Eternity In The Heart Of Sydney

By Steve Mayo

Perhaps you were among the one billion people who saw it on New Year's Eve, a single word scrawled across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in blazing, fifty-foot-high letters:

Eternity

Immediately, the puzzling began: "Why 'Eternity'?" "Why not 'millennium' or '2000' or even 'Olympics'?" The question was raised the world over.

Even some Sydneysiders did not understand the origin of the millennial message. Surely there was something behind that enigmatic word.

The story begins in 1884, when a child, named Arthur Stace, was born to an underprivileged, abusive family. By age 12, he was a ward of the state.

Things did not improve for Stace in adulthood. An illiterate man, he proved unable to hold a job. Soon he joined the underworld as a lookout for brothels and gambling houses-which put him in and out of jail.

Stace dulled his sorrows with alcohol. It was not uncommon to find him stumbling about in the shadows of south Sydney.

All of this changed on August 6, 1930, when Arthur Stace made his way into the St. Barnabas Church to get a free meal. The gospel was preached on that occasion and Stace was stirred by the Holy Spirit to respond. He left his seat, went outside and knelt beneath the great boughs of a tree, crying, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!"

This was the first great turning point in the life of Arthur Stace. The second came only two years later. Though less important to Stace, it proved most significant for Sydney.

The booming voice of Pastor John Ridley echoed off the walls of the Burton Street Baptist Church. "Eternity! Eternity! I wish I could shout that word to everyone in the streets of Sydney. Where will you spend eternity?"

The congregation sat breathless, but no one was moved more than Arthur Stace. "Eternity went ringing through my brain," was his own statement, "and suddenly I began crying and felt a powerful call from the Lord to write 'Eternity.' I had a piece of chalk in my pocket and, outside the church, I bent down right there and wrote it. The funny thing is that before I wrote the word, I could hardly write my own name. I had no schooling and I couldn't have spelled 'eternity' for a hundred quid. But it came out smoothly, in a beautiful copperplate script."

Over the next 33 years, Arthur Stace wrote "Eternity" on the sidewalks of Sydney some 500,000 times. Amazingly, he did it so discreetly that, for 24 years, no one knew that he was the man behind the word. The mystery of "Eternity" became a common topic in the Sydney Morning Herald -editorials, speculations, letters to the editor-everyone was searching for Mr. Eternity.

When at last his own pastor found him, Stace immediately became a folk hero. Even so, he shunned the notoriety and continued writing the word until he himself entered eternity in 1967.

Arthur Stace truly was a most improbable evangelist. At the stroke of a new millennium, it was his one-word sermon that reached to the ends of the earth. Who can number the lives that have been turned to the Savior because Arthur Stace was faithful to His call?

Only eternity will tell.

Eternal Gold

In the tradition of Mr. Eternity, ABWE will take the gospel to the streets of Sydney during the 2000 Olympics. A massive evangelistic campaign has been planned in partnership with Gospel Literature Services and several Bible-believing churches in Sydney.

The Eternal Gold outreach will distribute up to 500,000 booklets in 14 languages-the languages of Sydney. Many people do not realize that Sydney is one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world. The largest non-English language groups are Arabic and Chinese-people who would be restricted from hearing the gospel in their homeland.

Please pray for Eternal Gold. Several volunteers from the United States will join Australians on witnessing teams from September 15-October 1. A network of missionaries and pastors worldwide will ensure that each salvation decision is followed-up.

Pray also for God to raise up more long-term laborers for the Australian harvest field. ABWE-Australia is seeking church planters as well as people willing to evangelize in the public schools and on university campuses.