A reading of the holy gospel according to John. Jesus revealed himself again to the disciples by the Sea Of Tiberias. Of course, that's up in Galilee, the Lake Of Galilee. And this is the way it happened. Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twain, Nathaniel of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples were together.
Simon Peter said to them, I'm going fishing. They said to him, we'll go along with you. They went out and got into their boat, but that night they caught nothing. Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the beach, yet the disciples didn't know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, children, have you any fish?
They answered, no. He said, cast your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some. So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in for the quantity of fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved, that's John, said to Peter, it is the lord. When Simon Peter heard that it was the lord, he put on his clothes for he was stripped for work and jumped into the sea.
But the other disciples came in the boat dragging the net full of fish for they were not far from the land, about a 100 yards. That's a pretty good swim. When they got out on the land, they saw a charcoal fire burning with fish lying on it and bread. Jesus said to them, bring some of the fish over here that you have caught. So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore full of fish, a 153 of them.
And although there were so many, the net didn't break. Jesus said to them, come and have breakfast. Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, who are you? For they knew it was the lord Jesus. He came and took the bread and gave it to them and so also with the fish.
This was now the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Probably the greatest blot on us as a nation today is the free willing attitude, legal attitude towards abortion. Now yesterday, hearings began on a bill that will be presented to the senate on the right to life.
The meeting yesterday was the senate's judiciary subcommittee and it is intended to focus exclusively exclusively on scientific evidence which means experiential evidence, not philosophy or theology or sociology or economics or anything else, but exclusively on the scientific evidence of when human life begins. And I listened to some of the testimony. It's unbelievable. Now as regard this matter of abortion, which everybody says is fraught with emotion. Well, it certainly is fraught with emotion.
If you saw thirty minutes, if you saw the McNeil Lehrer show last night, you'll realize how much it is fraught with emotion. But the basic question you see, for example, if you're out in the woods and you see you've been out hunting a deer, I know you're all great deer hunters, but put yourself out in the woods on a foggy, cold, fall afternoon. It's almost dark. You can't see well at all, and you've been out there freezing and you're disgruntled. You've lost your money and you've lost your temper.
You've lost almost everything. And finally, you think you see a deer. And yet you say that may be a hunter. You can't you can't make sure. You can't solve that doubt.
The more you look, the more fuzzy it gets. Are you allowed to shoot? May you say, look, perhaps it you've the problem is this. It may be human. It may be a deer.
Are you allowed to shoot in that state of mind? I don't think there is anybody. And furthermore, if you say you are not allowed to shoot in that state of doubt, why aren't you allowed? You say, well, because you're not allowed to kill another human being. There's the question.
This is the issue. The issue is not the woman's right to her body. It's not the it's not the issue, it's not the woman's right to determine what she's going to bear and not bear. The issue is not whether these were all proposed. It is the issue is not whether a doctor in performing an abortion is committing murder.
These are not the real issues. This was I I didn't phrase that too well. A doctor said, look, if this bill passes, I'll be guilty of murder. You see he's looking at it in other words, as long as you got the law on your side, there's no you don't need to worry about being guilty of murder. The issue, the soul not the sole issue.
There are all kinds of issues involved here. But the basic first primary primitive question, the most elementary question is, what do you have inside that woman's uterus? If it's living. If it's not living, you don't have to worry. But if there is something they're living, what is it?
Now look here folks, here is the basic issue. In any debate, the burden of proof rests upon those who are attacking the accepted position. Now, the received position in the in Christian Western Europe, in Christian in the Christian world, and in the non Christian world to a great extent, is that abortion is wrong. Direct abortion is wrong because it's an attack upon a human being. That's the accepted position.
Therefore, the burden of proof doesn't rest upon me to prove it's human. The burden of proof rests upon those who say it ain't human. Let them try to prove it. Now, as far as I've read the testimony yesterday, they're getting in a bunch of gynecologists and pediatricians and you know very well known men and women. They're all in agreement.
They have to be in agreement that a new baby begins with the meeting of the sperm and the egg so that you have life before that. If the sperm is dead or if the egg is dead you don't have conception. The sperm is a living cell. The egg is a living cell. So you have life before you ever have any conception.
See the words here are not they're all mixed up. We're not talking about the beginning of life. We're talking about the beginning of a human person. Of course they don't use that word person. Now, very eminent doctor, gynecologist and pediatrician or whatever you call him, he said in reply to the question of when does human life begins?
He said when the baby is born you have a birth certificate. That's what he said. Now you see so here is the basic question. The church has never defined let get this straight. The Catholic church has never defined when a human being begins as a human being.
It's never said that. But it has said this, since we don't know for sure when it does begin as a human being, we have to treat every conception of a woman as a human being until the opposite be proved. You can't shoot in the dusk of the evening as long as you're in doubt. This is a the committee is headed by Senator John East, North Carolina. This is a notice, this bill does not call this all this bill is is intended to do is to give back to the states the right to make their own decision in this matter.
But if the bill passes, it will negate the supreme court's decision of 1973, which everything on which the whole business rests at the present time. This is a this is a matter of tremendous concern to the whole nation. It's probably the most important issue that's been brought up in Congress in years and years, probably not since the problem over slavery because there's a great similarity here. It's a matter of prayer. It is also a matter of your of your own active attention in regard to this.
Letting your own representatives, senators know what you think. This is a frightfully important issue. You're talking in terms of millions of fetuses destroyed every year. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.