The phrase used by Seventh-day Adventists to describe all printed material such as tracts, magazines, or books dealing with the doctrines of the Bible, intended to disseminate the faith. This phrase is employed especially for printed matter that is distributed free as a method of lay evangelism.
The earliest known piece of SDA missionary literature was a 48–page pamphlet entitled The Seventh-day Sabbath—A Perpetual Sign, written by Captain Joseph Bates, which came from the press in August 1846 and which became a “mighty instrument” in the propagation of the doctrine of the Sabbath. (T. M. Preble, whose 1845 tract had been instrumental in bringing the Sabbath message to many people, did not belong to the group who became the nucleus of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.)
When in 1849 the original Present Truth, an eight-page sheet, was printed in a first issue of only 1,000 copies, it could hardly be foreseen that this paper was the forerunner of the church’s current missionary magazines, of which many millions of pages are printed monthly.
The publication of The Signs of the Times (a weekly for many years and at first partly a church paper) began in 1874. It later became exclusively evangelistic in character, the oldest of its kind. It, along with other periodicals and tracts, was distributed widely by lay members under the various local societies that formed the International Tract Society.
After the turn of the century came a greater development of missionary literature. In 1913 when the Home Missionary Department of the General Conference was organized, the responsibility of promoting the wider use of missionary literature for free distribution was assigned to this department.
Methods of circulation are varied. Many churches carry on a mailing plan whereby papers or tracts are sent to each boxholder in a county or a given territory. House-to-house visitation is encouraged, in which personal contacts are made and appropriate literature (specially prepared tracts or a copy of a missionary magazine) is given to interested people. Subscriptions for magazines are sent by mail to friends. Invitations to enroll in free Bible correspondence schools are extended to all who might be interested. Through lending libraries, books are made available by the home missionary council of each church, or by individual members of the church. Free copies of Signs of the Times are available from many airport displays in the United States. Boxes placed in shops also offer free copies with a year’s subscription at no cost to those who send in their names.
The two major missionary magazines in English are Signs of the Times , a 36-page four-color monthly published by the Pacific Press in Boise, Idaho, and Message , also 36 pages and in color, issued bimonthly by the Review and Herald Publishing Association in Hagerstown, Maryland. It is primarily for African-Americans in the United States. El Centinela , the Spanish, and La Sentinelle , the French equivalent of Signs of the Times , are also widely distributed in North America.
Outside of North America, millions of missionary magazines are printed in Korean, Norwegian, Danish, Polish, Chinese, Dutch, Italian, Afrikaans, Spanish, Portuguese, Finnish, German, Japanese, Urdu, Hindi, and Russian.
Missionary literature is printed in approximately 200 languages by more than 50 Seventh-day Adventist publishing houses around the world. With the modern equipment available in many of our houses, it is not uncommon to print and distribute a million copies of Great Controversy in a single language in just one year.
Another development beginning in 1950 was the annual publication of a “missionary book of the year.” Through quantity production these books could be made available at a greatly reduced price. In some cases these were reprints of large subscription books that for years had been sold by house-to-house methods. For example, Bible Readings for the Home , containing some 700 pages, had been sold by the colporteurs for decades. When it was reprinted as a Missionary Book of the Year by the Review and Herald Publishing Association, in one year 236,980 copies were circulated—many more than the total number of copies in all trade editions of the book distributed in the preceding 50 years. Several million copies of these missionary books of the year have been purchased, largely by Seventh-day Adventists, to be given or lent to friends, relatives, or neighbors. The publication of these annual books rotates among the two major publishing houses in North America.
In recent years North American publishing houses have combined forces with the laymen’s group ASI in producing inexpensive paperback newsprint editions for mass distribution. Presently they are offering Steps to Christ, Christ’s Object Lessons, The Desire of Ages, The Great Controversy, Acts of the Apostles, Patriarchs and Prophets, Prophets and Kings, and Bible Readings. Because of quantity printing, the price of these books has been kept to below $1 per copy.
Tract racks filled with attractive missionary literature are placed in railroad and bus stations, airports, laundromats, dentists’ and physicians’ waiting rooms, barbershops, and many other places where people have time to read. The circulation of missionary literature still plays, and will continue to play, a large part in the missionary activities of the members of the church.