Testimonies for the Church Volume 1 - A New You Ministry

The Background Of Volume OneThe nine volumes of Testimonies for the Church, aggregating 4,738 pages of text,consist of articles and letters written by Ellen G. White, containing instruction to,and pertaining to the welfare of, the Seventh-day Adventist church. A sixteen-pagepamphlet, issued in December of 1855, marked the beginning of the series of suchcounsels which from time to time appeared in consecutively numbered pamphlets andbooks. These messages naturally dealt with issues that were current, but in most caseswe are today confronted by the same problems, perils, and opportunities which facedthe church in earlier years.The earliest numbered Testimonies were published only about seven years after thememorable “Sabbath Conferences” of 1848, when Adventist believers in the newlyrevived Sabbath and sanctuary truths laid the foundations of the distinctive doctrinesheld by the Seventh-day Adventist denomination. During these few years the cause hadadvanced in a marked manner. At the beginning there were only three or four preachers,or “messengers” As they then styled themselves, all of them dependent upon what theyearned by physical labor and the freewill offerings of the few believers, who also werepoor in this world’s goods. These beginnings were limited in area almost entirely tothe New England States.By 1855, the year of issuance of the first Testimony Pamphlet, there were about ascore of preachers of the Sabbath and Advent message. The number of believers hadgrown from less than one hundred to well into the second thousand.The publishing work, begun by Elder White in the summer of 1849 at Middletown,Connecticut, had been conducted in various places under adverse circumstances. Nowin 1855 it was established in its own building in Battle Creek, Michigan.5