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Saturday, 23 December 2017

The man with the jacket that spoke

I took this picture in the shopping centre when I went down there yesterday to get some lunch. I tried to understand what it said when I got home, and wrote down the words on it here:
Who are U worshipping. Nothing (1) God!!!
AD 15th – 17th century
The spirit of truth
Error: will worshipping
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me to warn Oz, Acts 17:26 & 7
Jer:18 … 2013 A.D Aust proclaimed rejection of God: Selling itself 4 nothing
Open 4 business

Acts 17:26-27 goes like this:
From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.
Jeremiah 18 goes like this:
This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” 3 So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4 But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. 
5 Then the word of the Lord came to me. 6 He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel. 7 If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, 8 and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. 9 And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, 10 and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it. 
11 “Now therefore say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, ‘This is what the Lord says: Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. So turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions.’ 
12 But they will reply, ‘It’s no use. We will continue with our own plans; we will all follow the stubbornness of our evil hearts.’” 
13 Therefore this is what the Lord says: “Inquire among the nations: Who has ever heard anything like this? A most horrible thing has been done by Virgin Israel. 
14 Does the snow of Lebanon ever vanish from its rocky slopes? Do its cool waters from distant sources ever stop flowing? 
15 Yet my people have forgotten me; they burn incense to worthless idols, which made them stumble in their ways, in the ancient paths. They made them walk in byways, on roads not built up. 
16 Their land will be an object of horror and of lasting scorn; all who pass by will be appalled and will shake their heads. 
17 Like a wind from the east, I will scatter them before their enemies; I will show them my back and not my face in the day of their disaster.” 
18 They said, “Come, let’s make plans against Jeremiah; for the teaching of the law by the priest will not cease, nor will counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophets. So come, let’s attack him with our tongues and pay no attention to anything he says.” 
19 Listen to me, Lord; hear what my accusers are saying! 
20 Should good be repaid with evil? Yet they have dug a pit for me. Remember that I stood before you and spoke in their behalf to turn your wrath away from them. 
21 So give their children over to famine; hand them over to the power of the sword. Let their wives be made childless and widows; let their men be put to death, their young men slain by the sword in battle. 
22 Let a cry be heard from their houses when you suddenly bring invaders against them, for they have dug a pit to capture me and have hidden snares for my feet. 
23 But you, Lord, know all their plots to kill me. Do not forgive their crimes or blot out their sins from your sight. Let them be overthrown before you; deal with them in the time of your anger.
He was a slim man with the tendons and muscles on his neck clearly visible from the back of him and the stubble visible on his jaw. He quit the shopping centre ahead of me and went up to walk across Bay Street, heading down the hill on Broadway toward the city. He walked along and near the bus stop took a swig from the bottle of red wine he had bought in the shopping centre, then put it in the singlet bag in his hand. Outside the Anglican church near Mountain Street he lit a cigarette in the wind shadow created by the building’s wall.

This was the church that Arthur Stace attended on 6 August 1930 after which he converted to Christianity. I’ve written about Stace several times on this blog, and especially about the word ‘Eternity’ that he wrote on the pavements of the city when he was alive. The word ‘Yes’ was written on the pavements around Broadway in the same script Stace used, at the time the same-sex marriage survey was being conducted by the federal government.

Today, after lighting his cigarette the man stopped with the foot traffic at Mountain Street and waited with the crowd until the light changed. At one point it looked like he would cross against the lights but the heavy traffic turning in from Broadway convinced him to wait and he turned back to the kerb. When the light changed, I crossed the street ahead of him and went along, wondering if he would follow. He walked past me and turned west into Wattle Street, where I stopped to wait for the traffic signal to change. When I was walking across to the traffic island, I looked left down the street and he was nowhere to be seen so I guessed that he must have walked into a side street.

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