Chapter 18

The Laws of Faith

Prayer as a set of laws, and the prayers God answered with no

Near the end of Bible Truths Unmasked, a book he published in 1950, Finis Dake gathered his teaching on prayer into a promise that allows no exceptions. Under the heading “No Defeat Possible to Christians” he wrote this.

If God said these things they are true and they are "yea and amen to them that believe" (2 Cor. 1:20). If they are true they cannot be lies. If they are not lies then it is impossible for any child of God to pray in faith and not receive. Bible Truths Unmasked, ch. 16, p. 124¹

Set that sentence beside a prayer the Son of God prayed on the night He was betrayed. In Gethsemane Jesus fell on His face and asked His Father for something He wanted.

O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will. Matthew 26:39 (NKJV)²

He prayed those words three times, and the cup did not pass. Yet the letter to the Hebrews says that He “was heard because of His godly fear” (Hebrews 5:7).³ The Father heard His Son and still did not give Him what He asked. Under Dake’s rule that should not happen to anyone who prays in faith.

Dake taught that prayer works by law. God has written down His terms, and a believer who meets every one of them is certain to receive what he asks. When the answer does not come, the fault is always in the person who prayed. That is harmful false teaching. It turns asking into a legal claim that binds God, and it lays the blame for every unanswered prayer on the one who prayed it. Scripture records holy prayers that God answered with no, and the prayer in Gethsemane is one of them.

I was trained in Pentecostal schools, and I believe that God answers prayer, heals the sick and keeps every promise He made. Believers should ask boldly and keep on asking. My argument is with the law Dake built around prayer and with what that law does to a believer when heaven is silent. His teaching on healing in particular is the subject of Chapter 17.

What a law of prayer does to the people who pray

Picture a man who lost his job in the spring. He has tithed for years, and every night he and his wife have asked God for work. He has quoted the promises out loud and tried hard not to doubt. By the fall nothing has come. A friend from his Bible study, meaning well, hands him a typed list of sixteen conditions for answered prayer and asks him to go down it and find the one he missed.

The list is Dake’s, and the friend is only doing what the list requires. Under a law of prayer, a silent heaven can mean one thing. The man failed somewhere, and his job is to find out where. He cannot consider that God may have other plans for him, or that the answer is coming later, or that God is saying no for reasons of His own. Each of those thoughts counts as unbelief, and unbelief is the very failure he is searching for.

The friend came to encourage him, and the system turns him into an examiner. It changes the picture of God as well. A promise leaves God free to answer as a Father answers, while a law that binds Him once the terms are met leaves Him no room to answer any other way. Prayer becomes a claim filed with a court, and God becomes the judge who must rule for anyone who files it correctly.

Prayer as a case in court

Dake’s main lesson on prayer is Lesson Sixteen of his course God’s Plan for Man. It opens with a definition.

Prayer is the offering up of our desires for lawful and needful things and things we want that are promised by God, with humble confidence that we will obtain them through Jesus Christ for God's glory and for our good. It is the pleading of our cause in God's court. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Sixteen, p. 279⁴

The first sentence would sit comfortably in many prayer books. The second sentence governs the rest of his teaching. Dake calls prayer “the pleading of our cause in God’s court” and builds everything else on that picture.⁵ A court decides cases by law, and in Bible Truths Unmasked Dake supplies the law. He sets out sixteen numbered conditions of answered prayer, each tied to a passage of Scripture. Here are four of them.

(1) ASK, SEEK, and KNOCK are the conditions of Matt. 7:7-11 if one wants to RECEIVE, FIND, and have the door OPENED to him. . . . (13) ASK IN FAITH, NOTHING WAVERING is the condition of getting every prayer answered, according to James 1:5-8. (14) BE HUMBLE, SUBMIT TO GOD, and RESIST THE DEVIL are other conditions of answered prayer (James 4:6-10). (16) ASK ACCORDING TO THE WILL OF GOD is the final requirement of John if we expect answers to all prayers (John 5: 14-15). This means that we pray for those things promised by God and that are in harmony with His Word. Bible Truths Unmasked, ch. 16, pp. 123–124⁶

Each condition is a requirement, and the requirements together are the price of an answer. Right after the list Dake tells the reader what to do with it.

One should memorize both the conditions and the benefits of the promises and affirm both at all times when seeking an answer to prayer. He should intelligently refuse to be denied until he receives the answer and then be thankful to God for it. Bible Truths Unmasked, ch. 16, p. 124⁷

Jesus praised persistence, and a child may keep asking his father for the same thing. Dake’s reader is told to do more than that. He is to learn the terms by heart so that he can “refuse to be denied” until the answer comes. That is how a lawyer holds a court to its own rules, and it leaves the Father no room to answer as He sees fit.

No defeat possible

The conditions come with a guarantee. In Lesson Sixteen Dake states it this way.

Prayer will never fail when it is done right. Heaven and Earth will pass away more easily than prayer will become powerless and fruitless if men will pray right. Prayer never fails when man never fails to believe God when he asks for something. Prayer is absolute and unfailing when faith is the same. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Sixteen, p. 281⁸

A reader will turn the first sentence around without being told to. If prayer never fails when it is done right, a prayer that failed was not done right. Dake also borrows the Lord’s words about heaven and earth passing away and attaches them to a method of praying. In a supplement he reduces the law to one sentence.

There is no possible way to transgress the law of faith and get an answer. God’s Plan for Man, Supplement Five, p. 183⁹

On the next page he names the penalty for breaking that law and tells the believer how to read his own unanswered prayers.

The penalty for breaking the law of faith is failing to receive those things which man would receive if he exercised faith instead of unbelief. No man can break this law and still get results or answers to his prayers. When prayers are not answered for one who is in Christ, let it become a settled fact with him that he is breaking the law of faith. God’s Plan for Man, Supplement Five, p. 184¹⁰

The believer is told to settle the question before he has prayed about it. He is not to ask God why, or to wait, or to allow that God may have reasons He has not shared. He already knows what went wrong, because the answer was decided before he asked. In another supplement Dake explains why the fault can only lie on one side.

In the final analysis the answer to your prayer depends upon you more than it does upon God, for the simple reason that God does not fail or change and there is no possible failure on His part. The only failure that is possible is on your part. God’s Plan for Man, Supplement Nine, p. 330¹¹

The premise is true. God does not fail, and He does not change (Malachi 3:6; James 1:17). The conclusion does not follow from it. A father who refuses his son’s request has not failed, and the God who keeps every promise is still free to say no to a request He never promised to grant. Dake moves from the claim that God cannot fail to the claim that God cannot decline, and his whole system rests on that step.

The law even governs the words a believer may use when he prays. Chapter 17 prints two passages in which Dake calls the prayer “If it be thy will” a sin when it is prayed for healing. In the next chapter of the same book, under the heading “Quit Praying ‘If It Be Thy Will’” he says it again.

Let this be settled once and forever and never again question God or make Him a liar by saying, "if it be thy will." Since He has promised healing, it is sinful and contrary to His Word and will to pray this way. One should go to God in absolute unwavering faith for those things that He has promised. He should never question the will of God at all concerning what He has promised. Bible Truths Unmasked, ch. 14, p. 94¹²

On these terms, praying “if it be thy will” about anything God has promised is unbelief, and it makes God a liar. Earlier in the same chapter Dake gives the reason God makes no exceptions: “He is not that kind of God, and He will not break His laws for anyone.”¹³ He means it as a comfort, since God plays no favorites. But the sentence also sets the laws above God, so that He cannot step outside them for any person who has not met the terms. In his lesson on faith Dake rules out every other explanation.

Dake had a real target in that lesson. He blamed preachers for teaching believers to resign themselves to defeat in prayer, and many pulpits of his day did teach a passive acceptance that Scripture does not teach.¹⁵ He was right that resignation is not the same thing as faith. His cure was to make the answer certain and to take every other explanation away.

Mastery over the devil

Dake carried the same law beyond prayer. In Bible Truths Unmasked one section is headed “Complete Mastery Over the Devil Possible” and makes this promise to the believer who meets the terms.

Demons cannot stand before you. Sicknesses will have to go. Pains will have to leave. Sins and bad habit demons will have to depart. Demons that hinder and cause unbelief and doubt will loose their hold on you if you resist them and refuse to obey them. All failures and spiritual defeats to overcome any problem in life will be a thing of the past. Financial problems or any trouble can be solved by a definite stand against these powers. God will back up His promises and will grant everything that is asked in faith in the name of Jesus. Bible Truths Unmasked, ch. 16, p. 121¹⁶

Part of this is the New Testament’s own teaching. Christ has disarmed the powers of darkness (Colossians 2:15), and the devil flees from a believer who resists him (James 4:7). A Christian who has been taught to live in fear of evil spirits needs to hear that. What Dake adds is the guarantee. In his passage sicknesses “will have to go” and every failure and defeat “will be a thing of the past” for the believer who takes his stand. Even money troubles can be solved “by a definite stand against these powers.” The New Testament never promises that a correctly performed act will always bring that result.

When the trouble stays, the system has its explanation ready. In the next section Dake tells the believer what to do: “Refuse to take no for an answer. Refuse to even think that it is possible that you have not been heard of God.”¹⁷ The believer may not even consider that God has answered in some other way. Dake’s teaching on demons themselves belongs to Chapter 19.

The laws of prosperity

The same law governs money. Supplement Six of the course opens its list with this sentence.

The following are the laws of prosperity whereby all men can have guaranteed success in life if they will obey these laws. God’s Plan for Man, Supplement Six, p. 217¹⁸

He closes the section by stating the law as if it were a fact of nature.

Men cannot practice the above-mentioned laws of prosperity without being prosperous. God’s Plan for Man, Supplement Six, p. 222¹⁹

Much of the advice is ordinary wisdom. Work hard, be honest, give generously and waste nothing, and you will usually do better than if you do the opposite. Proverbs teaches the same things as the normal course of life under God.²⁰ Proverbs does not turn them into a guarantee, and the Bible that contains Proverbs also contains Job and Ecclesiastes, which record the exceptions at length.

A passage in Heavenly Hosts, a compilation of Dake’s writings published after his death, warns against putting money ahead of God.

The devil preaches to the diligent businessman that he needs to spend all his time getting rich before serving the Lord. The truth is, if one will truly serve the Lord, he can be abundantly prosperous with God's help. Heavenly Hosts, ch. 4, “Deception About Wealth”²¹

The rebuke to the man who chases wealth first is right. But the passage still ties abundant prosperity to true service, and Dake’s system invites the reader to run that promise backward. If true service brings prosperity, the believer who stays poor has not truly served. The same pattern runs through the prayer laws, the mastery over the devil and the laws of prosperity. Each begins with a real promise in Scripture and ends as a mechanism, and the mechanism can place the blame in only one direction.

His own last condition

Dake took the last of his sixteen conditions from John’s first letter. It reads “ASK ACCORDING TO THE WILL OF GOD” and points to this passage.

Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him. 1 John 5:14–15 (NKJV)²²

Dake read “according to His will” as a rule about which requests may be filed. In his words, we pray “for those things promised by God and that are in harmony with His Word.” Once we do, the question of God’s will is closed. He says the same thing in his course: “Never question the will of God in anything that you ask according to the promises. It is already His will for you to ask what you will.”²³ On that reading, a believer who finds a promise that covers his request has nothing more to hear from God about it.

John’s word for “will” (Greek thelema) names the desire of a person, what someone wants. Jesus prayed with the same word in Gethsemane when He went away a second time and said to His Father, “Your will be done” (Matthew 26:42).²⁴ John is speaking of the living will of the Father who listens, and what he promises first is that “He hears us.” He does promise that we have what we ask, but only what we ask according to that will. Paul says plainly that “we do not know what we should pray for as we ought” (Romans 8:26). The condition Dake put last on his list is the one that leaves the final word over every request with God.

Holy prayers that God answered with no

Dake wrote that “not one Scripture says that unanswered prayer indicates any other cause” than unbelief. The Bible records several faithful people who prayed and did not receive what they asked. In none of these cases does it name unbelief as the reason.

Moses pleaded with God to let him cross the Jordan and see the good land, and God refused him.

But the LORD was angry with me on your account, and would not listen to me. So the LORD said to me: ‘Enough of that! Speak no more to Me of this matter. Deuteronomy 3:26 (NKJV)²⁵

God gave His reason, and it had nothing to do with how Moses prayed that day. It was a judgment God had passed earlier, at the waters of Meribah. God then showed Moses the whole land from the top of Pisgah, and when Moses died, God Himself buried him (Deuteronomy 34:1–6). Scripture does not treat him as a man who failed to pray correctly.

David pleaded with God for his infant son. He fasted and lay all night on the ground, and on the seventh day the child died (2 Samuel 12:16–18). When his servants asked why he had fasted, David answered, “Who can tell whether the LORD will be gracious to me, that the child may live?”²⁶ He prayed hard without a guarantee, and Scripture never rebukes him for the way he prayed.

Paul asked three times for his thorn in the flesh to be taken away. He reports the Lord’s reply: “And He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness’” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Dake argued that the thorn was an angel of Satan and not a disease.²⁷ Even on his reading, Paul asked for something three times and was told no, and the no came with a gift.

Then there is Gethsemane. Jesus asked for the cup to pass from Him, and He asked three times. Dake set this prayer apart from the prayers of Christians. He wrote that there is “no analogy” between it and a Christian’s prayer for healing, since healing is promised and the cup was not (Chapter 17).²⁸ But his rule about unanswered prayer has no such limit. It says that the lack of an answer “simply shows unbelief” and that no Scripture gives any other cause. The garden is the hardest case of all for that rule, because the One who prayed there had no unbelief in Him. The Father heard Him, and the answer was no.

What faith is aimed at

Dake leaned hard on Mark 11:22–24, where Jesus speaks of faith that moves a mountain and tells His disciples to believe that they receive what they ask. Before any of that, Jesus names what faith rests on.

So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God. Mark 11:22 (NKJV)²⁹

Faith has an object, and the object is God. It is trust placed in a Person, and its strength comes from the One it trusts, whatever the trusting person feels on a given day. That is why Hebrews 11 can end the way it does. The first part of its list tells of people who shut the mouths of lions and received their dead raised to life. Then the chapter turns.

And others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. . . . And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, . . . Hebrews 11:35, 39 (NKJV)³⁰

Some were rescued and some were sawn in two, and the writer commends both groups for the same faith. On Dake’s terms the second half of the chapter lists people who broke the law of faith. The writer of Hebrews says they all “obtained a good testimony through faith” (v. 39).

A system no answer can test

Ask what result could ever count against Dake’s laws. An answered prayer proves that the laws work, and an unanswered prayer proves that the one who prayed broke them. Every possible outcome confirms the system, so no outcome can test it. Dake could not have learned such a rule from watching how God answers prayer, because nothing God did could ever have corrected it.

Dake did offer evidence. He kept letters marked “Testimony” and printed some of them. One told of a woman who heard him on the radio and “acted upon the Word and got out of bed” after ten years of sickness. Another told of a paralyzed man in Detroit who, when Dake told him to believe he already had his healing, asked what he was lying there for and got up.³² I believe God heals, and if those things happened, God did them and deserves the thanks. The letters show that God answers prayer, and they leave the law unproved. A good Father giving good gifts to children who ask Him explains every one of them. The letters from people who believed just as hard and stayed in bed were never printed, because under the system their failures were filed under their own unbelief.

The pastoral result follows the logic. If every unanswered prayer means hidden unbelief, then every suffering believer has a hidden fault, and a friend’s duty is to help him find it. Job’s friends reasoned that way, and God rebuked them for it (Job 42:7).³³

The system also makes God smaller. A God who must grant every request filed on the right terms has no freedom left to act as a Father, and His own laws stand over Him. That is the God of Chapter 11, whose grace or love, Dake says, is “naturally limited by the free moral agency of man.”³⁴ The laws of prayer and the limited God are the same teaching seen from two sides.

How the Bible teaches us to ask

Scripture puts something better in the place of the law. It tells believers to ask boldly. Jesus said, “ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Luke 11:9). Then He argued from earthly fathers to the heavenly one: “how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” (Luke 11:13).³⁵ The greatest gift in that promise is God’s own presence. Dake made the receiving of the Spirit a matter of terms as well, and Chapter 14 takes that up.

It tells believers to keep asking. Jesus told the parable of the widow and the unjust judge “that men always ought to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1). If an unjust judge gives way to a widow who keeps coming back, the just Father will surely act for His own.³⁶ Persistence in that parable is trust that keeps returning to the same door, and it leaves the Father free.

It tells believers to ask in submission. In Gethsemane the Son asked for what He wanted and then placed His Father’s will above it, and the church has prayed that way ever since. Paul tells us what God promises to the person who asks.

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6–7 (NKJV)³⁷

Paul promises the peace of God, and he promises it while the request is still waiting. The answer to the request is left with God. That is a guarantee in the full sense, and no unanswered prayer can take it away.

Doesn’t God’s honesty make His promises guarantees?

Some readers will say that God cannot lie, so His promises must be guarantees, and Dake simply took Him at His word. The premise is true. Paul calls Him “God, who cannot lie” (Titus 1:2). But God’s truthfulness is a reason to read His promises the way He gave them. Scripture speaks in different kinds of sentences. A covenant oath is one kind. A proverb such as “Train up a child” (Proverbs 22:6) is another, a saying about how life usually goes. An invitation to pray is a third, and John supplies the clause that governs the prayer promises, “according to His will” (1 John 5:14). To believe God fully is to believe that clause too. Dake honored God’s honesty by taking away His freedom to answer, which is a strange way to honor a Person.

Isn’t a submitted prayer a doubting prayer?

Others will say that adding “if it be Your will” teaches people to pray with doubt. Doubt and submission are different things. Doubt says that God may not be able, or may not be good. Submission says that God is able and good and wiser than my request. The prayer in Gethsemane holds no doubt at all. It holds a real request, pressed three times, and a real surrender. A submitted prayer can also be the bolder of the two. A believer who thinks a no would expose his faith as false will ask only for safe things. A believer who trusts his Father can ask for the hardest thing, because he can accept the answer either way.

Aren’t the conditions just holiness?

A third objection is that Dake’s conditions only ask for holiness and obedience. Several of them are plain commands of Scripture, such as humility and submission to God, and Scripture does connect sin with hindered prayer.³⁸ The trouble is the use Dake makes of them. Jesus said, “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you” (John 15:7). That promise describes a life joined to Christ, and the life shapes what a person asks for.³⁹ Dake turns the same verse into a term to be met. The difference shows when the answer does not come. A believer who abides in Christ takes his disappointment to his Father, while a believer working from a list goes back to the list to look for his fault.

Heard in the garden

Dake taught that prayer works by law. He gave sixteen conditions, promised a certain answer to whoever meets them, and passed a settled verdict of unbelief on whoever does not receive. He promised mastery over every trouble and guaranteed success to the obedient, and he called the prayer “if it be thy will” a sin. That is harmful false teaching. It binds God to a contract He never made, and it lays the blame for every unanswered prayer on the one who prayed.

Think again of the man who lost his job and the friend with the typed list. The list sends him back into himself to search for a fault. The gospel sends him back to his Father with his grief. Those are two different religions.

The Father hears that man, as John promised, whether his faith is strong this week or weak. He should ask for the job and ask often, as boldly as he likes. When he has asked, he can pray what the Son prayed in the garden and know that the words “nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will” are trust and not unbelief. The prayer in Gethsemane was heard, though it was not granted, and the cross that followed gave us everything. The Father who “did not spare His own Son” can be trusted with every lesser request (Romans 8:32).⁴⁰