The 125th Anniversary of Steps to Christ by Ellen White: What It Means
June 1, 2017: This year marks the 125th anniversary of Steps to Christ, the small book that is probably the most widely circulated of the many volumes written by Ellen G. White, the co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination. It was published in 1892 by a leading Protestant publishing house instead of an Adventist publisher.
It was written in the period after the 1888 General Conference Session when Desire of Ages, the biography of Jesus Christ by White, also came out. It was a time when the Adventist faith took a turn in an Evangelical direction.
“The book has been in the public domain for many years, so no one knows how many tens of millions of copies … have been circulated,” said Pastor Tim Poirier, a staff member at the White Estate. It has been translated into at least 165 languages and is considered to be one of the most widely distributed religious books in the world. A paraphrase in contemporary English has been published under the title Steps to Jesus and is available from Pacific Press, the Adventist publisher in the United States.
A special 125th anniversary edition has been published this year with notes and an article on the historic context of the original volume. A review by Adventist Today contributing editor Pastor John McLarty is available here.
