Messenger of the Lord

Ellen White’s Core Theme—the Title of One of Her Best-Known Books

Mrs. White’s two-hour vision at Lovett’s Grove, Ohio, in mid-March 1858, became known as the “Great Controversy vision.” ¹⁷ In 1860 she stated that this vision repeated and amplified what she had been shown ten years earlier and that she was instructed to write out the vision in full. ¹⁸ MOL 445.7

The broad outline of this vision became the first volume of Spiritual Gifts (1858). ¹⁹ Although others have written on the general subject of the “controversy” between good and evil, no other writer has unfolded the cosmic dimensions and the eternal consequences of the conflict between Christ and Satan as Ellen White has done. ²⁰ The Great Controversy Theme presents a unique philosophy of history as well as a distinctive theological framework for Christian doctrine. ²¹ MOL 445.8

In addition to the vision’s panorama, Ellen White was given a warning that “Satan would make strong efforts to hinder me, but angels of God would not leave me in the conflict.” ²² She soon learned what that warning meant. Before the Whites reached their Battle Creek home she experienced paralysis of her left arm and leg and was unable to speak. For weeks she could not feel any sensation in her hand, and not even cold water poured on her head. When trying to walk, she often fell. In this condition she began to write out the vision that ultimately became the book we know as The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan. ²³ MOL 446.1

Three months later she learned in a vision what was behind this violent physical attack: “Satan designed to take my life to hinder the work I was about to write; but angels of God were sent to my rescue.... I saw, among other things, that I should be blessed with better health than before the attack at Jackson.” ²⁴ MOL 446.2

During a general gathering of church members from May 21 to 24, 1858, Ellen White related some of the events she had seen in that vision and was now writing out. One day the group of 400 were enthralled with the “startling facts and vivid descriptions.” When she reviewed the humiliation and suffering of Jesus, the audience was visibly moved, even audibly sobbing. She continued in the evening until ten o’clock! The audience then responded with a spontaneous testimony meeting. ²⁵ MOL 446.3

In September of 1858, this first of several revisions and expansions of the vision was published under the title, The Great Controversy Between Christ and His Angels, And Satan and His Angels. By 1864 the first expansion of this theme appeared as “Important Facts of Faith in Connection With the History of Holy Men of Old” in Spiritual Gifts, volume 3, and the first half of Spiritual Gifts, volume 4. This printing unfolded events from Creation to Christ’s ascension. MOL 446.4