Dear ___________,

Thank you for contacting the Ellen G. White Estate. If you and I are on the same wavelength, the four editions you had in mind were published in 1858, 1884, 1888, and 1-1. The reason behind all the subsequent editions, I believe, was to tell the story better and more fully. The 1858 edition (Spiritual Gifts, vol. 1) skipped from the garden of Eden to the coming of Jesus, omitting almost all of the Old Testament part of the story. Mrs. White remedied this, to some extent, with Spiritual Gifts, vols. 3 and 4a, published in 1864. By 1870, having received further visions and seeing how the account could be enlarged and improved, she resolved to expand those three volumes into four larger volumes. These are what we call the "Spirit of Prophecy" series, with volumes published in 1870, 1877, 1878, and 1884. The last volume was also called The Great Controversy, and it was the first volume by that title to cover the same part of the story that our current volume does, from the fall of Jerusalem to the end of the conflict. Literature evangelists found that they could sell the book to the public, and in the following four years they sold about 50,000 copies. That number was larger than the number of Seventh-day Adventists in the entire world at the time. Mrs. White was in Europe while this was going on, and the leaders there asked for her permission to translate volume 4 into the European languages. But now, having seen the sites of the reformation with her physical eyes, understanding the European mind and interests better than before, and perhaps having more light from visions, Mrs. White refused permission. She wanted to tell the European part of the story more fully and also tailor the language and arguments more deliberately for the general public. She began working on the project in Europe and completed it after she returned to America in 1887. The new edition of "volume 4" was published in 1888, with larger pages containing more text, and a greater number of pages. She left out a small amount of material that might not be well understood by the general public who were not acquainted with her work. She also determined to revise the rest of the Great Controversy story, enlarging it again from those three other "Spirit of Prophecy" volumes into four other volumes, larger than their predecessors. These, together with The Great Controversy, became the "Conflict of the Ages" series: Patriarchs and Prophets, Prophets and Kings, The Desire of Ages, The Acts of the Apostles, and The Great Controversy. She had her staff revise The Great Controversy in 1-1 to accomplish several purposes: to improve the accuracy of some of the statements so that people would not quibble over them, to remove language that was "needlessly offensive" to Catholics, to better document her historical sources, and to improve the appendix notes. Any changes to the text of the book had to receive her approval, or they were not made.

The edition you asked about ?1888, but with 1884 text - sounds to me like it was a late printing of the 1884 edition, prior to the release of the revised and expanded edition of 1888. If so, it was probably done to fill demand. But these are only guesses on my part.

I hope this helps. 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