A Look at Some of The Problems in Finis Dake’s Theology

Introduction: The Man, His Bible, and the Big Problems

Who Was Finis Dake and Why Does His Influence Matter?

Finis Jennings Dake (1902-1987) was one of the most important and also one of the most controversial people in American Pentecostalism during the 1900s.1 His work and writings have had a huge impact on many Christians, especially those in Charismatic and Word of Faith churches. What made people trust Dake so much? When he was 17 years old, he claimed God gave him a special gift. He said this gift allowed him to quote huge parts of the Bible from memory.1 This claim made people think his teachings had special authority from God. It became the main selling point for everything he wrote.

The most famous thing Dake created was the Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible, which first came out in 1963.1 This Bible was huge. It had over 35,000 notes explaining Bible verses and 500,000 cross-references that connected different verses together.6 It was the first major study Bible written by someone from a Pentecostal background. It quickly became a must-have book for pastors, teachers, and regular church members in that tradition. The Bible had so many notes that it seemed to answer every single Bible question someone might have. But Dake didn’t stop there. He also wrote other important books like God’s Plan for Man and Bible Truths Unmasked.6 These books explained his unique way of understanding the Bible even more. Through all these writings, Dake shaped how a whole generation of church leaders thought about God. This includes famous leaders in the Word of Faith movement like Kenneth Copeland and Kenneth Hagin. These leaders then taught Dake’s ideas to millions of people around the world.1

Why This Report Was Written

While it’s clear that Dake worked hard and loved the Bible, when we look closely at his work, we find serious problems. His teachings go against what Christians have believed for nearly 2,000 years. The purpose of this report is to carefully examine these big theological mistakes in Dake’s main books. We’ll use the Bible itself to check if what he taught was right or wrong. This isn’t meant to attack Mr. Dake personally. Instead, we need to follow what the Bible tells us to do: “Test everything; hold on to what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

The apostle Paul warned church leaders in Ephesus about false teachers. He said, “Savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number, men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them” (Acts 20:29-30). Following Paul’s warning, this report will look directly at what Dake wrote. We’ll quote his exact words a lot. Then we’ll compare what he said with what the Bible actually teaches and what Christians have always believed. Our goal is to help believers who might have been influenced by Dake’s teachings. We want to give them solid, biblical answers to his wrong teachings.

Quick Overview of Dake’s Wrong Teachings

To give you a clear picture right away, here’s a table that shows the main areas where Dake’s teachings went against normal Christian beliefs. This table is like a map for the detailed discussion that comes next. It shows the basic mistakes that infected his whole system of theology.

Topic	What Dake Taught (Wrong)	What Christians Have Always Believed (Right)
About God	God is actually three separate divine beings (this is called Tri-theism). Each one has his own body, soul, and spirit. God the Father has a physical body with parts like we do. God doesn’t know everything – He learns new things as time goes on.	God is one Being who exists forever as three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (this is called the Trinity). God is Spirit, not physical. God knows everything – past, present, and future, including every choice people will make.
About Jesus Christ	Jesus wasn’t always God’s Son. He only became the Son when He was born as a human. When He was on earth, He gave up His divine powers like knowing everything and being all-powerful.	Jesus Christ has always been the Son of God, forever existing with the Father as one with Him. When He became human, He stayed fully God and became fully human at the same time – two natures in one Person.
About Creation & People	There was a big gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 with a pre-Adam race and “Lucifer’s flood.” Demons are the ghosts of this pre-Adam race. God wants races to stay separate.	God created the heavens and earth from nothing. Death came into the world through Adam’s sin. Demons are angels who rebelled against God. In Christ, all barriers between races and groups are broken down.
About Understanding the Bible	Everything in the Bible must be taken super-literally, but he doesn’t follow this rule consistently. He adds new theories and spiritualizes parts he doesn’t like.	We should understand the Bible by looking at grammar, history, and context. We need to respect different types of writing and remember that “Scripture interprets Scripture.”

Section 1: What Dake Taught About God: Moving Away from One God in Three Persons

Everything in Christian theology starts with what we believe about God. This is the foundation for everything else. And this is exactly where Dake’s system goes completely wrong. His teachings don’t just emphasize different things than other Christians. They create a totally different picture of God that goes against the basic belief that there is only one God. Dake’s theology shows us three separate gods, a God stuck in a physical body, and a Being who doesn’t know everything and has to react to surprises. Let’s look at each of these mistakes one by one.

1.1 Three Gods Instead of One: The Tri-theistic Error

The most shocking mistake in Dake’s theology is that he completely rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Instead, he taught what we call tri-theism – the belief in three separate gods. Even though he used the word “Trinity,” what he meant by it was totally different from what Christians have always believed.

What Dake Taught

Dake taught that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit aren’t three Persons sharing one divine nature. Instead, he said they are three separate divine beings. Each one has his own individual body, soul, and spirit. He thought the normal Christian idea of “one God in three Persons” was silly and ridiculous.6 His argument was simple: just like three human persons are three separate human beings, three divine persons must be three separate divine beings.

His writings are crystal clear about this. In God’s Plan for Man, he wrote: “There are over 500 plain scriptures that refer to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as being THREE SEPARATE AND DISTINCT PERSONS, each with His own personal body, soul, and spirit in the sense that all other persons have them.”6

In his Bible notes, he explained more: “What we mean by Divine Trinity is that there are three separate and distinct persons in the Godhead, each one having His own personal spirit body, personal soul, and personal spirit in the sense that each human being, angel, or any other being has his own body, soul and spirit.”9

To support this view, Dake pointed to places in the Old Testament where God uses plural words. For example, “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26). He also noted that the Hebrew word for God, Elohim, is plural.6 He pointed to times when multiple members of the Godhead seem to appear at the same time, like when Jesus was baptized or in Daniel’s vision of the “Ancient of Days” and the “Son of Man.”6 He said these passages prove there are three separate divine beings who are only “one” in the sense that they agree perfectly with each other. He compared this to how believers are called to be “one” (John 17:11, 21-23).9

Why This Is Wrong According to Orthodox Christianity

What Dake taught is just a modern version of an old heresy called tri-theism. The early church condemned this teaching completely. The most important belief in both Judaism and Christianity is that there is only one God. The Bible is absolutely clear about this. Israel’s most important prayer says, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). The prophet Isaiah records God saying: “I am the LORD, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God” (Isaiah 45:5). He also said, “Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me” (Isaiah 43:10). The New Testament continues this teaching: “There is no God but one” (1 Corinthians 8:4).

The historic Christian doctrine of the Trinity was carefully worked out at the Council of Nicaea (AD 325). The Nicene Creed that came from this council was designed to faithfully explain all the Bible’s teaching: that there is one God, that the Father is fully God, that the Son is fully God, and that the Holy Spirit is fully God.10 The correct doctrine says that God is one in essence (what God is) while existing forever in three equal and eternal Persons (who God is). Dake’s mistake is that he confused the biblical distinction between Persons with dividing God’s essence into parts. He didn’t understand that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit aren’t three parts of God, and they aren’t three separate gods. They are the one true God.

Dake made this mistake because he tried too hard to make the deep mystery of the Trinity completely understandable using human logic. He thought that since three human persons are three separate beings, three divine persons must also be three separate beings. This approach fails to respect how different God is from His creation. It tries to squeeze the unlimited God into the limited categories of created things. Real Christian theology carefully distinguishes between the one divine essence (what God is) and the three persons (who God is).15 Dake mixed these two things up, basically making each “person” a separate “essence” or “being.” His tri-theism comes from wanting to eliminate all mystery and force the infinite God into a box that our finite minds can fully understand.

1.2 A God with a Body: Making God Like a Human

Because Dake believed in three separate gods, he also taught another wrong idea: that God the Father has a physical body. His logic was simple – if the Father is a separate being from the Son and the Spirit, then He must have His own distinct body.

What Dake Taught

Dake insisted that God the Father has a physical “spirit body” with shape, form, and parts just like a human being. He came to this conclusion by taking biblical descriptions of God’s “hands,” “face,” “feet,” and other body parts extremely literally.6

In one of his most famous (and criticized) notes, Dake claimed: “He (God) has a personal spirit body, shape, form, image and likeness of a man, bodily parts such as, back parts, heart, hands and fingers, mouth, lips and tongue, feet, eyes, hair, head, face, arms, loins, and other bodily parts.”9

To prove this, he made a list of scriptures like Exodus 33:23 (“back parts”), Genesis 6:6 (“heart”), and Daniel 7:9 (“hair”). He presented these as literal descriptions of God the Father’s anatomy.6 He also argued that since humans were made in God’s “image and likeness” (Genesis 1:26), and humans have bodies, God must also have a body.6

Why This Is Wrong According to Orthodox Christianity

This teaching is called anthropomorphism – giving God human form or characteristics. It goes against what the Bible clearly and consistently teaches. Jesus Himself said, “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). The apostle Paul says God is “the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15) and “the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God” (1 Timothy 1:17). The Westminster Confession of Faith, which summarizes biblical teaching, states that God is “a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions.”20

The Bible passages Dake uses are understood by all orthodox theologians as examples of anthropomorphic language. This is a writing technique where the infinite, invisible God is described in finite, human terms so that we, as created beings, can understand something about His character and actions. When the Bible talks about God’s “mighty hand,” it’s a figure of speech for His power and action in the world, not a literal body part. When it talks about His “eyes” looking throughout the earth, it’s describing how He knows everything and takes care of everything, not actual physical eyes. Taking this figurative language literally is doing violence to the text. It creates a finite, physical idol – a god made in man’s own image. This is the very definition of idolatry.

Dake’s anthropomorphism is a direct result of his bad method of interpretation. Because he insists on reading everything literally “wherever possible,”6 he ignores the rich variety of writing styles in the Bible. He doesn’t recognize important literary devices like metaphor and anthropomorphism, which are necessary for understanding how the Old Testament describes God. This error is connected to his tri-theism. If each Person of the Trinity is a separate being, it’s a small and logical step in his system to imagine each of them having a separate, physical body.

1.3 A God Who Doesn’t Know Everything: Denying Divine Omniscience

The third major mistake in Dake’s teaching about God is his denial that God knows everything, especially His knowledge of people’s future free choices. This view, which has become more popular recently under the name “Open Theism,” basically reduces God from the sovereign Lord of history to someone who just reacts to events and is often surprised by what happens.

What Dake Taught

Dake explicitly taught that God doesn’t have complete knowledge of the future. He claimed that God learns things, discovers things over time, and has to change His plans when humans do unexpected things.6

He made several shocking claims in God’s Plan for Man:

• “God gets to know things concerning the free moral actions of men as others do…”6

• He claimed God “did not know beforehand that men would become so wicked (Genesis 6:5-7); that they would plan Babel (Genesis 11:5-7); that Sodom would be so wicked (Genesis 18:21, 26, 28-32); that Abraham would actually proceed to offer up Isaac (Genesis 22:12).”6
• He even suggested that God “sends messengers throughout the whole of His vast creations to find out for Him what He wants to know, the same as the head of any other business would be likely to do, so that plans may be made and actions taken accordingly.”6

Why This Is Wrong According to Orthodox Christianity

This view directly goes against what the Bible overwhelmingly teaches about God’s all-knowing nature and His control over everything. Scripture says that God knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10), that His understanding is infinite (Psalm 147:5), and that nothing in all creation is hidden from Him (Hebrews 4:13). The apostle John says, “God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything” (1 John 3:20).

The passages Dake uses to support his view, like God “regretting” that He made humans (Genesis 6:6) or testing Abraham to “know” his faithfulness (Genesis 22:12), are understood in orthodox theology as anthropopathisms. This is a figure of speech where God’s actions and feelings are described in human terms that we can relate to. When God “regrets,” it doesn’t mean He changed His mind because of new information. It’s a vivid way of expressing His deep sorrow over human sin from a human viewpoint. When He “tests” Abraham to “know,” it’s not for God’s information. It’s to demonstrate and confirm Abraham’s faith. These passages describe how God interacts with humanity within the flow of history, not a limitation on what He knows forever.

Dake’s denial that God knows everything completely changes God’s relationship to time, creation, and His own eternal plan. The all-knowing, sovereign God of Scripture, who “works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will” (Ephesians 1:11), is replaced by a limited, reactive God who is often caught off guard and must constantly change His plans. This view seriously damages a Christian’s confidence that God is ultimately in control of history and that His promises about the future are certain. It transforms God from the sovereign author of the redemption story into just another participant in the drama, hoping for the best but not sure how things will turn out.

Section 2: What Dake Taught About Christ: A Lesser Savior

Just as Dake’s teaching about God went wrong, so did his teaching about Christ. What he taught about Jesus being the Son and about the incarnation (when God became human) compromises what the Bible and history tell us about Jesus as the unique God-man. It makes both His eternal identity and His earthly ministry less than what they really are.

2.1 Denying Jesus Was Always God’s Son: A Son in Time, Not Forever

Perhaps the most important mistake in Dake’s teaching about Christ is his strong denial that Jesus Christ has always been God’s Son. This teaching attacks the very heart of how the Trinity relates within itself and the identity of the second Person of the Godhead.

What Dake Taught

Dake argued that the second Person of the Godhead was the eternal Word, but He wasn’t the eternal Son. He taught that Jesus became the Son of God at a specific point in time – specifically, when He was conceived in Mary’s womb.2

His reasoning is laid out clearly in his writings. In a note in the Dake Bible, he wrote: “As man and as God’s Son He was not eternal, He did have a beginning, He was begotten, this being the same time Mary had a Son. Therefore, the doctrine of eternal sonship of Jesus Christ is irreconcilable to reason, is unscriptural, and is contradictory to itself.”23

He argued further that “The word Son supposes time, generation, father, mother, beginning, and conception… If sonship refers to deity… then this person of the deity had a beginning in time and not in eternity.”21

He concluded that the title “Son of God” refers only to Christ’s humanity, not His deity.6

Why This Is Wrong According to Orthodox Christianity

This is a major heresy about Christ. It’s similar to the ancient error of Arianism, which taught that “there was a time when the Son was not.” The Council of Nicaea in AD 325 met specifically to fight this error. The Nicene Creed that came from this council became the standard for what Christians believe about Christ for all time. The Creed says that Jesus Christ is “the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.”10

The Scriptures consistently talk about the Son existing before time as the Son. John 3:16 says that God “gave his one and only Son.” This act of giving assumes the Son existed before being sent into the world. Jesus Himself prayed, “And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began” (John 17:5). This clearly shows an eternal, pre-incarnate relationship with the Father as the Son.24

Dake’s error has terrible effects throughout his entire theology. If the Son isn’t eternal, then the Father isn’t an eternal Father. The very nature of God as an eternal, loving, relational fellowship is destroyed. The inner life of the Trinity becomes just a temporary arrangement for saving people, rather than an eternal reality. Dake’s reasoning that the word “Son” necessarily means a beginning in time is a huge theological mistake. It fails to distinguish between temporal, physical, human birth and the eternal, mysterious relationship that exists within the Godhead. The term “eternally begotten” is the church’s way of saying both that the Son is a distinct person and that He fully shares in the eternal divine essence, coming from the Father without having a beginning in time.

2.2 The Kenosis Theory: Did Jesus Empty Himself of Being God?

Dake’s unorthodox view of the incarnation gets worse in his teaching about the kenosis, or the “emptying” of Christ described in Philippians 2:7. He interprets this not as hiding His glory but as literally subtracting divine attributes.

What Dake Taught

Dake taught that when Christ “emptied himself,” He literally gave up His divine attributes of being all-powerful, all-knowing, and present everywhere – or at least gave up the power to use them during His life on earth.6

In God’s Plan for Man, he wrote: “The true biblical teaching of the kenosis of Christ is that in taking human form He divested Himself of His divine attributes… having laid aside His God-form and voluntarily given up His glory… and became limited in knowledge, wisdom, power, glory, and in every way that man was…”6

He argued that Jesus’ miracles weren’t done by His own divine power. Instead, they were done only “by the direct anointing of the Spirit,”6 a power he suggests believers can have today too.

Why This Is Wrong According to Orthodox Christianity

The orthodox understanding of the incarnation, officially defined at the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, is that Jesus Christ is one Person with two distinct natures – one fully divine and one fully human.30 These two natures are united “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.” When the eternal Son became man, He didn’t stop being God. His divine nature wasn’t made smaller, set aside, or emptied of its attributes.

The “emptying” described in Philippians 2 means Christ hid His divine glory and voluntarily took on the lowly status and role of a servant. He submitted Himself to the limitations of being human – hunger, thirst, tiredness, and death – but He didn’t subtract from His essential deity.35 Throughout His earthly ministry, Jesus made claims that would make no sense if He had temporarily stopped having the attributes of God. For example, He said, “Before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58), which was a clear claim to God’s eternal name. He forgave sins (Mark 2:5-7) and accepted worship (Matthew 14:33), things only God should do.

Dake’s kenosis theory is logically connected to his denial of eternal Sonship. If Jesus’ earthly existence is just a temporary “role” He took on, it becomes easier to argue that He also temporarily set aside His divine attributes for that role. The two heresies support each other. Furthermore, this teaching makes Christ less unique. By claiming Jesus operated only by the anointing of the Spirit the same way a believer can, Dake blurs the line between the Savior and the saved. He reduces Jesus to little more than a Spirit-filled example rather than the unique God-man, our substitute and Redeemer.

Section 3: What Dake Taught About Creation and Humanity: Rewriting Genesis

Dake’s departure from orthodox beliefs extends to what he taught about how the world began, where evil came from, and where humanity came from. He built a speculative pre-history based on the “Gap Theory” interpretation of Genesis. and provided what he thought was biblical support for the sinful practice of racial segregation.

3.1 The “Gap Theory” and a Race Before Adam

Trying to make the biblical creation story fit with old-earth geology, Dake became a major supporter of the “Gap Theory.” This view inserts a huge, unknown period of time between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2.

What Dake Taught

Dake taught that Genesis 1:1 describes an original, perfect creation in the “dateless past.”6 This world had people living in it before Adam (a pre-Adamic race) and was ruled by Lucifer. This perfect creation was then destroyed and judged by what Dake calls “Lucifer’s flood” because Lucifer rebelled. This resulted in the chaotic state of “formless and empty” described in Genesis 1:2. The six days of creation that follow in Genesis 1:3 and after aren’t the original creation, but a re-creation of the ruined earth.6

To support this, he made two main arguments. First, he translated the Hebrew word hayetah in Genesis 1:2 as “the earth became formless and empty,” suggesting a change happened rather than this being how it started.6 Second, he argued that when God told Adam to “replenish” the earth in Genesis 1:28, it proves the earth had been “plenished” or filled before.6

Why This Is Wrong According to Orthodox Christianity

The historic Christian teaching about creation is creatio ex nihilo – creation out of nothing.47 Most Hebrew scholars agree that the grammar of Genesis 1 tells one continuous story, not one with a “gap.” The verb hayetah (“was”) is the standard verb for being and doesn’t necessarily mean “became.” The Hebrew verb male’ (“replenish” in the KJV) simply means “to fill,” not “to re-fill.”

The biggest theological problem with the Gap Theory is that it puts death, destruction, and God’s judgment before Adam’s sin. This completely contradicts what the Apostle Paul clearly taught in Romans 5:12: “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.” The Bible presents one unified story: God created a “very good” world (Genesis 1:31), which then came under the curse of sin and death because Adam rebelled. Christ’s work to save us is the answer to the problem of Adam’s fall.

By putting a world of death and ruin before Adam, Dake breaks the critical biblical link between sin and death. This makes Adam’s fall seem less catastrophic and undermines how big Christ’s saving work really is. If the world was already a graveyard full of fossils from a previous judgment, then what exactly did Adam’s sin introduce that was new? Dake’s attempt to solve what he saw as a scientific problem created a much worse theological problem. It distorts the central storyline of Scripture.

3.3 A Theology Supporting Racial Segregation

Perhaps the most morally disgusting of Dake’s teachings is how he used the Bible to argue for racial segregation. In an older version of the Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible, he included a note under Acts 17:26 called “30 Reasons for Segregation of Races.” (Only after Finis Dake died was this racist language removed from the Dake Bible in 1990. You will need a version of his Bible published before 1990 to view it.

What Dake Taught

Dake argued that God not only created the different races but also wants them to stay separate. He strongly condemned interracial marriage, which he called “miscegenation.”

• Reason 1: “God wills all races to be as He made them. Any violation of God’s original purpose manifests insubordination to Him.”60

• Reason 2: “God made everything to reproduce ‘After his own kind’ (Genesis 1:11-12, 21-25; 6:20; 7:14). Kind means type and color or He would have kept them all alike to begin with.”60

• Reason 4: “Miscegenation means the mixture of races, especially the black and white races, or those of outstanding type or color. The Bible even goes farther than opposing this.”60

To support his position, Dake terribly misused Old Testament commands for Israel to stay separate from pagan nations. He took commands that were based on religious purity – to prevent Israel from falling into idol worship (Deuteronomy 7:3-4) – and twisted them into a universal command for racial segregation. He even applied laws about not mixing fabrics or seeds to human relationships.60

The following list contains 30 points written by Finis Jennings Dake, which were included as commentary in his Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible. First published in the 1960s, these notes were intended to provide a biblical justification for racial segregation. It’s important to understand that Dake wrote this from his personal viewpoint during a different era, and these interpretations are widely considered racist and are rejected by the vast majority of modern Christian theologians and scholars.

1. God wills all races to be as He made them. Any violation of God’s original purpose manifests insubordination to Him(Acts 17:26; Romans 9:19-24)
2. God made everything to reproduce “After his own kind” (Genesis 1:11-12, 21-25; 6:20; 7:14). Kind means type and color or He would have kept them all alike to begin with.
3. God originally determined the bounds of the habitations of nations(Acts 17:26; Genesis 10:5, 32; 11:8; Deuteronomy 32:8)
4. Miscegenation means the mixture of races, especially the black and white races, or those of outstanding type or color. The Bible even goes farther than opposing this. It is against different branches of the same stock intermarrying such as Jews marrying other descendants of Abraham(Ezra 9-10; Nehemiah 9-13; Jeremiah 50:37; Ezekiel 30:5).
5. Abraham forbad Eliezer to take a wife for Isaac of Canaanites (Genesis 24:1-4). God was so pleased with this that He directed whom to get (Genesis 24:7, 12-27).
6. Isaac forbad Jacob to take a wife of the Canaanites (Genesis 27:46-28:7).
7. Abraham sent all his sons of the concubines, and even of his second wife, far away from Isaac so their descendants would not mix (Genesis 25:1-6)
8. Esau disobeying this law brought the final break between him and his father after lifelong companionship with him(Genesis 25:28; 26:34-35, 27:46; 28:8-9).
9. The two branches of Isaac remained segregated forever (Genesis 30; 46:8-26).
10. Ishmael and Isaac’s descendants remained segregated forever (Genesis 25:12-23; 1 Chronicles 1:29)
11. Jacob’s sons destroyed a whole city to maintain segregation (Genesis 34)
12. God forbad intermarriage between Israel and all other nations (Exodus 34:12-16; Deuteronomy 7:5-6)
13. Joshua forbad the same thing on sentence of death (Joshua 22:12-13)
14. God cursed angels for leaving their own “first estate” and “their own habitation” to marry the daughters of men (Genesis 6:1-4; 2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6-7)
15. Miscegenation caused Israel to be cursed (Judges 3:6-7; Numbers 25:1-8)
16. This was Solomon’s sin (I Kings 11)
17. This was the sin of Jews returning from Babylon (Ezra 9:1-10:2,10-18,44; 13:1-30)
18. God commanded Israel to be segregated (Leviticus 20:24; Numbers 23:9; 1 Kings 8:53)
19. Jews recognized as a separate people in all ages because of Gods choice and command (Matthew 10:6; John 1:11). Equal rights in the gospel gives no right to break this eternal law.
20. Segregation between Jews and all other nations to remain in all eternity (Isaiah 2:2-4; Ezekiel 37; 47:13-48,55; Zechariah 14:16-21; Matthew 19:28; Luke 1:32-33; Revelation 7:1-8; 14:1-5)
21. All nations will remain segregated from one another in their own parts of the earth forever (Acts 17:26; Genesis 10:5,32; 11:8-9; Deuteronomy 32:8; Daniel 7:13-14; Zechariah 14; Revelation 11:15; 21:24)
22. Certain people in Israel were not even to worship with others (Deuteronomy 23:1-5; Ezra 10:8; Nehemiah 9:2 10:28; 13:3)
23. Even in heaven certain groups will not be allowed to worship together (Revelation 7:7-17; 14:1-5; 15:2-5)
24. Segregation was so strong in the O.T. that an ox and an ass could not work together (Deuteronomy 22:10).
25. Miscegenation caused disunity among God’s people (Numbers 12).
26. Stock was forbidden to be bred with other kinds (Leviticus 19:19).
27. Sowing mixed seed in the same field was unlawful (Leviticus 19:19)
28. Different seeds were forbidden to be planted in vineyards (Deuteronomy 22:9)
29. Wearing garments of mixed fabrics forbidden (Deuteronomy 22:11; Leviticus 19:19)
30. Christians and certain other people of a like race are to be segregated (Matthew 18:15-17; 1 Corinthians 5:9-13; 6:15; 2 Corinthians 6:14-15; Ephesians 5:11; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-16; 1 Timothy 6:5; 2 Timothy 3:5).

In conclusion, the 30 points listed above represent Finis Dake’s attempt to use scripture to support racial segregation. This method of biblical interpretation, which takes verses out of their historical and literary context to support a pre-existing belief, is a practice known as proof-texting. Modern biblical scholarship overwhelmingly concludes that the Bible does not support racism; rather, core Christian teachings emphasize concepts like unity, equality, and love for one’s neighbor, regardless of ethnicity or background.

Why This Is Wrong According to Orthodox Christianity

This teaching is a sinful and heretical twisting of Scripture. The Bible’s message is one of universal human dignity and radical reconciliation in Christ. It starts by teaching that all humanity came from one couple, Adam and Eve, and so we’re all one race – the human race. The apostle Paul told the philosophers in Athens, “[God] made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26).

The Old Testament prohibitions against intermarriage were never based on race or ethnicity. They were based on religion. Foreigners who embraced faith in Yahweh, like Rahab the Canaanite and Ruth the Moabitess, were welcomed into the community of Israel. They’re even found in the family tree of Christ Himself (Matthew 1:5). The central message of the New Testament gospel is breaking down all human barriers. Paul’s magnificent statement in Galatians 3:28 is the final word on this: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Ephesians 2 describes Christ’s work on the cross as destroying the “dividing wall of hostility” to create “in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace” (Ephesians 2:14-15).

Dake’s teaching about race shows how dangerous his method of interpretation is. By applying Old Testament civil and ceremonial laws literally and universally, without understanding their specific context in redemption history, he came to conclusions that go against the very heart of Jesus Christ’s gospel. It shows how a flawed way of interpreting the Bible can lead not just to theological mistakes, but to deeply harmful and sinful social teachings. While Dake Publishing later changed this section in newer printings of the Bible because of widespread criticism, the original teaching remains a stark reminder of where his interpretive framework logically leads.61

Section 4: What Dake Taught About Salvation: A Gospel Based on Conditions and Material Things

Dake’s unorthodox theology extends into his teaching about salvation (what theologians call soteriology). He presents a gospel that depends on human performance to stay saved, and promises physical and financial blessings as a guaranteed right from Jesus’ death. Both of these teachings shift the focus from God’s grace to human works and faith.

4.1 Rejecting Eternal Security: A Salvation You Can Lose

Going directly against the historic Reformed doctrine that true believers will persevere (often called “eternal security”), Dake taught that a true believer can lose their salvation.

What Dake Taught

Dake strongly opposed the doctrine often summarized as “once saved, always saved.” He argued that salvation requires conditions not only to get it but also to keep it. A believer, he taught, can “make a failure” through sin or unbelief and be lost forever, just like Adam was.2

In God’s Plan for Man, he wrote, “Eternal life is not an eternal possession until the end of a life of holiness, for one can make a failure before then and be lost just as Adam did in the beginning.”2

He based this view on the warning passages in the New Testament, like Hebrews 6:4-6 (“it is impossible… to be brought back to repentance”) and Galatians 5:4 (“You have fallen away from grace”). He interpreted these passages as applying to real believers who later committed apostasy.6 Dake even went so far as to teach that a person can be “unborn” by sinning and then “born again” multiple times through repentance. He used Peter’s denial and later restoration as proof.6

Why This Is Wrong According to Orthodox Christianity

While all Christians are called to keep living in faith and holiness, and the Bible contains real warnings against falling away, the Reformed and Calvinistic tradition holds that true believers will ultimately persevere because God keeps them by His power.63 Salvation is God’s gift from start to finish, not a cooperative project where God starts the work and humans must maintain it. As Paul wrote to the Philippians, “Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).

Jesus’ own promises provide the greatest assurance. He said about His sheep, “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of the Father’s hand” (John 10:28-29). The security of the believer doesn’t rest in how strong their grip on Christ is, but in how strong Christ’s grip on them is.

The warning passages that Dake uses as his main evidence are understood in the orthodox framework not as proof that true saints can be lost, but as one of the very means God uses to keep His saints persevering. These serious warnings push believers to be diligent and drive them to rely on God’s grace. Also, passages about those who “fall away” are often understood as referring to people who only had a shallow or temporary claim to faith, but were never truly born again. As the apostle John writes, “They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us” (1 John 2:19). Dake’s view ultimately bases the believer’s eternal security on their own up-and-down performance rather than on Christ’s finished work and God’s preserving power.

This particular error is deeply connected to Dake’s view of a limited God. If God doesn’t know in advance who will ultimately be saved, as Dake teaches, then it logically follows that salvation must depend on the ongoing, unpredictable choices of each person. A sovereign God who predestines and knows His chosen people can guarantee their final salvation. A limited, reactive God, as Dake describes, cannot. His teaching about salvation is the necessary and tragic result of his flawed teaching about God.

4.2 The “Health and Wealth” Gospel: A Promise of Material Guarantees

Dake’s teaching about the benefits of salvation goes beyond the spiritual realm to include guaranteed physical and material blessings. This doctrine has become a foundation of the modern “Prosperity Gospel” or “Word of Faith” movement.

What Dake Taught

Dake’s writings consistently teach that perfect physical healing and material prosperity are benefits that were bought for believers when Christ died. He presents these blessings not as potential gifts of God’s grace, but as guaranteed rights available to all believers who have enough faith.6

In the introduction to God’s Plan for Man, he promises the reader, “You will learn how to receive healing, health, prosperity and happiness here and now.”6

He lists the idea “That healing is not in the atonement or in the will of God” as a false doctrine spread by Satan.6 The clear message throughout his work is that if you don’t receive these blessings, it’s not because of God’s sovereign will. It’s always because the believer doesn’t have enough faith.6

Why This Is Wrong According to Orthodox Christianity

This teaching might sound appealing, but it seriously misunderstands what Christ’s death accomplished and what the Christian life is really like in a fallen world. The main purpose of Christ dying as our substitute on the cross was to pay for sin and bring sinners back to a holy God (2 Corinthians 5:21). The ultimate healing and inheritance promised to believers will come in the future – when our bodies are resurrected and we receive the immeasurable riches of glory in the new heavens and new earth (Romans 8:22-23).

While Scripture clearly says that God is a gracious provider and healer (James 5:14-15), it nowhere teaches that perfect health and financial wealth are guaranteed entitlements in this life. Actually, the Bible is full of examples of faithful saints who suffered greatly, including sickness and poverty. The apostle Paul begged God three times to remove his “thorn in the flesh,” but God’s answer wasn’t healing. It was sustaining grace (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). Paul left his companion Trophimus sick in Miletus (2 Timothy 4:20). He praised the Macedonian churches for their “extreme poverty” which “welled up in rich generosity” (2 Corinthians 8:2).

Dake’s teaching promotes a materialistic and triumphant view of the Christian life that completely contradicts the New Testament’s call to take up our cross and follow Christ (Luke 9:23). It can cause huge spiritual damage, making sincere believers who suffer illness or financial hardship feel guilty and have a crisis of faith. They’re led to believe their suffering comes from their own weak faith or hidden sin.

Section 5: Dake’s Method of Interpretation: The Root Problem of Hyper-Literalism

The root of all of Finis Dake’s theological errors is found in his flawed and inconsistently applied method of biblical interpretation (what scholars call hermeneutics). While he claimed his approach was simple and faithful “literalism,” it was actually a rigid and rationalistic system that ignored important principles of sound interpretation. This led him to twist the very Scriptures he claimed to honor.

The Claim vs. The Reality

Dake repeatedly presented his interpretive method as the only path to a “clear, sane, and harmonious understanding of Scripture.”6 His rule, stated in the preface to his Bible, is to “Take the Bible literally wherein it is at all possible.”6 He insisted that “God… said what He meant, and meant what He said,” and that doing anything other than taking His words at face value is falling for “man’s interpretations and distortion of the Word.”6

This approach has powerful appeal because it seems to honor Scripture’s authority and cut through centuries of theological debate.

However, when we carefully examine Dake’s work, we find that his application of this “literalism” is highly selective and inconsistent. It becomes a tool to justify his own new theories rather than a consistent method for finding out what the author really meant. For example, he takes clearly figurative, anthropomorphic language about God’s “body” and “parts” with a wooden literalness that leads to the heresy of a God with a body.6 Yet when it suits his system, he’s perfectly willing to spiritualize or turn texts into allegories. In one case, he interprets the literal “earthquake” of Revelation 6:12 as the symbolic “breaking up of society” and the “moon turned to blood” as “the destruction of derived authority.”6 This isn’t literalism. It’s an arbitrary choice driven by his pre-existing theological system. His method isn’t submission to the text. It’s imposing a rigid, rationalistic grid on it.

The Results of a Flawed Method

Using this flawed hermeneutic has several devastating consequences that we can see throughout Dake’s work.

First, it forces him to ignore literary context and genre. The Bible isn’t a flat text. It’s a divine library containing a rich variety of literary forms: historical stories, poetry, wisdom literature, law, prophecy, and apocalyptic visions. Each genre has its own rules for interpretation. Dake’s method often treats them all with the same flat literalism, leading to huge misinterpretations. He reads the poetic anthropomorphisms of the Psalms as anatomical charts of God and the symbolic visions of Revelation as literal history written in advance.

Second, his method creates more contradictions than it solves. As we saw with his Gap Theory, his attempt to “literally” harmonize Genesis 1 with old-earth geology forces him into a direct contradiction with what Romans 5 clearly teaches about where sin and death came from. His system repeatedly puts Scripture in conflict with itself, undermining the very harmony he claims to achieve.

Third, and perhaps most dangerously, his method opens the door to unlimited speculation. By dismissing two thousand years of careful, orthodox biblical interpretation as “man’s interpretations,”6 Dake positions himself and his unique “anointing” as the key to unlocking the Bible’s “true” meaning. This creates a closed system where his own new theories – like the pre-Adamic race, the origin of demons, and his tri-theistic Godhead – are presented not as interpretations, but as the plain, literal truth of the Bible that tradition has hidden.

In the end, Dake’s hermeneutic is the single biggest source of his unbiblical teachings. It’s not just that he made mistakes on a few isolated points of doctrine. His entire system of interpretation is fundamentally flawed. This flawed foundation inevitably produces a cascade of errors that corrupts every major area of Christian theology. His “literalism” isn’t faithful submission to the text. It’s a tool that allows him to remake the God of the Bible into his own rationalistic and understandable image.

Conclusion: A Call to Be Careful

This report has carefully examined the major theological teachings of Finis Jennings Dake as found in his most influential works. The analysis shows a pattern of significant and serious departure from the historic, orthodox Christian faith. While Dake’s enthusiasm for the Bible and his tireless efforts to produce study materials are clear, the content of those materials is deeply problematic and, in many areas, heretical.

The main errors in Dake’s theology can be summarized like this:

• About God: He replaces the belief in one God who is three Persons (Trinitarian monotheism) with a form of tri-theism, teaching that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three separate divine beings. He promotes a crude anthropomorphism, insisting that God the Father has a physical body. He denies God’s complete omniscience, arguing for a limited God who learns and reacts to unforeseen events.
• About Christ: He denies the eternal Sonship of Christ, a cornerstone of orthodox Christology, teaching that Jesus only became the Son at the incarnation. He supports a version of the Kenosis theory that has Christ emptying Himself of His divine attributes, which makes His full deity less during His earthly ministry.
• About Creation and Humanity: He promotes the speculative Gap Theory, which imagines a pre-Adamic race and puts death and judgment before Adam’s fall. This contradicts the biblical story of sin and redemption. This leads to his unbiblical theory that demons are the spirits of this pre-Adamic race. Most seriously, he used the Bible to justify racial segregation, a teaching that goes against the gospel.
• About Salvation: He rejects the biblical doctrine of eternal security, teaching a conditional salvation that can be lost. This grounds a believer’s hope in their own performance rather than in God’s preserving grace. He promotes a “health and wealth” gospel, teaching that physical healing and material prosperity are guaranteed in the atonement for all who have enough faith.

The root of all these errors is a flawed and inconsistently applied hermeneutic of hyper-literalism. This interpretive method ignores literary context, creates theological contradictions, and ultimately serves as justification for Dake’s own speculative and unorthodox system.

Therefore, this report ends with a pastoral encouragement to all believers about how important sound doctrine is for the health of both individuals and the church. We’re called to test all teachings, no matter how popular the teacher is or what special insights they claim to have. We must test everything against the whole counsel of God’s Word, read together with the historic, orthodox faith that has been “once for all entrusted to God’s holy people” (Jude 3).

The Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible and the other writings of Finis Jennings Dake are not reliable or safe guides to the Christian faith. Their teachings about the most basic doctrines – the nature of God, the person of Christ, the story of creation and redemption, and the essence of the gospel – are deeply flawed. They should be used with extreme caution, if at all. Believers should instead turn to study resources that are grounded in and faithful to the rich theological heritage of historic, biblical Christianity.

Works Cited

1. Finis Jennings Dake – Wikipedia, accessed September 4, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finis_Jennings_Dake
2. Finis Dake Theology – Dake Bible .com, accessed September 4, 2025, https://www.dakebible.com/resources/finis-dake-theology
3. About Finnis Dake, accessed September 4, 2025, https://www.gotchoices.net/dake/
4. History | Dake Publishing, Inc. | Finis J. Dake, accessed September 4, 2025, https://www.dake.com/history-dake-publishing-inc-finis-j
5. Dake’s Testimony | Dake Publishing, Inc. | Finis J. Dake, accessed September 4, 2025, https://www.dake.com/dake-s-testimony-dake-publishing-in
6. Dakes Gods Plan for Man.pdf
7. Dake’s Topics | Logos Bible Software, accessed September 4, 2025, https://www.logos.com/product/198956/dakes-topics
8. Dake Study Bible – Christianbook.com, accessed September 4, 2025, https://www.christianbook.com/page/bibles/study-bibles/dake-study-bible
9. Dake’s Bible Exposed! | PDF | Incarnation (Christianity) | Trinity – Scribd, accessed September 4, 2025, https://www.scribd.com/doc/121826433/Dake-s-Bible-Exposed
10. The Nicene Creed | The Church of England, accessed September 4, 2025, https://www.churchofengland.org/faith-life/what-we-believe/nicene-creed

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