What is the Great Controversy?

The most captivating stories have a clear hero and villain. Someone fights for good, and the other fights for evil.

It’s easy to look at this messed-up world and believe that clearly-defined battles between good and evil only happen in stories. Everything here is so mixed up! Heroes are far from perfect. And anyone can become a villain.

It’s not uncommon to see people do horrible things for good causes. Others try their best to do the right thing but end up making things worse. How can pure good and pure evil exist in such a confusing world?

The Bible helps make these moral struggles clear. It tells how each of us are caught in an epic battle between good and evil.

This battle encompasses the entire world and was being fought before humanity even began. And, just like in all good stories, the Bible tells us that good eventually comes out on top. God will prevail, and evil will be destroyed.

This epic battle is sometimes referred to as the “Great Controversy,” the conflict between God and Satan. And all humanity is caught up in it due to our free will, and the fact we chose the “knowledge of good and evil” back in the Garden of Eden.

But this isn’t a physical battle:

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12, ESV).

The Great Controversy is a spiritual battle, a conflict over God’s character and His right to rule the universe.

The Great Controversy book covers the final scenes of earth’s history, from the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 to the end of the controversy between good and evil when the sin and evil are destroyed and the earth is made new.