How should we use The Great Controversy?

The last issue of Adventist Today reported that church leadership feels embarrassed by evangelism such as the recent Orlando campaign featuring anti-Catholic billboards. Many church members in Orlando feel socially uneasy, but they are silently gratified that although the method is unusually direct, at least someone is standing up and calling a spade a spade, or here, naming a Catholic a Catholic!

The question raised by the billboards may merely be one of means. But for some Adventists, the undergirding issue is one of ends—theological ends.

Does a book such as The Great Controversy contain specific unconditionally true information about the Catholic Church’s future sinister activities? If so, then on to discussion of the most savvy method of conveying the information. But there is disagreement in the church over how to interpret The Great Controversy. Therefore, Adventist Today presents below three different ways a contemporary Adventist may relate to sacred texts, of which The Great Controversy is but a timely example.

For the position of the White Estate on the question of interpreting The Great Controversy, see Paul A. Gordon’s,”How Shall We Warn the World?,” Adventist Review, July 1, 1993.