The Teachings and History of Finis Jennings Dake,
Examined in His Own Words
Trinity Theological Seminary
"But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness,
so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached,
or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received,
or a different gospel which you have not accepted — you may well put up with it!"
2 Corinthians 11:3–4 (NKJV)
The Dake Annotated Reference Bible sits open on pulpits and kitchen tables across the Pentecostal and charismatic world. Most of the people who love it have never read its notes slowly. This book reads them slowly.
Finis Jennings Dake (1902–1987) was a man of enormous energy who studied Scripture more hours than most of his critics ever will. His study Bible and his thousand-page course, God's Plan for Man, have shaped generations of Spirit-filled believers. Many who carry his Bible love Jesus sincerely and have never noticed what the notes actually teach about the God they worship.
Another God is a fair, documented examination of what those notes say. Its method is fixed and never varies: quote Dake exactly, in his own words, with a full citation; explain in plain English what the quotation actually claims; then answer it from Scripture and the historic Christian faith. Every doctrine is shown on the page before it is weighed. Photographs of the original notes are embedded so the reader never has to trust the author. The reader is shown the page.
The covenant of this book: Full context, never a clipped sentence. Edition labels on every citation. Honest concession wherever Dake gets it right. In-house differences (like conditional security) kept off the indictment. No attacks on the man. No sneering at the people who love this Bible. The verdicts land on the teaching, not on the teacher or the reader.
This book is written from inside the Pentecostal house, not against it. The author holds three degrees from Assemblies of God schools and believes the gifts of the Spirit are for today. The argument here is not with Pentecostalism, with taking the Bible seriously, or with expecting God to heal and act. The argument is that Dake, while using the church's words, teaches a different God: three separate beings instead of one God in three persons; a God who is somewhere instead of everywhere; a God who investigates instead of knowing all things; a God whose power is limited by human free will. And in the pre-1988 printings, on page 159 of the New Testament, thirty reasons why God commands the separation of the races.
By the last page the reader should be able to say: I have seen what Dake actually wrote, in his own words, with the page numbers. I understand what he meant by the words he used. And I have seen it weighed against the Bible he annotated.
Part I — The Man and the Method
Chapter 1: The Bible on the Table The book's method and its promise: quote first, characterize second. A covenant of fairness the reader can hold the author to.
Chapter 2: The Life of Finis Dake The biography told warmly and honestly: a man of prodigious labor whose industry was real and whose halo was a later construction.
Chapter 3: The Trial The 1936 federal Mann Act conviction, told strictly from the newspapers of the day, with every source linked. A life does not refute a doctrine, but the record answers the silence.
Chapter 4: Taking It Literally Dake's hyperliteral hermeneutic: "literal when at all possible" as the engine that manufactures doctrine. The root of the system examined.
Chapter 5: Same Words, Another Dictionary How a teacher keeps the church's vocabulary while replacing its meanings. Two men both say "I believe in the Trinity." One means one God in three persons. The other means three Gods who agree.
Part II — The God of the Dake Bible
Chapter 6: Dake's Godhead in His Own Words The full documentation: three separate divine persons, each with His own body, soul, and spirit. His pages quoted at length, in context, before a word of verdict.
Chapter 7: One God — The Bible's Answer Scripture's monotheism opened in full. The Shema, the exegesis of echad, the person-and-being distinction, and the Athanasian Creed as the church's answer to tritheism.
Chapter 8: A God with a Body Dake's doctrine that God the Father has a visible body of ordinary human size. "God is Spirit" and the theophanies examined from his pages and from Scripture.
Chapter 9: A God Who Is Somewhere The denial of omnipresence: a God who travels from place to place. Scripture's answer from Jeremiah, the Psalms, and Solomon's own temple-dedication prayer.
Chapter 10: A God Who Learns The denial of omniscience: a God who investigates, tests to learn, hopes, and is surprised. Isaiah's test of deity and the Bible's named futures examined.
Chapter 11: A God Who Cannot The limitation of omnipotence: "God's grace is naturally limited by the free moral agency of man." The Thirty Things Grace Cannot Do, weighed against Jeremiah's "nothing is too hard."
Chapter 12: A God Who Changes The immutability question: a God who literally repents and revises plans. 1 Samuel 15's two statements, twelve verses apart, as the Bible's self-interpreting answer.
Chapter 13: The Christ of the Dake Bible Dake's Christology: the kenosis examined, what he says Christ emptied Himself of, and the Chalcedonian answer that the Incarnation adds humanity without subtracting deity.
Chapter 14: The Spirit of the Dake Bible The Spirit as a third separate being with His own body, soul, and spirit. A continuationist correction: the Spirit is God Himself present, Gift before He is wage.
Part III — The World of the Dake Bible
Chapter 15: The World Before Adam The pre-Adamite civilization: a detailed unrevealed history built on a disputed verb, a 1611 English word, and poetic judgment texts read out of context.
Chapter 16: A Material Heaven Heaven as a literal planet with cities, furniture, and food. Eternal natural generations. The Bible's realism is transfigured realism, not an improved subdivision.
Chapter 17: Healing and the Atonement Healing guaranteed on the same terms as forgiveness. A continuationist chapter that defends present-day healing and refuses the audit that sends the dying to their deathbeds as defendants.
Chapter 18: The Laws of Faith The law-machinery of prayer: meet the conditions and the answer is certain, "no defeat possible." Weighed against a garden at night where the sinless Man prayed and was told No.
Chapter 19: The Crowded Heavens Dake's angelology and demonology: ranked hierarchies, angel-marriages, and a demon behind every doubt and delay. The real war honored; the crowded map corrected.
Part IV — The Race Notes
Chapter 20: Thirty Reasons The full documentation of page 159: thirty numbered reasons for racial segregation, printed as Bible annotation beneath Acts 17:26 in every pre-1988 copy. Photographed, transcribed, and shown.
Chapter 21: One Blood The Bible's answer: one race in God's image, from one couple, through one ark, made "from one blood." Every cluster of the note's arguments met with Scripture.
Chapter 22: The Quiet Erasure What happened to page 159 after 1987. The text changed, in stages, without acknowledgment. The change was right. The silence was wrong.
Part V — Legacy, Defenders, and the Way Home
Chapter 23: Dake's Legacy Where the teaching traveled: documented echoes in broader streams, traced only as far as the receipts go. Unexamined margins become unexamined pulpits.
Chapter 24: Answering the Defenders The cumulative case for Dake, stated at full strength and answered strand by strand. The best defense of Dake, honestly weighed, is the case for reading him more carefully.
Chapter 25: Loving the Bible More Than the Notes The pastoral exit. A transferable method for testing any study Bible. The decision about the Bible in hand. And the true and greater God, confessed at full size.
Appendices
Appendix A: The Trial Record The documentary companion to Chapter 3: annotated document list, hosted sources, and a dates-only timeline from the newspapers.
Appendix B: Page 159 in Full The canonical record: photographs, the complete verbatim transcription of the segregation note, and the later-edition replacement.
Appendix C: The Editions Compared The edition table behind Chapter 22: each printing's state of the race-related material, evidenced by photographs and scans.
Appendix D: A Dake Dictionary The same-words reference: Dake's definitions set beside the historic meanings, term by term, with verified quotations and owning-chapter links.
Appendix E: Dake and the Historic Faith The doctrine-by-doctrine chart: Dake's position, Scripture's answer, and the historic confession, row by row.
Appendix F: Sources and Bibliography Every source used, laid open for audit: Dake's works by edition, the documentary sources, the measuring line, and a short shelf for further study.
"Test all things; hold fast what is good." 1 Thessalonians 5:21 (NKJV)