The title for this editorial is copied from the title of chapter ten of the book Prophet of the End and is about the same subject. Ellen White received many visions, both public and private. Her public visions were accompanied with supernatural phenomena which forces any candid observer to the same conclusion that Ellen White made herself: “God is either teaching His church, reproving their wrongs and strengthening their faith, or He is not. This work is of God, or it is not. God does nothing in partnership with Satan. My work for the past thirty years bears the stamp of God or the stamp of the enemy. There is no halfway work in the matter. The Testimonies are of the Spirit of God, or of the devil. In arraying yourself against the servants of God you are doing a work either for God or for the devil.” Testimonies, vol. 4, 230.
On Sunday afternoon, March 14, 1858, at Lovett’s Grove, Ohio, in a schoolhouse where religious meetings were being held, there was a funeral at which James White was invited to speak. After he had finished, Ellen White believed that she was being urged by the Spirit of the Lord to bear her testimony.
I believe it is always appropriate for a Christian to attempt to comfort those who are bereaved. We have a “blessed hope” (Titus 2). Ellen White began to speak about the coming of Christ, the resurrection and the cheering hope possessed by the Christian. During this time she was taken in vision for approximately two hours and was shown many things that she had been initially shown about ten years before about the great controversy of the ages between Christ and Satan. She was instructed in this vision to write out what had been revealed to her. She was also told that Satan would make strong efforts to hinder her from writing.
This vision and later visions on the same subject form the basis of the books in the Conflict of the Ages series and especially the last book of the set, The Great Controversy. For any person who wants to avoid being deceived in our time, this book, The Great Controversy between Christ and His Angels and Satan and his Angels, is a book that should be carefully studied.
“In The Great Controversy, the last message of warning to the world is given more distinctly than in any of my other books.” Letter 281, 1905.