Eternity! Eternity!

Arthur Stace was a loser, a no-hoper, an alcoholic and completely illiterate. He lived in the streets of Sydney, regarded by many who saw him as a lost cause.

One Sunday night in 1932 he entered St Barnabas' Anglican Church on Broadway, Sydney, and heard the Reverend T. C. Hammond preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Banner of Truth has published a paperback biography of T. C. Hammond. Arthur was convicted by the Spirit of God. He left the church, crossed the road, and sat under a tree in Victoria Park where he committed his life to Jesus Christ. He had become a new creation.

Later that year he was at the Burton Street Baptist Tabernacle on the corner of Palmer Street, Darlinghurst when he heard the evangelist John G Ridley preaching.

In his urgent, commanding voice, John Ridley cried, "Eternity! Eternity! Oh, that this word could be emblazoned across the streets of Sydney." Arthur Stace the little man who still could not read or write left that church, took some yellow chalk, bent down and wrote one word on the footpath. And throughout the night for the next 40 years, while Sydney slept, Arthur would take his chalk and write in immaculate copperplate handwriting the word "eternity" on footpaths, entrances to the train station, and anywhere else he thought it would catch people's attention.

Sydneysiders would alight from their commuter trains of a morning and see this word as they walked to work.

Sydney today, you can still see the word in three places...

1) On his gravestone in Waverley Cemetery, commemorating the life of Arthur Stace who had become known as 'Mr Eternity'.

2) Inside the huge bell in the GPO clock tower which had been dismantled during the Second World War. When the clock tower was rebuilt in the 1960s, the bell was brought out of storage and as the workmen were installing the bell they noticed, inside, the word "eternity" in Arthur Stace's chalk. (No one ever found out how Stace had been able to get to the bell, which had been sealed up, to add this mysterious entry to Sydney's folklore.

3) In Town Hall Square, between St Andrew's Cathedral and the Sydney Town Hall. When the area was redeveloped in the 1970s, a solid brass replica of the word in Stace's original copperplate handwriting was embedded in the footpath near a fountain as an eternal memorial to Arthur Stace.

As the year 2000 was welcomed, the word "eternity" in Stace's handwriting, was emblazoned NOT across the streets of Sydney as John Ridley had wished, but across the face of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and, thanks to modern technology, was seen around the world.

Of all the words that have been spoken during the first two millennia, the one chosen by otherwise-godless people to be featured on the Harbour Bridge at the dawn of the year 2000, is the one that was used to remind so many busy Sydneysiders of their impending appointment with their Creator.

Because Sydney's fireworks display was the first of the international celebrations to be telecast around the globe, people in every continent witnessed the miracle that God performed when he touched the life of one little, 'insignificant' man - Arthur Stace - a man who heard the voice of God and responded by committing his life to 'preaching' his one-word sermon.

Heaven only knows how God will continue to speak to the hearts of so many people around the globe, using the work He started back in the 1930s through Arthur Stace and his piece of yellow chalk.

Ron Bevis
Maroubra Baptist Church

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Stace

dW 02.09.07

scripture

Philippians 4:12-13
I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.

1 Timothy 6:6-7
But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.


quote

Contentment is a pearl of great price, and whoever procures it at the expense of ten thousand desires makes a wise and a happy purchase. - John Balguy

dW 02.08.07

scripture

 

Luke 23:39-43

One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: "Aren't you the Christ? Save yourself and us!" But the other criminal rebuked him. "Don't you fear God," he said, "since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong." Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." Jesus answered him, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise."

 

Revelation 1:18

“I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.”

 

quote

 

Arthur Brisbane once pictured a crowd of grieving caterpillars carrying the corpse of a cocoon to its final resting place.  The poor, distressed caterpillars, clad in black raiment, were weeping, and all the while the beautiful butterfly fluttered happily above the muck and mire of earth, forever freed from its earthly shell.  Needless to say, Brisbane had the average orthodox funeral in mind and sought to convey the idea that when our loved ones pass it is foolish to remember only the cocoon and concentrate our attention on the remains, while forgetting the bright butterfly. - Edmund Goldsborouth

dW 02.07.07

scripture

1 Corinthians 3:19-20

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight. As it is written: "He catches the wise in their craftiness"; and again, "The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.

Ref: Job 5:13; Psalm 94:11

quote

O how deceived we are, when we suppose we are advancing, because our vain curiosity is gratified by the enlightenment of our intellect! Be humble, and expect not the gifts of God from man! - Unknown

dW 02.06.07

scripture

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

NIV
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

AMPLIFIED
Therefore we do not become discouraged (utterly spiritless, exhausted, and wearied out through fear). Though our outer man is [progressively] decaying and wasting away, yet our inner self is being [progressively] renewed day after day. For our light, momentary affliction (this slight distress of the passing hour) is ever more and more abundantly preparing and producing and achieving for us an everlasting weight of glory [beyond all measure, excessively surpassing all comparisons and all calculations, a vast and transcendent glory and blessedness never to cease!], Since we consider and look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are visible are temporal (brief and fleeting), but the things that are invisible are deathless and everlasting.

thoughts

I included the AMP version here because though it is exhaustive, it is precise. I love the extra insight given in the emphasis of each word. It is wordy so try breaking it up in small portions and allow each to nourish your spirit.

quote

"There's nothing you can do, to make God love you more...and there's nothing you can do, to make God love you less" - Rich Mullins

dW 02.05.07

scripture

Ephesians 2:16-19
And in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household


quote

We are pilgrims, not settlers; this earth is our inn, not our home.
J. H. Vincent