Introduction
The Adventist Book Centers.—The current Adventist Book Center
(ABC) is the offspring of the Tract and Missionary Societies organized
by S. N. Haskell and his associates over a century ago.
“Soon after 1870, when S. N. Haskell organized the New England
Tract and Missionary Society, every conference had its own Tract So-
ciety, with local churches active in evangelism through the distribution
of tracts and papers. For supplying their members the conference Tract
Societies soon proved themselves convenient centers for handling not
only tracts but also a complete line of books and other denominational
publications. They also furnished various types of printed supplies
by the churches and the different departments of the conferences, and
functioned as wholesale outlets supplying the colporteurs.
“The denomination-wide International Tract Society was replaced
in 1901 by a publication committee, which a little later became the
Publishing Department of the General Conference. The local societies,
as important evangelizing agencies, eventually became the church
missionary societies, fostered by the Home Missionary Department.
“This left the conference tract societies with the specialized func-
tion of serving as distributing outlets for the publishing houses. In
1924, their scope of influence having long since reached beyond
the small-literature stage, the name was changed to Book and Bible
Houses. In 1972 the name Adventist Book Center was adopted. These
agencies are now established throughout North America and in most
parts of the world field.”—SDAEN 12.
The Adventist Book Center is described as follows:
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“A distribution and service outlet for Seventh-day Adventist pub-
lishing house products and other church-approved materials, including
Bibles, audio-visual aids, all church department needs, public evan-
gelism supplies, and often special dietary health products. Generally
there is one or more in each conference territory, selling either subscrip-
tion literature wholesale to literature evangelists and/or subscription
and trade literature at retail to individuals—subscription literature
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