Law enforcement officers and concerned citizens all over the United States are looking for ways to cut down crime. The key is in an article on page 8-A of the Jan 15 Times Record.

A 17-year-old boy had been guilty of theft on numerous occasions. But on Jan 12 he walked more than 24 blocks to the police station to confess that he had stolen two bike frames and a lamp from the back yard of a Fort Smith home. He wanted the police to help him return them.

Why the confession and restitution? The young man had attended a church service where he had turned his life over to God. The only way a criminal will become a law abiding citizen is by having a change of heart. No program, educational or otherwise, can accomplish this. It takes the power of the Almighty God.

All efforts at rehabilitation, apart from God, are like putting a Band-Aid on a cancer. Yet some years ago the Supreme Court, in effect, kicked God out of the public schools. In some classrooms students are ridiculed if they even believe there is a God, especially one Who is capable of doing anything. So lawlessness becomes worse and worse. The only way to turn the situation around is for Christians to pray more and work harder to let the world know that there is a God who can change lives for the better.

Government experts are baffled by the wave of crime that is sweeping over our land, but it's not really that hard to understand. The explanation was given in the 1854 edition of one of McGuffey's Eclectic Readers. The quotation follows:

"If you cause a community to doubt the genuineness and authenticity of the Scriptures, to question the reality and obligations of religion; to hesitate, undeciding, whether there be any such thing as virtue or vice; whether there be an eternal state of retribution beyond the grave; or whether there be any such being as God; you have broken down the barriers of moral virtue, and hoisted the floodgates of immorality and crime. I need not say that when a people have once done this, they can no longer exist as a tranquil and happy people. Every band that holds society together would be ruptured; fraud and treachery would take the place of confidence between man and man; the tribunals would be scenes of bribery and injustice; avarice, perjury, ambition and revenge would walk through the land, and render it more like the dwelling place of savage beasts than the tranquil abode of civilized and christianized men."

What part has modern television programming played in reducing our country to the state described above? You be the judge!

Some people are confused about God's command, "Thou shalt not kill." They feel that because of this, capital punishment is wrong But the actual meaning of the verse is, "Thou shalt do no murder." The Hebrew word translated "kill" refers to the willful destruction of life It is never used referring to taking the life of a murderer or of killing in battle.

God decreed in the Old Testament, "He who sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed," and this was not changed in the New Testament dispensation.

Much wanton murder could be prevented if the following measures were adopted:

1. If there is no doubt that a person committed murder, execute him within thirty days If there is doubt, give a life sentence without parole, but release him if he is proved later to be innocent.
2. Make dismissal mandatory for a judge who has released a murderer, if that murderer murders again.
3. Provide high-risk personnel, like convenience store clerks, with a means of protecting themselves and be sure they know how to use it.

Solomon said, "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the hearts of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.