Loading…

Ellen G. White and Her Critics

356/552

The Historical Background of “The Great Controversy”

We turn, first, to the book, The Great Controversy. On March 14, 1858, Mrs. White took part in a funeral service at Lovett’s Grove schoolhouse near Bowling Green, Ohio. As she was speaking she was taken off in vision. In 1860 she wrote of this experience as follows: EGWC 411.3

“In this vision of Lovett’s Grove, most of the matter of the Great Controversy which I had seen ten years before, was repeated, and I was shown that I must write it out.”—Spiritual Gifts 2:270. EGWC 411.4

Six months after this experience, her book, Spiritual Gifts. The Great Controversy, Between Christ and His Angels, and Satan and His Angels, † came from the press. EGWC 411.5

The range of this work—in which is found the present Great Controversy in embryo—is described in the following item in the Review and Herald: EGWC 411.6

“It is a sketch of her views of the great controversy between Christ and his angels, and the Devil and his angels, from the fall of Satan until the controversy shall close at the end of the 1000 years of Rev. xx, by the destruction of sin and sinners out of the universe of God. It will contain between two and three hundred pages.”—June 24, 1858, p. 48. EGWC 411.7

In this first brief presentation—219 small pages—important facts of history, coupled with the divine plan of God behind history, are set forth. EGWC 412.1

This 1858 volume, Spiritual Gifts, volume 1, is not only the present Great Controversy in embryo, it is really the present five-volume Conflict of the Ages Series in embryo. This first volume of Spiritual Gifts, plus volume 3, and a portion of volume 4, both published in 1864, * constitute Mrs. White’s original sketch of the plan of salvation from the fall of Satan, through the creation and fall of man, the antediluvian period, the history of Israel, the first advent of Christ and the activity of the apostles, the history of the Dark Ages, the Advent Movement of the nineteenth century, the delusions of the last days, the conflict ended, and the earth re-created. EGWC 412.2