Book Title Chosen

The idea for the title of her book probably came from a work similarly titled: The Great Controversy Between God and Man: Its Origin, Progress, and Termination, authored and published by H. L. Hastings of Rochester, New York. A copy of the book had been sent to the Review and Herald publishing office in the hope that its presence would generate a book review in the columns of the Review.GVEGW 72.6

That hope was not to be disappointed; in the March 18, 1858, edition it appeared at the top of the final page.GVEGW 73.1

A comparison by Warren H. Johns of these two books with near-identical titles demonstrates the existence of substantial differences between them as regards “scope, purpose, and content.” ^{49Warren H. Johns, “Literary Thief or God’s Messenger?” Ministry, June 1982, pp. 13, 14; cf. Ronald D. Graybill, “The Power of Prophecy: Ellen G. White and the Women Religious Founders of the Nineteenth Century” (Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 1983), pp. 196-199.}GVEGW 73.2

Both exploit the (by then) well-worn motif of a war between good and evil, perhaps best popularized by the English Puritan poet and political writer John Milton. Paradise Lost (1667) is considered by many to be the greatest epic poem ever written in the English language. ^{50“John Milton,” World Book Encyclopedia (1990), vol. 13, p. 556.} It was inevitable that similarities of flavor—and even of verbiage—should surround subsequent literary efforts, for, as the wise man had written three millennia earlier, “There is no new thing under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9).GVEGW 73.3

Through the next 40 years Ellen’s little 219-page book of 1858 was expanded by its author through two more reincarnations. It finally appeared as the five-volume Conflict of the Ages Series, with only the fifth and final book bearing the original, all-inclusive title The Great Controversy.GVEGW 73.4

Patriarchs and Prophets (1890, 754 pages), Prophets and Kings (1917, 733 pages), The Desire of Ages (1898, 835 pages), The Acts of the Apostles (1911, 602 pages), and The Great Controversy (1911, 678 pages)—a total of 3,602 pages—all grew from that earlier 219-page book, Spiritual Gifts, volume 1!GVEGW 73.5