The Prologue is prefaced by a brief opening section in which the book’s narrator welcomes the reader to a theatrical drama. (Both the narrator and the reader serve as characters within the book and only loosely correlate with the identities of the author and the person who is actually reading the book.) The reader is urged to take a seat near the stage and to observe the play as it unfolds; it will cover the biblical stories of Saul, David, and Absalom: “The story is a portrait (you might prefer to call it a rough charcoal sketch) of submission and authority within the kingdom of God” (xvi).

With the Prologue section complete, the story opens with a scene in heaven in which God commands the archangel Gabriel to take two portions of divine being and give one to each of two unborn destinies. The first portion is identified as a gift of power: “With this, the divine breath, you will have his power—power to subdue armies, shame the enemies of God, and accomplish his work on the earth” (xvii-xviii). This gift of power, it is noted, will relate only to the outer life of the person; it does not touch the inner life.