In light of the Great Controversy Project currently being advanced, it may be useful to reflect on the nature of the message of The Great Controversy, which understands history as being divinely guided to an end full of hope. We invite you to consider this theme with us, as expressed below by Rex Edwards, BRI.

The Great Controversy
Reminds us that history is set in the context of theology, of “beginnings” and “ends”; it assures every Christian that they can see something of the true meaning of events; it assures them they can see them not only in their contemporary setting, not only in their setting in human history, but in relation to “In the beginning God” and “I will come again.”

The long story of the Christian Church is a panorama of lights and shadows, of achievement and failure, of conquests and divisions. It has exhibited the divine life marvelously transforming the lives of men. It has also exhibited those passions and wickedness of which human nature is capable, and its tasks have seemed, in every age, almost insuperable. Notwithstanding,

The Great Controversy
Reminds us that the Church has demonstrated -- VITALITY in competing with other religions and ideologies, and the often sharp opposition from intellectual and political leaders; RESILIENCE in its seemingly inexhaustible capacity to revive after periods of stagnation and decay; CONTINUITY, for Christianity is an historical religion. The succession of the years is not merely an unraveling tangle of events without meaning. History witnesses to a divine purpose and is moving toward a divine goal. RENEWAL for the Church is a rhythmic panorama: the progression of zeal of the first generation, the indifference of the second, and the resurgence of the third.

The Great Controversy
Reminds us that the vital element of Christian faith, obscured in one generation will be revived in the next; reminds us that there is a pattern in the expansion of Christianity: proclamation, accommodation, assimilation, corruption and reform; reminds us that some of these rhythms include purity, corruption, and reform. From these abstractions one might infer that the history of the Church is simply a seesaw; but never is revival simply a repetition. Renewal is also re-creation for a zigzag admits of a forward movement. To what?

The Great Controversy
Reminds us that biblical Christianity is a religion of hope. When tongues shall have ceased and knowledge shall have vanished away, hope is one of the three things that abide. But the Christian hope looks also beyond the ultimate frontier, where history is no more, and forward to that time when the great controversy is ended, to that place where “there will be no cruel, deceiving foe to tempt to forgetfulness of God” where “every faculty will be developed, every capacity increased” where “the grandest enterprises may be carried forward, the loftiest aspirations reached, the highest ambitions realized” (GC 677).

The Great Controversy Is a VISION OF HOPE