General News
9 November, 2025
In good faith
IN GOOD FAITH: Did you know that arguably the best-known sermon preached in Australia consisted of just one word?
It was on 14th November 1932 at St. Barnabas Church, Broadway, Sydney that the evangelist Rev. John Ridley, when preaching his sermon, said the words, "Eternity, Eternity, I wish that I could sound or shout that word to everyone in the streets of Sydney. You've got to meet it, where will you spend Eternity?"
Sitting in the congregation at the time was a man named Arthur Stace.
Stace was a man who had a very difficult upbringing.
The fifth child of parents who were both alcoholics, his early life was one of great poverty.
He survived by stealing bread and milk and scavenging through bins for whatever food scraps he could find.
By age 12, he had received almost no education, was illiterate and was working in a coal mine when he was made a ward of the state.
As a teenager he also suffered alcoholism and found himself spending time in jail.
After he was released, he ‘worked’ as a “cockatoo” keeping watch for a “two-up school’ and later as a scout for his sisters’ brothels. In 1916, at age 32, he enlisted with the 5th battalion AIF for service in World War 1.
However, his health was poor, and he was medically discharged in 1919.
It was on the night of August 6, 1930 that he accepted Jesus as his lord and saviour after hearing a sermon by Rev. R Hammond at St. Barnabas Church.
Inspired by this sermon, he became intrigued with the concept of eternity.
It was two years later that he heard the sermon by the Rev. Ridley.
Rev. Ridley’s words about eternity were pivotal in Stace’s decision to tell as many people as possible about his faith.
He said, "Eternity went ringing through my brain and suddenly I began crying and felt a powerful call from the Lord to write Eternity."
Even though he was illiterate and could barely write his own name, the one word “Eternity” flowed from him easily and naturally in a beautiful script.
No one could explain how this could be.
For the next thirty-five years, he would often get up at 4:00 AM and go about the streets of Sydney writing in chalk the one word “Eternity” on footpaths, pavements, doorposts and anywhere else that presented itself.
He almost got caught by police several times, as it was then illegal to “deface the pavement,” but each time he avoided being arrested.
During this time, he was also homeless for a period, but still volunteered to assist the unemployed, addicted and mentally-ill of Sydney’s streets.
The mystery of “Mr. Eternity’s” identity was not solved for another twenty-seven years, when he was seen writing on the footpath by the Rev. Lisle Thompson, minister of the church where he worked as caretaker.
It was estimated that he wrote the word “Eternity” in the streets of Sydney over half a million times over thirty-five years.
Upon his passing in 1967, in his honour, the NSW government passed a law permitting the use of chalk on all public pavements in the state.
It would be an understatement to say that Stace was deeply conscious of the concept of where he was going to spend his eternity.
Perhaps the best-known bible verse of all in which Jesus taught about this is John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life”. Eternity is real.
The only question is about where each of us will spend it. The promise of Jesus is that if we turn to Him and believe, then when our days on Earth are past, we will spend the rest of our eternity with Him in the glorious place that He has prepared for us.