Former Alabama Chief Justice and Republican candidate for governor Roy Moore was the featured speaker at Crenshaw Christian Academy’s Veterans Day ceremony in Luverne on Thursday.

Moore, a decorated veteran of Vietnam and graduate of West Point Military Academy, layered Biblical and historical references throughout his speech and painted a grim picture of the United States’ future. Moore said if the country continues to turn its back on God then the US would go the way of other nations.

Mainly, he said, a country founded under God, would cease to exist.

“All nations have ended at some point,” he said. “I’m not saying it’s going to happen in a short time, but it may happen 1,000 years from now. Rome lasted 500 years but fell because of departure from its principals. We’re losing our morality.”

He said those who look back after the United States’ fall would ask: “Did they forget God?”

Retired Alabama Supreme Court Justice Terry Butts introduced Moore. Butts led Moore’s legal team in the fight to keep a monument bearing the Ten Commandments in the state’s judicial building.

Moore, Butts said, was “steeled in the fires of Vietnam” and he openly criticized the print media for not better referencing Moore’s military background and service to his country.

Moore agreed that his military service has not been well publicized, but wouldn’t comment on the media’s fairness toward him as a political candidate.

And while early polls show incumbent Gov. Bob Riley leading Moore among Republicans, Moore said he wouldn’t discuss the polls.

“We don’t talk about polls,” he said. “The only poll that matters is the one in July. And we’ll win that one.”

Moore honored the Veterans in attendance, and said, “we can never dispute the efforts of our armed forces.”

Mike Green, a pastor and resident of Luverne, said he believed Moore is a “Godly man” and was a “great candidate for governor.”

But he declined to say if Moore had his vote or not.

“I can’t say. Voting is something I believe is personal,” he said. “Gov. Riley is a great candidate as well. It’s a choice the State of Alabama is going to have to make.”

Moore attacked both evolution and abortion during his speech and said he wants to defend the rights of teachers and public officers to acknowledge God as the foundation of moral law.

In a distributed flyer, entitled “Return Alabama to the People,” Moore outlines his stand on other issues, including his desire to eliminate the power of special interest lobbyists in the state legislature, halt the flow of illegal aliens in Alabama by holding businesses who employ them financially responsible, and bring a conservative philosophy back to the state government.