Where will you spend ETERNITY...one day you will have to leave your comfort ZONE and answer this question. DO IT TODAY. The Story of Arthur Stace. As he walked, every so often he would stop, pull out a crayon, bend down and write on the pavement in large, elegant letters - ETERNITY. He would move on a hundred yards then write it again, ETERNITY, nothing more, just one simple word. For thirty-seven years he chalked this one-word sermon and he wrote it more than half a million times. He did not like publicity. He regarded his unique style of evangelism as a serious mission, something between Arthur Stace and his Maker, so for a decade these Eternity signs mystified Sydney. They were an enigma. Sydney columnists wrote about it, speculated on the author, and several people walked into newspaper offices and announced that they were the author. The real man kept quiet. The mystery all came clear in 1956 and the man who cracked it was the Reverend Thompson of the Burton Street Baptist Church. Arthur Stace was actually the church cleaner and one of their prayer leaders. One day Reverend Thompson saw Arthur Stace take out his crayon and write the famous Eternity on the pavement. He did it without realising that he has been spotted . Reverend Thompson said :Are you Mr Eternity? and Stace replied Guilty Your Honor. Reverend Thompson wrote a tract telling the mans extraordinary story and Tom Farrell, later had the first interview. He published it in the Sunday Telegraph on 21 June 1956. Arthur Stace was born in a Balmain slum in 1884. His father and mother were both drunkards. Two sisters and two brothers also were drunks and they lived much of their time in jail. The sisters ran brothels and one of them was ordered out of New South Wales three times. Stace used to sleep on bags under the house and when his parents were drunk he had to look after himself. He used to steal milk from the doorsteps, pick scraps of food out of garbage and shoplift cakes and sweets. His schooling was practically non-existent; so much so that this was noticed by Government officials. At the age of twelve he became a state ward. Not that this helped him greatly. He went to jail for the first time when he was fifteen, then it became a regular affair. During the First World War he enlisted in the 19th Battalion, went to France and returned home gassed and half blind in one eye. Back in Surry hills he took up his old habits, drink in particular. He told Tom Farrell that in 1930 he was in Central Court for the umpteenth time. The magistrate said to him: Dont you know that I have the POWER to put you in Long Bay jail or the POWER to set you free. Yes Sir”, he replied, but it was the word POWER that he remembered. What he needed was the power to give up drink. Outside the Court House there was a group of men walking up the street. The word had got around that a cup of tea and something to eat was available at the Church Hall. The date was August 6th and it was a meeting for men conducted by Archdeacon Hammond of St Barnabas Church on Broadway. There were about 300 men present, mostly down and outs, but they had to endure an hour and half of talking before they received their tea and rock cakes. Up front there were six people on a separate seat, all looking very clean, spruce and nicely turned out, a remarkable contrast to the 300 grubby-looking males in the audience. Stace said to the man sitting next to him, a well-known criminal: Who are they? Id reckon theyd be Christians, he replied. Stace said: Well look at them and look at us. Im having a go at what they have got, and after the meeting he went across to Victoria Park and he slipped down on his knees and prayed, and accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as his own personal Saviour. After that, he did find it possible to give up drink and he said: As I got back my self-respect, people were more decent to me. So he won a job on the dole, working at the sand mills at Maroubra one week on, one week off at three pounds a week. Later in the Burton Street Baptist Church at Darlinghurst he heard the evangelist, the Reverend John Ridley. Ridley was a Military Cross winner from World War One and a noted give-em-Hell preacher. He shouted: I wish I could shout ETERNITY through the streets of Sydney. Stace, recalling the day, said: He repeated himself and kept shouting ETERNITY, ETERNITY and his words were ringing through my brain as I left the church. Suddenly I began crying and I felt a powerful call from the Lord to write ETERNITY. I had a piece of chalk in my pocket and I bent down there and wrote it. The funny thing is that before I wrote I could hardly have spelled my own name. I had no schooling and I couldnt have spelt ETERNITY for a hundred quid. But it came out smoothly in beautiful copperplate script. I couldnt understand it and I still cant. Stace claimed that normally his handwriting was appalling and his friends found it illegible. He lived with his wife Pearl in Bulwarra Road, Pyrmont and this was his routine. He rose at 4am, prayed for an hour, had breakfast, then he set out. He claimed that God gave him his directions the night before, the name of the suburb came into his head and he arrived there before dawn. He took his message every 100 yards or so where it could be seen best, then he was back home around 10am. First he wrote in yellow chalk, and then he switched to marking crayon because it stayed on better in the wet. Arthur Stace wrote that word, in that elegant copperplate, in chalk and in crayon, for thirty-seven years, on the sidewalks of Sydney -- over half a million times. No one knew who he was, and he preferred it that way. The mystery grew: the word had evident spiritual overtones -- it was called a one word sermon -- who was writing it, and why? But no one knew, for years and years. Perhaps this mystery, so long sustained, instilled the fascination. Perhaps also, it was the suggestive power of the word itself. Because Eternity is also the story of one pure thought. The human fascination with that simple word…and what it calls to mind. Time without end? Another World? Perfection? What did Eternity mean to Arthur Stace? What motivated him to write it half a million times across a city? Why did it fire their imagination, then and now? This man was able to discern Gods purpose and bring it to pass in a way that was a blessing and inspiration to a whole city. Allow Gods calling and his purpose for you to become clear. Are you hungry to hear from God? If Jesus is the greatest, then he is able to make you into the greatest that you can possibly be! We are praying every day in the Holy Spirit for this to come to pass in your life. Accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour TODAY. Peter the Apostle told the people in his first sermon...[Acts 2:36-41] Be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, who was crucified and raised from the dead, both Lord and Saviour. When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’ Peter replied, ‘Repent and be baptised, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off – for all whom the Lord our God will call.’ With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, ‘Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.’ Those who accepted his message were baptised, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 23:46:57 +0000
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