Great Controversy Theme
Douglass promotes the Great Controversy theme (GCT) as the conceptual key, the organizing principle that leads to an understanding of humanity’s greatest questions: How did life begin? Why good and evil, and how does one know the difference? What happens after death? Why suffering and death? The Great Controversy Theme provides the background for the development of evil – the story of Lucifer’s (Satan’s) rebellion against the government of God. The thrust of Satan’s argument is that God cannot be trusted, that His law is severe and unfair, and thus the Lawgiver is unfair, severe, and arbitrary.
For Douglass, the Great Controversy Theme ties together the plan of redemption, Bible truth, and the peril and triumph of Jesus’ entry into humanity and His death upon the cross. It holds together Christ’s death for us with the application of His power within us. It shows why God purposes to demonstrate through His end-time people the ultimate fruition of what His grace can do, and clarifies how Satan’s charges will be finally negated. At the end of time God has called a people to understand, live out, and present to the universe God’s love through our individual opportunities in the climax of the great controversy.
Read more about this topic: Herbert E. Douglass
Famous quotes containing the words controversy and/or theme:
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)
“The saying, “The Magyar is much too lazy to be bored,” is worth thinking about. Only the most subtle and active animals are capable of boredom.—A theme for a great poet would be God’s boredom on the seventh day of creation.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)