Student Study Guide
Chapter 9
The Great Divides
Section 1 — The Great Divides
Section One
On December 28, 2019, during a long drive to Crystal Springs, Mississippi, Steve received a prophetic word: "Warn My people, the decade of the 2020s would be a decade of extremes. Things were not going to calm down. They are not to look to their circumstances to gain stability. They must hear My voice." God then spoke Isaiah 33:6: "Wisdom and knowledge will be the stability of your times, and the strength of salvation; the fear of the Lord is His treasure." Within weeks, Covid exploded across the world, and the global Church faced a choice greater than any generation before it: unite in love and release heaven's power, or let old patterns of pride and fear-driven division shut off the anointing the world desperately needed.
Instead of unity, the book describes major battle lines drawn - Christians turning on Christians over church closures, mask wearing, government overreach, vaccines, and the racial unrest of 2020. According to the chapter, fear, division, self-preservation, and a failure to clearly hear God's voice caused even highly regarded churches to shut down and retreat rather than stand together in prayer during that season.
Think It Through
Why do you think fear so often produces division rather than unity, even among believers who share the same core faith?
Your Thoughts
Recall Check
Fill in these details from the story above, from memory.
God said the decade of the 2020s would be a decade of .
Isaiah 33:6: "Wisdom and knowledge will be the stability of your times... the fear of the ___ is His treasure."
Battle lines were drawn over church closures, masks, government overreach, vaccines, and racial .
Section 2 — The New Commandment: The Only Answer
Section Two
Remember From Section 1
God said stability would not come from ___ but from wisdom, knowledge, and the fear of the Lord.
Jesus placed His new commandment to love one another immediately before His greatest promises of greater works and answered prayer. The oil of the Holy Spirit described in Psalm 133 flows down from the head only when brothers and sisters dwell together in unity. When love is replaced by pride and the lust for power - driven by fear rooted in insecurity - that oil is blocked, the blessing stops, and the prayer anointing that could change nations is cut off from the Church.
History has shown the devastating cost of broken unity. Three times the visible body of Christ suffered major, permanent splits: in 451, again in 1054, and once more in the Reformation of the 1500s. In each case, the disputes were often relatively minor in the daily life of the average believer - yet leaders blew them into life-or-death battles, shutting down the very prayer power that could have changed history.
Recall Check
Fill in these from what you just read above, using your own memory.
Jesus gave His new commandment to love one another His greatest promises of greater works and answered prayer.
"Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in !" (Psalm 133:1)
The visible body of Christ suffered major permanent splits in 451, 1054, and the .
Reflection
Why do you think Jesus placed the command to love one another immediately before, rather than after, His greatest prayer promises?
Your Thoughts
Chapter 8 promised that the chapters ahead would look honestly at how the Body of Christ became divided - not just theologically but spiritually. This is that chapter: three permanent fractures across sixteen centuries, each one starting the same way pride does in ordinary relationships too.
Section 3 — The First Major Split: Chalcedon, 451
Section Three
Remember From Section 2
The oil of Psalm 133 flows down from the head only when brothers and sisters dwell together in ___.
A century after Nicaea settled that Jesus is fully God, a new question split the Church: how do His divine and human natures relate in one Person? Alexandria stressed the unity of Christ's natures; Antioch stressed His genuine humanity. When the monk Eutyches pushed the Alexandrian view so far that Christ's humanity seemed swallowed into His divinity, Constantinople excommunicated him - enraging Alexandria's Patriarch Dioscorus. Pope Leo I sent his "Tome," claiming final authority for Rome, and Alexandria received it as an insult to its own centuries of theological leadership.
At a violent council in Ephesus in 449 - which Pope Leo called a "robber synod" - Patriarch Flavian was beaten so badly he died of his injuries. A new council convened at Chalcedon in 451, where over five hundred bishops finally heard Leo's letter read aloud and responded with a shout affirming Rome's authority. The council defined Christ's two natures "without confusion, without change, without division, without separation" - and elevated Constantinople's standing at Alexandria's direct expense.
Egypt's reaction was immediate and violent. Riots broke out for six years, and a patriarch forced on Alexandria was murdered by a mob in 457. Entire regions broke away permanently - communities that still exist today, over 1,575 years later, considering Chalcedon a betrayal.
Recall Check
Fill in these from what you just read above, using your own memory.
At Chalcedon, the bishops responded to Leo's letter with the shout: "Peter has spoken through !"
The Egyptian believers who rejected Chalcedon became known today as the Church of Egypt.
The split of 451 happened just as the western Roman was collapsing under barbarian invasions.
Reflection
The chapter says most ordinary believers on both sides could not have explained the theological dispute, let alone decided between the two positions. What does that tell you about how disputes get inflamed by leaders?
My Thoughts
Section 4 — The Second Major Split: The Great Schism of 1054
Section Four
Remember From Section 3
The Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and Ethiopian churches all trace their separate identity back to the Council of ___.
Six centuries later, the same deadly pattern played out on a larger scale. Small differences between the Latin West and Greek East - over married clergy, leavened bread, and the West's addition of "and the Son" to the Nicene Creed - had piled up for generations, but the real issue was still power: who had the final say? Patriarch Michael Cerularius of Constantinople closed Latin-style churches in the city; Pope Leo IX sent the confrontational Cardinal Humbert to respond.
On July 16, 1054, Humbert walked into the Hagia Sophia cathedral during the most sacred worship service of the Eastern Church, slammed a papal bull on the altar declaring Cerularius excommunicated, and walked out shaking the dust from his feet. Within days, Cerularius excommunicated the Roman representatives right back and publicly burned the bull in the street. Historians mark this moment as the start of the Great Schism - a division that still stands, over 970 years later.
In 1204, crusaders who were supposed to be fighting Muslims instead attacked and looted Constantinople itself - the greatest Christian city in the East.
Recall Check
Fill in these from what you just read above, using your own memory.
Cardinal Humbert slammed a papal bull on the altar of Hagia Sophia declaring Patriarch Cerularius .
In 1204, crusaders instead attacked and looted , the greatest Christian city in the East.
The formal excommunications of 1054 were finally lifted in as a gesture of goodwill, though the division remained.
Reflection
The chapter notes the average Christian in 1054 prayed the same Lord's Prayer and loved the same Jesus as their counterparts on the other side of the split. Why does that detail matter?
Your Thoughts
Section 5 — The Third Fracture: The Reformation
Section Five
Remember From Section 4
Historians mark the start of the Great Schism from the moment a papal bull was slammed on the altar of ___.
By the early 1500s, resistance to papal excess - indulgence sales, political power over kings, and the claim that submission to Rome was required for salvation - had been building for over a century, from John Wycliffe's English Bible to Jan Hus, who was burned at the stake in 1415 after being promised safe conduct. When Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to a church door in Wittenberg in 1517, protesting the sale of indulgences, his deeper conclusion - drawn from Romans - was that a sinner is made right with God through faith alone. Excommunicated in 1521 and ordered to recant before the Emperor, Luther famously replied, "Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, God help me."
The violence that followed was catastrophic: the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572 killed thousands of French Protestants within days; the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) may have cost parts of Germany a quarter to nearly half their population. And Protestantism itself fractured immediately - Luther and the Swiss reformer Zwingli met in 1529 hoping to unite the movement, but broke apart permanently over whether Christ was truly present in communion or only symbolically present.
Recall Check
Fill in these from what you just read above, using your own memory.
Luther declared before the emperor: "Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, God help ."
Luther and Zwingli broke apart over whether Christ was literally present in communion, or whether His presence was only .
Reflection
The chapter says the Reformation had genuine grievances behind it, yet the response on all sides sank into pride and bloodshed. How do you personally tell the difference between a genuine grievance and pride taking over a genuine grievance?
My Thoughts
Section 6 — The Devastating Cost to the Prayer Anointing
Section Six
Remember From Section 5
Jesus sent His disciples out "two by two" so that His ___ could rest on a place and open heaven over it.
The Day of Pentecost came when "they were all with one accord in one place" (Acts 2:1) - not when every theological debate had been resolved. The same tragedy of unity fracturing repeated in the twentieth century: the interracial Azusa Street Revival of 1906-1909 was one of the most remarkable outpourings in modern history under William Seymour's leadership, until theological disputes and a public break with Charles Parham fragmented the movement into competing, often racially segregated denominations within a few years.
In Anaheim in May 1988, Steve felt waves of anointing sweep the stadium as Dr. Morris Cerullo walked onto the platform, and God told him plainly: "He has taken authority over the spiritual atmosphere in prayer. He did this through love." Love-empowered prayer is the secret ingredient of the D.E.E.P. anointing - and it cannot operate where the Body is divided by pride, selfish ambition, and power struggles.
The chapters ahead will look at Jesus' prayer in John 17 as the actual blueprint for entering this kind of oneness, and at what the 120 believers in the Upper Room did for ten days that positioned them for Pentecost's fire.
Recall Check
Fill in this from what you just read above, using your own memory.
In 1988, God told Steve that Dr. Cerullo took authority over the spiritual atmosphere through .
The Three Fractures
| What Happened | In Your Own Words: What Pride Cost the Church |
|---|---|
| Chalcedon, 451 — Immediate Trigger: a dispute over how Christ's divine and human natures relate, entangled with Rome's claim to final authority | |
| Chalcedon, 451 — Long-Term Cost: the Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and Ethiopian churches broke away permanently | |
| Great Schism, 1054 — Immediate Trigger: Cardinal Humbert excommunicating Patriarch Cerularius at the altar of Hagia Sophia | |
| Great Schism, 1054 — Long-Term Cost: the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches remain divided to this day | |
| The Reformation — Immediate Trigger: Luther's 95 Theses protesting the sale of indulgences | |
| The Reformation — Long-Term Cost: decades of religious wars and Protestantism itself fracturing into competing groups |
One More Table
| What It Looked Like | What Was Actually True |
|---|---|
| Each of the three splits was purely a theological necessity, fought only to protect sound doctrine | Pride, the fight for power, and the fear of losing position were the actual root cause in each case — the theological disputes were often invisible to the daily faith of ordinary believers. |
| Where in your own life might "defending what's right" actually be pride, position, or fear wearing a theological costume? |
"The oil will flow. The dew will descend." What would it look like, practically, for you to help the oil flow rather than block it in your own church or family this month?
My Response
Personal Prayer Journal
Write a prayer asking God to show you any place where pride, fear, or the need to be right may be costing you unity with someone else in the Body.
Chapter 9 — Practice Test
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Part A: Multiple Choice (5 questions · 2 pts each)
1. What did God tell Steve the decade of the 2020s would be?
2. According to the chapter, what happens to the "oil" of Psalm 133 when unity among believers is broken?
3. What triggered the formal start of the Great Schism of 1054?
4. What was Martin Luther's central theological conclusion from his study of Romans?
5. According to Acts 2:1, what was true of the believers just before the Holy Spirit fell at Pentecost?
Part B: True or False (6 statements · 1 pt each)
1. God told Steve that stability in the 2020s would come from paying close attention to circumstances.
2. Jesus placed His new commandment to love one another immediately before His greatest promises of greater works and answered prayer.
3. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 was the only major split in church history the chapter describes.
4. Historians mark the start of the Great Schism from a legal document being slammed on the altar of Hagia Sophia during worship.
5. Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli fully united the Protestant movement in 1529 with no remaining disagreements.
6. The Azusa Street Revival's interracial unity fragmented after theological disputes and a public break between its leaders.
Part C: Fill in the Blank (5 items · 1 pt each)
1. God said the decade of the 2020s would be a decade of .
2. "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in !" (Psalm 133:1)
3. At Chalcedon, the bishops shouted, "Peter has spoken through !"
4. Martin Luther said, "Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, God help ."
5. In 1988, God told Steve that Dr. Cerullo took authority over the atmosphere through .
Part D: Short Answer (completion credit)
1. Explain, in your own words, what all three major church splits (451, 1054, the Reformation) had in common, and why the chapter says this matters for the D.E.E.P. prayer anointing.
2. Explain the connection the chapter draws between Acts 2:1 ("one accord") and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
3. Explain what the chapter means when it says "the oil stopped flowing" during the summer of 2020, and what it says could have prevented that.
Part E — Before You Leave
Is there a relationship, church, or group where pride or being "right" may be costing me more unity than it's worth?
Where have I personally experienced or witnessed division driven by fear rather than love?
What would it look like for me to "choose love" the way the chapter describes the Prayer Strike Force Team choosing to be sent together without full theological agreement?