Australia Day Message

by John Edwards

One day I asked the Lord to show me Australia's history from His perspective.

I was visiting my dear brother and his lovely family who, at the time, lived in Parramatta. One day we went for a walk, and happened to see some of the old colonial historical sites.

We walked past the old jail, over a bridge built by convicts, through the Macquarie Street gatehouse, to Old Government House; we saw an early settler's cottage, and the early church-building, and some early graveyards, which included the graves of some outlaws and missionaries alike—and numerous of the streets were named after early governors and pioneers.

As we stood in-front of a monument, and were looking at a bath-pool used by an early governor, I remember telling my brother that I was having some trouble thoroughly celebrating it all. Because I was also mindful of atrocities which I'd heard some people had perpetrated against some indigenous people.

So there are different perspectives on Australia's history now, aren't there. I therefore said to the Lord, "I really need to understand Australia's history from your perspective".

One day just a short time afterwards, I knelt down to pray, in a second bedroom in my brother's family-home—not at all expecting what was to happen next.

The bedroom wall in front of me suddenly seemed to disappear, and I went into a vision.

In the vision, I was taken back in history, to a time before a British penal-colony was established at Botany Bay.

I saw an aboriginal man, wearing traditional clothes, walking through the scrub. He stepped-through a clearing in the scrub, and onto the open beach. And I knew that it was the East coast of Australia.

He felt care-free, just enjoying the open-space on the beach, thinking that things were as they had always been and would always be as they had been. I could almost feel the breeze on his face! (I could feel so well what he felt, that for that moment it was almost as if I was him.)

As he looked out across the sea, suddenly he saw something he'd never seen before: bright beams of light shining on the horizon.

"Whatever could it be?" he thought to himself. He knew it wasn't the sunrise, for it was already high-noon and the sun stood blazing above him in the clear, bright, blue sky.

As he continued looking, he saw that the beams of light were becoming brighter—so he knew that whatever the source of the light was, it was soon to appear above the horizon.

The light-beams became brighter and brighter. He stood transfixed—his sense of anticipation heightened to a crescendo...

...and then it appeared, above the horizon: a glorious, shining city.

The city rose higher and higher in the sky; it moved closer and closer towards him—until it was right above him, suspended above his head. He stood gazing upwards, in awe and joy and with a sense of privilege, bathed in the glory of such grandeur, beauty and wisdom as he'd never seen nor considered before.

Then the city began to lower itself—lower and lower—until he began to find himself surrounded by it and in it—the city just plonked itself on the land. Any fear he'd felt at first, gave way to a wonderful peace, a feeling of being completely at home, a feeling of belonging, of naturally being one with the city. (Like he fit it, and it fit him—as if he was made for this.)

The city had walls. It occupied the entire continent of Australia—only a centimetre of land was left outside its walls. In the city were dwellings. (It was almost like the city was for both a man and his dog, if he had one—for everyone and everything.) The dwellings had windows, some of which were black, and some were white.

In the vision I looked to see if there was any indication of whether 'black' somehow symbolised evil and 'white' symbolised good—but it didn't: they were just different.

With that the vision ended.

And I knew straigthaway what it meant: GOD was up to something good!