"What Happens Without God?"-- a Letter to the Editor,

by Cecilia Spotted Bear, Wounded Knee, SD.

Dear Editor,

This country has gradually gone from bad to worse. The moral values have gone down the drain and the absolute laws of God have been pushed out from the schools and prayer banned.

So what do we have now? We have same sex marriages, which God said is hateful to Him. When God made man from the dust and breathed into his nostrils gthe breath of life, Man became a soul. The soul will never die, so the choice that we make for eternity will be the home of our soul, which is Heaven or Hell. When we die our soul leaves the body--it goes to God who made it--then we are sent to whatever place we put ourselves while we are alive.

The persons who do not want to know God's word will have no excuse for their sins. The sins that people do not want to part with will send them to Hell.

Here is something I read and want to share. The First Amendment of the Constitution forbade Congress to make any law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. With that history, America became the greatest nation on earth.

But all that has changed.

In 1962, the United States Supreme Court, in defiance of historical precedent and the Constitution, barred prayer from public school. The barring of the Bible and the posting of the Ten Commandments followed. The place of religion, prayer, and the scripture was usurped by humanism and sex-education.

The results were immediate and universal. Scholasticism plummeted while crime and immorality escalated. Recently published figures tell the story: more than a million teenage pregnancies a year; 75 percent of 19-year-old girls with lost virtue; three million teenagers infected with sexually-transmitted diseases annually; 400,000 teen abortions annually; AIDS cases doubling every 12 months; AIDS the number-one killer of ages 25-34 in New York City; 2,000 violent deaths in a year in New York City; suicide the number-three cause of death among teenagers; alcohol the number-one killer of youth 14 to 25 years old.

Those are the tragedies of a society from which God has been excluded.

What has happened to society also happens to the individual. To exclude God from life is to exclude good and hope from eternity. But when God comes into a life, that life is changed. Sin ceases and that one becomes a new person: "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold all the things are become new"--II Corinthians 5: 17.

This experience is described by Jesus as the new birth--to enter heaven, one must have it. It alone can prepare one to live, and get him ready to die.

To experience the "new birth" you must confess and forsake all sin, put your faith in Jesus Christ, and live a righteous life. "Wherefore He (Jesus) is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him." Hebrews 7:25.

What is happening in Lakota territory and all the rest of the reservations in this country? We have many different tribes who are having many of the problems that we have. How many of our people are dying from alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs, overdose of drugs, abortion, AIDS, car wrecks, fights, over-eating, and the list can go on.

Now we have gangs on this reservation beating up on one another, they are the dog fighters. Did you ever notice how a bunch of dogs get together and beat up on one?

The statistics were taken from the Teen Turmoil, Focus ont he Family, Greensboro News and Record, Reader's Digest, Baberton Rescue Mission News, and Ladies Home Journal.

What are the statistics from the Native Americans?--Cecilia Spotted Bear, Wounded Knee, SD