Dear ___________,
Thank you for contacting the Ellen G. White Estate. The Great Controversy went through an extended period of development, spanning nearly the entire length of Mrs. White's prophetic ministry. The first book to bear that title was a little 219-page volume published in 1858, soon after her Great Controversy vision. Today we call it Spiritual Gifts, vol. 1. It is also reproduced as the major portion of Early Writings. It told the story of the rise of sin in heaven, of Satan's being cast out with his angels, of the fall of man and the promise of a Redeemer, and then it skipped the rest of the Old Testament.It told the story of Jesus, the apostles, the rise of the papacy, the reformation, the Advent movement, the final events, and then end of sin. Mrs. White spent the rest of her life enlarging on this theme. First she filled in more of the Old Testament story in Spiritual Gifts, vols. 3 and 4 (1864). (Volume 2 was autobiographical.) But by 1870 she had decided to enlarge those three small volumes into four larger volumes, which she did between 1870 and 1884. This is the set we now call Spirit of Prophecy. The fourth volume is the one that Harvestime Books has reproduced. The next year Mrs. White went to Europe (1885-1887). The colporteurs in America found that they could sell vol. 4 quite well on its own. Between 1884 and 1888 they sold ten printings, totaling 50,000 copies. In the meantime Mrs. White was in Europe, where she saw with her human eyes some of the places she had seen in vision relating to the Reformation.She also gained a new sense of how to reach the European people with our message and the importance of giving that message in ways that people generally would understand. When the European brethren asked for her permission to translate vol. 4 into the European languages, she refused, having realized that she wanted to revise the book again to make it more effective for the general public. She returned to the USA in 1887 and by 1888 had a new, much larger, edition of The Great Controversy out. This is the one she authorized for translation. It is very nearly the edition we use today. She continued to expand the old four-volume Spirit of Prophecy series into five larger volumes. The first of these was Patriarchs and Prophets (1890), after which she went to Australia in 1891, to stay there for 9 years. During that time she finished The Desire of Ages (1898). In 1-1 she brought on The Acts of the Apostles and a revised edition of The Great Controversy, addressing some matters that had come to her attention in the years since the 1888 edition had been published. The last of the five volumes, Prophets and Kings, was nearly finished when she died in 1-5. Her staff finished the remaining two chapters from material she had previously written, and the book was published in 1-7. After the 1-1 edition of The Great Controversy was published, Mrs. White expressed great satisfaction with it. You can read her comments in Selected Messages, book 3, pp. 123, 124.
So this is an overview of the history of the book. I have never understood the desire of some to promote the earliest or middle stages of the book at the expense of the final stage, especially in light of Mrs. White's own clear endorsement of the final stage.
Regarding the chapter "The Snares of Satan," here is what W. C. White wrote about the omission you mentioned:
"Sister White not only had good judgment based upon a clear and comprehensive understanding of conditions and of the natural consequences of publishing what she wrote, but she had many times direct instruction from the angel of the Lord regarding what should be omitted and what should be added in new editions. . . .
"Consider for a few moments the chapter in the first edition of Great Controversy, Volume IF, published by Pacific Press in 1884. In Chapter XXVII, 'The Snares of Satan,' you find that about four pages in the latter part of the chapter were omitted from the later editions of Great Controversy. These four pages are to be found in Testimonies to Ministers, pages 472-475. The information contained in these four pages is very valuable to Seventh-day Adventists and was very appropriately included in the first edition of Great Controversy, Volume IV, which when it was published was like the other volumes considered to be a message especially to Seventh-day Adventists, and to [all] Christian people sympathizing with them in beliefs and aims.
"But when it was decided that Great Controversy, Volume IV should be republished in form for general circulation by subscription agents, Ellen G. White suggested that the pages be left out because of the likelihood that ministers of popular churches reading those statements would become angered and would array themselves against the circulation of the book." Selected Messages, book 3, pp. 452, 453, in Appendix C.
Regarding Project Restore, Inc., I have no knowledge beyond what I observed in a brief look through the web site you mentioned. While I did not find specific matters of concern during that brief look, I know that I did not look at even as much as one quarter of the material on the site, so this may not be enough basis on which to come to an informed opinion.I consider it a bit of a "red flag," however, when a site such as this is published entirely anonymously. I could not find any indication of who the author was or who was behind it. This always makes me wonder why.
In some respects, Harvestime Books operates this way. If I understand matters correctly, it is run by Vance Ferrell, who for many years has issued a monthly newsletter that mostly (but not exclusively) publishes expose's from the conservative side about various things the author considers to be evils in the church. I used to read them each month, and for the most part found myself agreeing with the author about the wrongness of this or that situation. Then one day he wrote about a situation with which I was thoroughly acquainted. It was immediately apparent to me that he knew very little about it, had not followed the instructions of Matthew 18 about contacting those we believe to be in error (which would at least have helped him get his facts straight), and had presented as facts the things that he had wrongly surmised about the situation. I realized then that, if he had operated this way on that occasion, much more of what he had published might also have suffered from the same deficiency. Yet I had believed him regarding those situations about which I knew very little. He lost much credibility with me at that point. I wrote to him about the matter, but I never received a reply. I soon stopped reading his newsletter. This is by way of background regarding Harvestime Books. I have not checked recently, but my memory is that one is hard-pressed to find Vance Ferrell's name on the Harvestime Books web site or other materials, yet it is one of his enterprises. His publication of the 1884 edition of The Great Controversy seems to me to fit the pattern of being somewhat at odds with the church even while professing great loyalty to it. That is just my "take" on the situation, and of course I may be wrong in some (or all) respects.
I hope this may help. Thank you for writing, and God bless!
William Fagal
Associate Director
Ellen G. White Estate
12501 Old Columbia Pike
Silver Spring, MD 20904-6600 U.S.A.
Phone: 301 680-6550
FAX: 301 680-6559
E-mail: mail@WhiteEstate.org
Web: www.WhiteEstate.org
