About “The Great Controversy”

There is the book, “The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan,” which has had a remarkable appeal to the unlearned and the learned. Years ago, in Finland, I met a peasant farmer who had come from near the Arctic Circle to attend a conference for the first time. It was “The Great Controversy” that had led to his conversion. “I felt that it was inspired,” he told me, “as I read its pages.”SPIAM 40.9

To a Catholic businessman of Argentina, South America, a man of education and culture, a colporteur had sold a copy of this book. Later, meeting the colporteur, the purchaser said:SPIAM 41.1

“You have brought me great happiness. I have read nearly the whole of the book ‘The Great Controversy.’ I believe it is the truth. I do not know the author, but she must have been divinely inspired. I would not sell that book for fifty dollars, no, not for one hundred dollars, if I could not get another.”SPIAM 41.2

A leading lawyer in one country, referring to “The Great Controversy,” said: “That book was not written by education, but by inspiration.”SPIAM 41.3

A young lady colporteur, of Virginia, told me a story of this book that illustrates the manner in which the author wrote it. The young woman said, in effect:SPIAM 41.4

“I sold a copy of ‘The Great Controversy’ to the wealthiest person in a certain town, the most influential woman there. She wanted it for a sister who was a Catholic. But first the lady read it herself. When I met her later, she said: ‘That is a most wonderful book. I never read anything like it. It seemed to me as I read I could see the very picture of the scenes written about.’ And I said to her: ‘That is just how this writing is different. The author is describing scenes that she has seen pass before her under the influence of the Spirit of God.’”SPIAM 41.5

Our colporteur sister gave a remarkably true answer on the spur of the moment. She was evidently familiar with Mrs. White’s statement in the introduction to this book: “Through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, the scenes of the long-continued conflict between good and evil have been opened to the writer of these pages.”SPIAM 41.6

The author was writing as an eyewitness. First, in 1848, the scenes of the great controversy had been caused to pass, in part at least, before the eyes of the young woman. Then, she tells us, they were repeated ten years later, while attending a meeting in Ohio. She wrote of this:SPIAM 41.7

“In the vision at Lovett’s Grove [Ohio, in 1858], most of the matter which I had seen ten years before concerning the great controversy of the ages between Christ and Satan, was repeated, and I was instructed to write it out.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 162.SPIAM 42.1

It was not by any ordinary method of authorship that these writings came forth through the years. Long did the pressure to write sometimes crowd upon this servant of God, awaiting the time, in a busy, active life, when that pen could trace on paper, in the rolling-letter style of her handwriting, the things that the Spirit of prophecy used her to relate.SPIAM 42.2