And The Lord Sayeth, 'are You Mad?'
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday August 7, 1999
WHAT'S going on with mayors? First this guy in Coffs Harbour is agreeing with white supremacist loonies, and now the Mayor of Burnie, Tasmania, has resigned in a story which involves messages from God, jogging around a building seven times because of biblical significance, and a plan for a Christian prophecy centre.
(The story was broken by The Advocate newspaper.)
David Currie, 10 years an alderman of the job-starved former pulptown of Burnie, was elected mayor about four months ago. He's a former member of the fundamentalist Gospel Halls church, "also known as the Brethren", but left years ago and worked as an orderly and eventually as a personnel manager at the old hospital in Burnie. That building is now derelict, full of asbestos, with a price tag of about $1 million and a potential bill of $500,000 to demolish it. (Trust me, it's relevant.)
Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, Currie resigned, citing disillusionment with council matters and a message from God. Huh? So I called him to get the story. The things which strike one most about Currie are that he is deeply sincere, he could leave an iron pot limbless talking about "the Gospel", "the Messiah" and the Bible, and he's not winning any prizes for making sense.
He told me that he saw an old family friend approaching his family's shop-restaurant, the Chick Queen, as he was leaving one day. "She was talking away to herself or the Lord or however you want to put it: 'Send Mr Currie out'." The woman said she had been directed by God to ask him and his wife "to tea" so that she could deliver him a message from God. "So several days later..." he began. Whoa. Someone has a message from God and you don't rush over? "I had quite a busy week," said Currie from the Chick Queen.
Anyway, the message was that he was no longer putting God first in his life. Three weeks later he resigned, and started telling the town through letters to The Advocate about his plans for turning the old hospital into a biblical prophecy and Christian centre.
"I went for a jog one night and I usually just pass [the building] and I ran around it seven times [Currie explains later this was the number of times Joshua and his followers circled the walls of Jericho on the seventh day in the Bible story]. As I went around it I was claiming this place for God ... It sounds massive ... It sounds crazy. I know that.
"We could use Internet systems and telecommunication to set up a call centre, almost. I'm not an expert in that, by the way ... Deep down I know I've got to do this. It could be another building. My future lies in going out and abroad, not just Burnie ... I'm not sure how but it's got to be done. It will involve physical travel ... and mainland Australia."
But he hasn't got the money to buy the building and nobody's offering. "We'll wait on God for provision." But what if He does not provide? "Well, there you go - you can't fulfil the vision," Currie said. "It's just a building ... the temple is not the important thing. The real value is the person of Christ." Currie chuckled, "To this day [some] Jews would take a lot of convincing of that." I don't think he thought he was being vicious. I don't think he was even aware of how horrible it sounds.
And doesn't the whole thing seem pretty kooky? "It does," he said readily. And what does your wife think? "She's a bit perplexed." It's not as remarkable as "the walls of Jericho coming down, the [parting of the] Red Sea, the Resurrection". He adds that Karl Marx wrote that all history was the history of the class struggle, but Currie believes that "all history is the history of the messianic struggle, and all prophecy is the prophecy of the messianic triumph. In other words, there's a glorious future."
Then Currie started to tell me something about Matthew 16, but I really had to go.
© 1999 Sydney Morning Herald
