The Ten Commandments- in the Hebrew Bible that is "aseret hadavarim"- the Ten Words or utterances of God- which define with some clarity everyman's relationship to his Creator, to himself, and to his fellow man- are the only words ever spoken from Heaven by the Creator publicly and audibly to an entire nation.  Those words have been carried by that tiny nation of Israel for more than three-thousand years now- up to this day.  Those Ten Words have outlived the great civilizations and cultures that arose during that time and witnessed them in their midst- but refused to heed them, refused to live by them- and are now silent, perished from the earth.  The great Egyptian civilization and her gods have left behind only massive stone tombs and dusty mummies, all silent as the Sphinx.  The glory of Babylon has crumbled- gone.  The expansive Persian Empire shriveled and died.  The world of Greek Hellenistic light with its pantheon of gods has faded out and extinguished.  The undefeatable Roman Empire has fallen and left only ruins.  In more recent times the Third Reich-stepped its way across the stage of history and was bombed into the dust of extinction.  In our day the fearful superpower called the Soviet Union with its god of Atheism has collapsed after seventy years of display.

Now, in this great and most blessed of nations in the history of nations, there are forces of forgetfulness that would erase and expunge these Ten Words from the memory, from the consciousness and conscience of the American people- leaving in their place a vacuum that would be filled only with their antithesis.  Allow me then to quote the words of James Madison, one of the fathers and founders of this nation, who said: "We have staked the whole future of the American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it.  We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."

Today, on this anniversary of Paul Revere's ride to the warning of the American people, and on this Holocaust Memorial Day- and I am a living remnant of that Holocaust- we unveil this monument to the grace of God- His Ten Commandments- before our Creator and before the eyes of the American people as did Joshua in the Land of Israel some three- thousand years ago.  Let me read those words from Joshua, chapter twenty-four, verses twenty-six and twenty-seven:  "And Joshua wrote these words in the book of the Law of God, and he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak by the sanctuary of the Lord.  Joshua said to all the people, Behold, this stone shall be for a witness against us, for it has heard all the words of the Lord which He spoke to us; thus it shall be for a witness against you, lest you deny your God."  That they might remember and not forget from whence has come this great blessing and that they may choose life and the continued blessing, in order that this great nation, under God, shall not perish from the earth.

This is the address given at the unveiling and dedication of the Ten Commandments monument by its designer, Elhanan ben-Avraham, at West Bowles Community Church in Littleton, Colorado on April 18th, 2004.

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