The Pioneers in the Seventh-day Adventist Work Regarded Truth as Common Property

The fundamental doctrines constituting what we speak of as Present Truth, were the result of much concerted study, following prayerful individual study.BSRWEGW 7.5

It is interesting to observe the way in which the early workers in the Seventh-day Adventist cause regarded the use of one another’s writings.BSRWEGW 7.6

When tracts and pamphlets were published, the expositions of truth therein presented, frequently represented the results of united, concerted study, and the forms of expression by the several writers were very similar and sometimes identical. All felt that the truths to be presented were common property and wherever one could help another or get help from another in the expression of Biblical truths, it was considered right to do so. Consequently there were many excellent statements of present truth copied by one writer from another. And no man said that aught which he wrote was exclusively his own.BSRWEGW 7.7

In the process of time many things which Sister White wrote and said were used by others without credit, and she in turn when dealing with prophetic exposition or doctrinal statements felt free to use without credit the statements and teachings of leading writers among the pioneers when she found in their writings the exact thought that she wished to present.BSRWEGW 7.8

We might point out that this class of matter formed only a small part of the writings of Mrs. White, the great mass of her writings being an a different plane than that of other writers, consisting chiefly of spiritual exhortation, messages of encouragement and reproof, and divine prediction of future events.BSRWEGW 7.9

When she was writing Great Controversy, Volume IV, in 1882-1884, she was instructed regarding the general plan of the book. It was revealed to her that she should present an outline of the controversy between Christ and Satan as it developed in the first centuries of the Christian era, and in the great Reformation of the sixteenth century, in such a way as to prepare the mind of the reader to understand clearly the controversy as it is going on in our day.BSRWEGW 7.10

While Mrs. White was writing this book, many of the scenes were presented to her over and over again in visions of the night. The vision of the deliverance of God’s people, as given in Chapter XL, was repeated three times; and on two occasions, once at her home in Healdsburg, and once at the St. Helena Sanitarium, members of her family, sleeping in nearby rooms, were awakened from sleep by her clear, musical cry, “They come! They come!” (See The Great Controversy, 363.)BSRWEGW 7.11

Several times we thought that the manuscript of the book was all ready for the printer, and then a vision of some important feature of the controversy would be repeated, and she would again write upon the subject, bringing out the description more fully and clearly. Thus the publishing was delayed, and the book grew in size.BSRWEGW 8.1