Blast from my Past in Today's News

Recently 600,000 Chicago residents received an unsolicited book in their mail boxes. The Chicago Tribune reports that the book mass mailing was funded by a group who wanted to provide hope and spiritual answers in these troubled times of neighborhood shootings in Chicago and terror attacks around the world.

When I saw the title of the book, "The Great Controversy", I recognized it from my own shelves. But my copy was printed over 100 years ago. But as you can see from the photo of my copy below, the graphics are a lot different than the current volume pictured in the Chicago Tribune.

A copy of the 1907 edition of "The Great Controversy". 600 Thousand copies of a modern edition has been mailed to Chicagoans. Photo © O. Douglas Jennings

It is an old Seventh Day Adventist (written by founder E. G. White) religious book that I found in my great grandfather's library. It’s mainly a recounting of Church History up to the "modern day".  This copy, published in 1907, seems to me to have an anti-Catholic bias.

It’s something of a classic in religious literature circles, as I first noticed nearly a decade ago when I read the text of a tract posted by one of my flickr.com friends.

To be honest, I haven't read the book cover to cover. The style is very cumbersome and full of purple prose (typical of 19th Century literature). But I have looked it over reasonably well and read selected passages...especially concerning future judgements and the predictions of calamity are very generalized. So, no, it doesn't predict modern events such as 911 as far as I can tell.

But the weird thing for me personally is that it doesn't reflect what I remember as being my great grandfather's beliefs (I spent a lot of time with him during my childhood). He was a retired baptist preacher but he was not, when I knew him, a fire-and-brimstone guy.

Maybe he mellowed out in his old age. But a main point in this book an attack on "the false Sabbath". It teaches that worshipping on Sunday was a false Catholic convention and that we should worship on Saturdays (like the Jews). That day, according to the author, is the true Sabbath. Recent U.S. Presidential Candidate Ben Carson is a Seventh Day Adventist.

I'm guessing the book was a gift to my grandfather from a Seventh Day Adventist friend. He was fairly open minded and loved to read new ideas. His library had books from Jehovah's Witness publishers and Catholic books as well.

But one thing I admire about this 1907 edition of it is an impressively produced volume. At the time it must have been state-of-the-art in publishing tech. It's title and engravings have a certain classic quality that, now, is vintage-chic.

A sample of some of the 19th Century illustrations featured in the 1907 edition of "The Great Controversy"