This is the first volume of a 9-book series by Ellen G. White entitled Testimonies for the Church which was started as instruction and guidance to the Seventh-day Adventist Church during its infancy (during the late 1840's and early 1850's). During that time, there were only four ministers serving the entire denomination. The ministers, who supported themselves through physical labor, were poor in this world's goods but rich in the gospel. By 1855, membership in the fledgling denomination had grown from less than a hundred to more than a thousand. During those years of growth, opposition by a group called the "Messenger Party" brought much sorrow and perplexity to the believers. Fanatical movements also divided and distracted from time to time. Discouraged by the fact that Jesus had not come in 1844, the church was in danger of losing its "first love." With the Gold Rush and westward movement, those years were also a time of speculation in homesteads and land. As a result, these testimonies contain more than a few earnest warnings about the dangers of conformity to the world. Calls to deeper consecration on the part of church members were also frequent. In late 1856, Advent believers began to recognize themselves as "lukewarm" and in need of heeding the counsel of the "True Witness" witness of Revelation 3. Mightily stirred by this message, the believers expected the loud cry of the third angel to take place very soon. The earnest messages of Testimonies Volume One can be better understood with this background in mind. The times of this volume were also filled with discussion and debate. Adventist ministers, including one prominent one named Moses Hull, were often challenged to debate about the Sabbath or even with Spiritualists. Moses Hull's ill-advised debates with spiritualists, which led to his ultimate spiritual demise, were addressed in some of the counsels included in Volume One. During the times of this volume, steps were also being taken to organize the Seventh-day Adventist Church. There was much discussion about the idea of organization, as opponents of the move argued that the idea of organization itself came straight from Babylon. Also notable during this period was the introduction of health reform in 1863. After Ellen White received a vision that emphasized the relationship between the laws of health and spiritual development, she began to admonish the members on this topic. Reforms in dress were also closely related to the health reform movement. Additional counsel led the members to establish the Health Reform Institute. During the American Civil War, guidance was also needed-and provided-about the proper relationship between the church and civil government. Other notable topics covered during those formative years (and included in Testimonies for the Church Volume One) included the importance of the home in the building of Christian character, the responsibility of parents, and admonitions for the youth. Counsel and admonition for the church body was also included. All in all, the counsels in Volume One spanned a very important phase in the development of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and were very influential in its development.

Section 1. The World's NeedSection 2. Essentials to HealthSection 3. Diet and HealthSection 4. Outdoor Life and Physical ActivitySection 5. Sanitariums--Their Objects and AimsSection 6. Successful Institutional WorkSection 7. The Christian PhyscianSection 8. Nurses and HelpersSection 9. Teaching Health PrinciplesSection 10. Health Food WorkSection 11. Medical Missionary WorkSection 12. Ensamples to the FlockSection 13. Holiness of Life

Today we need the intensified Spirit because of the degradation of the church. When the book of Revelation was written, the church had become degraded. The Lord became the intensified Spirit because of the degradation of the church. The history of the church tells us that even in the last part of the first century while the apostle John was still alive, the church had degraded from the Spirit to religion. The church had fallen from the living Spirit to dead religion. It was in such a situation that the Lord wrote this book to the seven local churches, using the title of the sevenfold Spirit. Under the degradation of the church, what we need is not religion or doctrines but the intensified Spirit.

In 1820, a young farm boy in search of truth has a vision of God the Father and Jesus Christ. Three years later, an angel guides him to an ancient record buried in a hill near his home. With God’s help, he translates the record and organizes the Savior’s church in the latter days. Soon others join him, accepting the invitation to become Saints through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. But opposition and violence follow those who defy old traditions to embrace restored truths. The women and men who join the church must choose whether or not they will stay true to their covenants, establish Zion, and proclaim the gospel to a troubled world. The Standard of Truth is the first book in Saints, a new, four-volume narrative history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Fast-paced, meticulously researched, Saints recounts true stories of Latter-day Saints across the globe and answers the Lord’s call to write history “for the good of the church, and for the rising generations” (Doctrine and Covenants 69:8).

In the Lord’s recovery during the past five hundred years the church’s knowledge of the Lord and His truth has been continually progressing. This monumental and classical work by Brother Witness Lee builds upon and is a further development of all that the Lord has revealed to His church in the past centuries. It is filled with the revelation concerning the processed Triune God, the living Christ, the life-giving Spirit, the experience of life, and the definition and practice of the church. In this set Brother Lee has kept three basic principles that should rule and govern every believer in their interpretation, development, and expounding of the truths contained in the Scriptures. The first principle is that of the Triune God dispensing Himself into His chosen and redeemed people; the second principle is that we should interpret, develop, and expound the truths contained in the Bible with Christ for the church; and the third governing principle is Christ, the Spirit, life, and the church. No other study or exposition of the New Testament conveys the life nourishment or ushers the reader into the divine revelation of God’s holy Word according to His New Testament economy as this one does.