human language to describe God and insisting they must be literally true.
For example, when Genesis 6:6 says that “it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth,” Dake takes this to mean God actually changed His mind—that He regretted a decision He had made. In his Bible notes on passages where God “repents” or “changes His mind,” Dake consistently interprets these as literal changes in God’s thinking and planning. In his commentary on Psalm 7:11, Dake writes that “His is not sudden emotion that breaks forth in wrath and then changes or passes away. It is the uniform attribute of God that is as unchanging as His own being and nature”1—yet elsewhere he contradicts this by insisting God literally learns new things and reacts to unexpected human actions.
What Dake Teaches: In his notes on Genesis 6:6 and similar passages, Dake argues that God literally changes His mind based on human actions. He writes about God discovering things and reacting to unexpected events. According to Dake’s interpretation, God makes plans and then has to adjust them when humans do things He didn’t expect. Dake explains his understanding of immutability this way: “He is immutable as to His plan for the highest good of being and of the universe. His plan includes change of methods or ways to save as many men as possible. For example, when He abolished the law of Moses it was no change in God’s plan, but rather the execution of that plan… When the terms are not met, it is not failure or change with God, but with man.”2 This makes God’s immutability dependent on human actions rather than absolute.
Furthermore, in discussing moral law in God’s Plan for Man, Dake states: “It can never change or vary in its requirements that all free wills consecrate themselves to the same end to which God is consecrated—the highest good of the universe and all things therein. Rebellion of free wills will never change God’s plan concerning the good of His creation. Because of this, moral law can never change.”8 Yet this applies only to moral law, while Dake’s broader teaching allows for God to change methods, learn information, and respond to unexpected human choices.
But here’s the problem: If God can change His mind, then He’s not perfect. Why? Because change means moving from one state to another. If God changes for the better, then He wasn’t perfect before. If He changes for the worse, then He’s not perfect now. Either way, you don’t have a perfect God anymore.
What’s really happening in these passages? The Bible is using what theologians call “anthropopathisms”—descriptions of God using human emotions and responses so we can understand Him better. It’s like when we say “the sun rises.” The sun doesn’t actually rise—the earth rotates. But we use this language because it describes what we see and experience. Similarly, when the Bible says God “repented” or “changed His mind,” it’s describing how God’s consistent character responds to changing human behavior.
The Danger of a Changing God
Think about what it would mean if God really could change His mind:
- His promises wouldn’t be reliable. If God can change His mind, maybe He’ll change His mind about saving you.
- His love might not last. If God’s feelings can change, maybe He’ll stop loving you tomorrow.
- His standards could shift. If God can change, maybe what’s right today will be wrong tomorrow.
- Prayer becomes pointless. Why pray to a God who might be different by the time your prayer reaches Him?
- The Bible can’t be trusted. If God changes, then His Word written thousands of years ago might not apply today.
This is why the church has always insisted that God is immutable—unchanging. It’s not just a philosophical idea; it’s essential for our faith, our hope, and our relationship with God.
Divine Simplicity Rejected: The God Made of Parts?
Another attribute of God that Dake attacks is what theologians call “divine simplicity.” Now, this doesn’t mean God is simple like a children’s puzzle. It means God isn’t made up of parts that can be separated. God doesn’t have components like a machine. He’s not assembled from different pieces. God is simply and purely God—whole, complete, and indivisible.
Why does this matter? Because anything made of parts can fall apart. Anything composed of pieces depends on those pieces staying together. But God doesn’t depend on anything. He just IS. As He told Moses, “I AM THAT I AM” (Exodus 3:14).
How Dake Divides God
Dake completely rejects divine simplicity. In fact, he teaches the exact opposite. Look at what he writes in God’s Plan for Man:
“God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, each has His own personal spirit body, personal soul, and personal spirit in the same sense that each human being, angel, or any other being has his own body, soul, and spirit which are separate and distinct from all others.”
—God’s Plan for Man, page 51
Do you see what Dake is saying? He’s claiming that God the Father has three separate parts: a body, a soul, and a spirit. And not just the Father—the Son and Holy Spirit each have their own separate body, soul, and spirit too. That’s nine different parts just for the Trinity!
But it gets worse. If God has a body with parts (hands, feet, eyes, etc., as Dake claims), then God is made up of even more pieces. Dake’s god isn’t simple at all—he’s incredibly complex, made of countless parts that somehow stay together. Dake expands on this view by providing what he calls “63 Facts About God,”3 where he systematically lists God’s supposed bodily components including “back parts, heart, hands, fingers, right hand, mouth, lips, tongue, feet, eyes, ears, head, hair, arms, loins, and other bodily parts.”4
In God’s Plan for Man, Dake provides extensive detail: “He has back parts; so must have front parts (Exodus 33:23). He has a heart (Gen. 6:6; 8:21); hands and fingers (Exodus 31:18; Ps. 8:3-6; Rev. 5:1, 6-7); nostrils (Ps. 18:8, 15); mouth (Num. 12:8); lips and tongue (Isa. 30:27); feet (Ezek. 1:27; Exodus 24:10); eyes, eyelids, sight (Ps. 11:4; 18:24; 33:18); voice (Ps. 29; Rev. 10:3-4; Gen. 1); breath (Gen. 2:7); ears (Ps. 18:6); countenance (Ps. 11:7); hair, head, face, arms (Dan. 7:9-14; 10:5-19; Rev. 5:1, 6-7; 22:4-6); loins (Ezek. 1:26-28; 8:1-4); bodily presence (Gen. 3:8; 18:1-22; Job 1:6-12; 2:1-7; Ex. 24:10-11); and many other bodily parts as is required of Him to be a person with a body.”9
Why This Destroys God’s Nature
Here’s why this teaching is so dangerous:
- A god with parts can be divided. If God has separate components, what keeps them together? What if they came apart?
- A god with parts depends on those parts. If God needs His parts to be God, then He depends on something other than Himself.
- A god with parts isn’t infinite. Parts have boundaries where one part ends and another begins. This makes God finite—limited.
- A god with parts can lose parts. Could God lose His hand? His soul? This makes God vulnerable.
- A god with parts isn’t really God. The true God is independent, self-sufficient, and needs nothing outside Himself.
The Bible teaches that God’s attributes aren’t parts added to God—they ARE God. God doesn’t have love; He IS love (1 John 4:8). God doesn’t have holiness; He IS holy (Isaiah 6:3). God doesn’t have truth; He IS truth (John 14:6). These aren’t components that could be removed or changed. They’re different ways of describing the one, simple, indivisible God.
Understanding Divine Simplicity
Think of it like this: Water can be described as wet, clear, and fluid. But these aren’t three separate parts of water that you could take apart. They’re all describing the same water from different angles. Similarly, when we talk about God’s love, justice, and power, we’re not talking about three separate parts of God. We’re describing the one, simple God from different perspectives.
Dake’s error is like saying water is made of three separate things: wetness, clearness, and fluidity—and that you could separate them. That’s not how water works, and it’s definitely not how God works!
Eternality Redefined: The God Who Had a Beginning?
The Bible teaches that God is eternal—He has no beginning and no end. Psalm 90:2 says, “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.” God doesn’t exist IN time; time exists because God created it. He’s above time, beyond time, outside of time.
This is crucial because anything that has a beginning needs a cause. If God had a beginning, something else would have had to create Him. Then that something would be God, not Him! The fact that God is eternal—without beginning—means He’s the uncaused cause, the source of everything else.
How Dake Limits God’s Eternality
While Dake technically affirms that God is eternal, his other teachings undermine this truth. How? By making God physical and spatial. Remember, Dake teaches that God has a literal body that exists in space. But here’s the problem: space and time are connected (that’s why scientists talk about “spacetime”). Anything that exists in space is also bound by time in some way.
In his book God’s Plan for Man, when Dake discusses “The Eternal Past,” he writes about God planning the ages and creating worlds. But he presents God as existing IN the eternal past, working through time to accomplish His plans. Look at how he describes it:
“God, like any other intelligent person, first planned, then created and made, or brought the plan into reality.”
—God’s Plan for Man, from “Ages and Dispensations”
Do you see the problem? Dake describes God “like any other intelligent person”—planning first, then acting. This puts God IN a sequence of time: first this, then that. But the eternal God doesn’t work through time like we do. He doesn’t need to plan and then wait to execute. From God’s eternal perspective, all of time is present to Him at once.
Dake even presents God’s eternal plan in sequential stages, writing that in his “30fold Dispensational Plan of God From Eternity Past Through Eternity Future,”5 God first existed in the eternal past, then drafted His plan, then created the heavens, then created the spirit-world, and so on—as if God had to work through these stages one at a time rather than knowing and willing all things from eternity. In God’s Plan for Man, Dake outlines: “1. God in the eternal past (Ps. 90:2; 93:2; Mic. 5:2; Heb. 9:14). 2. The drafting of God’s plan (Heb. 1:3; 11:3; Eph. 3:11; 1 Pet. 1:20). 3. Creation of the heavens, including the sun, moon, and stars…”10 as though these occurred in temporal succession.
The Problem with a Temporal God
If God exists in time and space like Dake suggests, several problems arise:
- God becomes subject to time rather than its master. Time would control God rather than God controlling time.
- God’s knowledge becomes limited. A god in time can only know what has happened and what is happening, not what will happen.
- Prophecy becomes impossible. How could God predict the future if He’s stuck in the present like us?
- God’s promises become uncertain. A god bound by time can’t guarantee the future.
- Creation becomes problematic. How could God create time if He needs time to exist?
The Bible’s teaching is clear: God is “the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity” (Isaiah 57:15). He doesn’t live IN eternity as if it were a place; He inhabits it—He fills it, transcends it, defines it. He declares “the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10) because He sees all of time at once. This is the God we can trust with our future—because He’s already there!
Holiness Diminished: The God Who’s Just Like Us?
Perhaps the most subtle but devastating of Dake’s attacks on God’s attributes concerns God’s holiness. The Bible repeatedly emphasizes that God is holy—set apart, utterly different from His creation, morally perfect beyond our comprehension. Isaiah saw God in a vision and heard the angels crying, “Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts” (Isaiah 6:3). The triple repetition emphasizes that God is absolutely, completely, perfectly holy.
God’s holiness means He’s not just a bigger, better version of us. He’s qualitatively different—in a completely different category. As Isaiah 55:8-9 says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
How Dake Makes God Too Human
But Dake’s entire system makes God far too much like us. Look at how he describes God in his note on Genesis 1:26:
“God has a personal spirit body… shape, image, likeness, bodily parts such as, back parts, heart, hands and fingers, mouth, lips, tongue, feet, eyes, hair, head, face, arms, loins, and other bodily parts.”
—Dake Bible, note on Genesis 1:26
And in God’s Plan for Man, Dake goes even further, saying that God has a body, soul, and spirit “in the same sense that each human being, angel, or any other being has his own body, soul, and spirit.”
Do you see what’s happening? Dake is making God just like us—only bigger and more powerful. God becomes a super-human rather than the wholly other, transcendent Creator. This isn’t the holy God of Scripture who dwells in “light which no man can approach unto” (1 Timothy 6:16). This is a god made in our image rather than us being made in His!
Dake reinforces this human-like depiction of God by arguing that “God can be like man in bodily form and still be as magnificent as we have always thought Him to be. He can have a spirit-substance body and still be like man in size and shape; and He can have passions, feelings, desires, intelligence and willpower without being confined to man’s limitation and sinfulness.”6 But this completely misses the biblical emphasis on God’s transcendent holiness—His radical otherness from creation.
The Practical Impact of Diminished Holiness
When we lose sight of God’s holiness, several dangerous things happen:
- Sin becomes less serious. If God is just like us but bigger, then He should understand our sins. They’re no big deal.
- Worship becomes casual. Why approach God with reverence if He’s basically just like us?
- The gospel loses its power. If God isn’t perfectly holy, then sin isn’t that bad, and we don’t really need a Savior.
- Ethics become relative. If God is like us, then His standards are just opinions, not absolute truth.
- Prayer becomes manipulation. We start trying to bargain with God like He’s a human we can negotiate with.
But the Bible presents a God who is so holy that sinful humans can’t even look at Him and live (Exodus 33:20). A God so pure that the angels cover their faces in His presence (Isaiah 6:2). A God so set apart that it took the death of His own Son to bridge the gap between His holiness and our sinfulness.
The Beauty of God’s Holiness
God’s holiness isn’t meant to keep us away—it’s what makes His love so amazing! Think about it: The holy, perfect, transcendent God loves sinful, imperfect, finite creatures like us. He doesn’t love us because we’re lovable or because we’re like Him. He loves us in spite of the infinite distance between His holiness and our sinfulness. That’s what makes grace so amazing!
When we diminish God’s holiness, we diminish His love. When we make God like us, we lose the wonder of the gospel. The good news isn’t that God is like us—it’s that the God who is completely unlike us loved us enough to send His Son to save us!
The Cumulative Effect: A Different God Entirely
When you add up all of Dake’s errors about God’s attributes, you don’t end up with the God of the Bible anymore. Let’s compare the God Scripture reveals with the god of Dake’s system:
The God of the Bible:
- Is immutable—never changes in His being, character, or purposes
- Is simple—not composed of parts that could be separated
- Is eternal—exists outside of time with no beginning or end
- Is holy—utterly transcendent and different from creation
- Is spirit—not limited by physical form or location
- Is one—absolute unity in the Trinity
- Is infinite—unlimited in all His perfections
- Is omnipresent—fully present everywhere at once
- Is omniscient—knows all things past, present, and future
- Is omnipotent—all-powerful with no limitations except His own nature
The god of Dake’s System:
- Changes his mind based on circumstances
- Is composed of multiple parts (body, soul, spirit, plus body parts)
- Exists in time and works through sequential planning
- Is basically human-like but bigger and more powerful
- Has a physical body limited to one location
- Is actually three separate beings working together
- Is finite—limited by physical form and spatial boundaries
- Can only be in one place at a time (in body)
- Learns new information and reacts to unexpected events
- Has power limited by his physical nature
These aren’t minor differences or alternative interpretations. These are fundamentally different beings. The God of the Bible is the transcendent, infinite, unchanging Creator who exists in perfect Trinity. Dake’s god is a collection of three physical beings who change, learn, and are limited by their bodies.
Why This Matters for Your Faith
You might be thinking, “Why does all this theological stuff matter? Can’t I just love God and follow Jesus without worrying about all these attributes?” Here’s why it matters deeply:
1. You become like what you worship. If you worship a god who changes his mind, you’ll think it’s okay to be unreliable. If you worship a god who’s just a bigger human, you’ll never aspire to true holiness. If you worship a limited god, you’ll have limited faith.
2. Your prayers depend on who God really is. Can you trust a god who might change his mind? Can you depend on a god who doesn’t know the future? Can you find help from a god who’s limited to one location?
3. Your salvation requires the true God. Only an infinite God can pay an infinite price for sin. Only an unchanging God can guarantee eternal life. Only a holy God can make you holy. If God isn’t who the Bible says He is, then salvation isn’t what the Bible says it is.
4. Your hope rests on God’s nature. In times of trouble, you need a God who never changes, who is always present, who knows the end from the beginning. Dake’s god can’t provide that security.
Why Attributes Cannot Be Separated
Here’s something crucial to understand: God’s attributes aren’t like items on a menu where you can pick some and leave others. They’re all interconnected, like a perfectly woven fabric. Pull one thread, and the whole thing starts to unravel.
Think about how Dake’s errors connect:
- Because Dake gives God a body, God can’t be omnipresent
- Because God can’t be omnipresent, He can’t be omniscient (He can’t know what’s happening everywhere)
- Because God isn’t omniscient, He can change His mind when He learns new things
- Because God changes, He’s not immutable
- Because God’s not immutable, His promises aren’t certain
- Because God has parts, He’s not simple
- Because God’s not simple, He depends on His parts staying together
- Because God depends on something, He’s not self-sufficient
- Because God’s not self-sufficient, He’s not really God
Do you see how one error leads to another? This is why the church has always insisted on maintaining all of God’s attributes together. They’re not optional extras—they’re essential to who God is.
The Heresy of Making God in Our Image
At its root, Dake’s error is the oldest error in the book—making God in our image rather than recognizing we’re made in His. When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, they were trying to “be as gods” (Genesis 3:5). Dake does the opposite but equally wrong thing—he tries to make God be as humans.
This is why the Second Commandment forbids making any graven image of God (Exodus 20:4). It’s not just about statues and paintings. It’s about reducing God to something we can fully understand, something that fits in our mental boxes, something that’s like us. Dake’s physical, limited, changing god is just as much a graven image as any golden calf.
Responding to Dake’s Defenders
When confronted with these errors, defenders of Dake often respond with several arguments. Let’s address them:
“Dake is just taking the Bible literally”
No, Dake is taking the Bible hyper-literally, refusing to recognize obvious figures of speech. When the Bible says God has “eyes,” it’s using anthropomorphism—human language to help us understand that God sees. It doesn’t mean God has physical eyeballs. Even Jesus used figures of speech. When He said “I am the door” (John 10:9), He didn’t mean He was made of wood with hinges!
Dake himself tries to defend his literal interpretation by asking rhetorical questions: “If God did not mean all He said about Himself in over 20,000 scriptures then why did He say such things? … Furthermore, why would God, in hundreds of places, refer to Himself as having bodily parts, soul passions, and spirit faculties if He does not have them?”7 But this reasoning ignores the Bible’s own use of figurative language throughout Scripture.
“These are minor issues that don’t affect salvation”
These are not minor issues. The nature of God is the most fundamental doctrine in Christianity. Everything else—salvation, Scripture, ethics, worship—flows from who God is. If we get God wrong, we get everything wrong. As A.W. Tozer said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
“Dake was a great Bible teacher who loved God’s Word”
Sincerity doesn’t equal truth. Many false teachers are sincere. Paul was sincere when he persecuted Christians, but he was sincerely wrong. Love for the Bible means interpreting it correctly, not forcing it to say what we want. True love for God’s Word submits to what it actually teaches, not what we think it should teach.
“You’re just defending human tradition”
The attributes of God aren’t human tradition—they’re biblical revelation. Every attribute we’ve discussed comes directly from Scripture. The church has believed these truths for 2,000 years not because of tradition but because that’s what the Bible teaches. It’s Dake who’s introducing new, unbiblical ideas.
The Way Forward: Knowing the True God
So how do we move forward? How do we ensure we’re worshiping the true God and not a god of our own making?
1. Return to Scripture—Carefully
Read the Bible, but read it properly. Recognize figures of speech. Understand that God accommodates His revelation to human language without becoming human. Let clear passages interpret unclear ones. Let the New Testament shed light on the Old Testament.
2. Learn from Church History
The church has been studying God’s attributes for 2,000 years. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. The great creeds and confessions of the church can help us avoid errors that have already been identified and corrected. When someone like Dake comes up with “new” interpretations that contradict 20 centuries of Christian understanding, be very suspicious.
3. Worship the God Who Is, Not the God We Want
It’s tempting to remake God in an image we’re comfortable with—a god who’s like us, who thinks like us, who we can fully understand. But the true God is infinitely greater than our comprehension. As Romans 11:33 exclaims, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!”
4. Let God’s Truth Transform You
Don’t try to bring God down to your level. Instead, let His truth lift you up to become more like Him. The God who is immutable can make you stable. The God who is holy can make you pure. The God who is eternal can give you everlasting life. But only if He really is that God—not Dake’s diminished deity.
A Prayer for Truth
Heavenly Father, the one true God, eternal, immutable, and holy, we confess that we often try to remake You in our image rather than allowing You to remake us in Yours. Forgive us for diminishing Your glory, for limiting Your infinity, for questioning Your perfection.
Help us to know You as You truly are—not as we imagine You to be. Give us wisdom to understand Your Word correctly. Give us humility to accept what we cannot fully comprehend. Give us courage to reject false teaching, no matter how popular or comprehensive it might be.
We thank You that You are unchanging, so Your promises are sure. We thank You that You are simple, so You cannot be destroyed. We thank You that You are eternal, so our future is secure. We thank You that You are holy, so Your love is pure.
Keep us from the error of making You in our image. Transform us by the renewing of our minds, that we might know You truly and worship You properly. In Jesus’ name, who is the perfect revelation of Your nature, Amen.
Discussion Questions for Small Groups
1. Why is it important that God never changes (is immutable)? How would your faith be affected if God could change His mind about your salvation?
2. What does it mean that God is “simple” (not made of parts)? How does this make God different from everything else that exists?
3. How does believing God is eternal affect the way you pray? What difference does it make that God sees all of time at once?
4. Why is God’s holiness good news for sinners? How does understanding God’s holiness help us appreciate His grace?
5. Look at the list comparing the God of the Bible with Dake’s god. Which differences surprise you the most? Why do these differences matter?
For Pastors: Helping Your Congregation
If you discover members of your congregation have been influenced by Dake’s teaching about God’s attributes, approach the situation with patience and love. Many sincere believers have simply never been taught proper theology. Consider:
- Teaching a series on the attributes of God, using clear Scripture and simple illustrations
- Recommending solid resources like Tozer’s “The Knowledge of the Holy” or Pink’s “The Attributes of God”
- Explaining how to recognize anthropomorphisms and other figures of speech in Scripture
- Showing how all of God’s attributes work together and support each other
- Emphasizing that knowing God correctly isn’t just academic—it’s essential for worship, prayer, and Christian living
Remember, your goal isn’t just to refute error but to lead people into a deeper, truer knowledge of the awesome God we serve.
Check Your Bible
Look up these verses yourself and see what they teach about God’s attributes:
- For God’s immutability: Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8; James 1:17; Numbers 23:19
- For God’s simplicity: Deuteronomy 6:4; 1 Corinthians 8:6; John 4:24
- For God’s eternality: Psalm 90:2; Isaiah 57:15; 1 Timothy 1:17; Revelation 1:8
- For God’s holiness: Isaiah 6:3; 1 Peter 1:15-16; Revelation 4:8; Habakkuk 1:13
As you read these passages, ask yourself: Do they describe Dake’s god or the God of biblical revelation? The answer should be clear.
Final Warning
The errors we’ve examined in this chapter aren’t just theological mistakes—they’re attacks on the very nature of God. When we change God’s attributes, we’re not adjusting our understanding; we’re creating an idol. The god who changes, who has parts, who exists in time like us, who isn’t truly holy—this isn’t the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This isn’t the God who sent His Son to save us. This isn’t the God revealed in Scripture.
Finis Dake may have been sincere, but he was sincerely wrong. His errors about God’s attributes create a different god entirely—one who cannot save, cannot be trusted, and should not be worshiped. The choice before us is clear: Will we worship the true God as He has revealed Himself, or will we follow Dake in creating a god more to our liking?
Choose wisely. Your eternal destiny depends on knowing and worshiping the true God, not a counterfeit of human imagination.
Footnotes
1 Finis Jennings Dake, Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible (Lawrenceville, GA: Dake Bible Sales, 1963), note on Psalm 7:11.
2 Finis Jennings Dake, Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible (Lawrenceville, GA: Dake Bible Sales, 1963), note on God’s attributes regarding immutability.
3 Finis Jennings Dake, Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible (Lawrenceville, GA: Dake Bible Sales, 1963), “63 Facts About God,” Old Testament page 548.
4 Finis Jennings Dake, Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible (Lawrenceville, GA: Dake Bible Sales, 1963), “63 Facts About God,” Old Testament page 548.
5 Finis Jennings Dake, God’s Plan for Man (Lawrenceville, GA: Dake Bible Sales, 1949), section on “Ages and Dispensations.”
6 Finis Jennings Dake, Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible (Lawrenceville, GA: Dake Bible Sales, 1963), Old Testament notes on God’s bodily form.
7 Finis Jennings Dake, Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible (Lawrenceville, GA: Dake Bible Sales, 1963), Old Testament notes defending literal interpretation of God’s body.
8 Finis Jennings Dake, God’s Plan for Man (Lawrenceville, GA: Dake Bible Sales, 1977 [originally published 1949]), 406.
9 Finis Jennings Dake, God’s Plan for Man (Lawrenceville, GA: Dake Bible Sales, 1977 [originally published 1949]), 57.
10 Finis Jennings Dake, God’s Plan for Man (Lawrenceville, GA: Dake Bible Sales, 1977 [originally published 1949]), 78.
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