34t What is the Gospel pool?

34t The Gospel Pool 

"Beside the gospel pool

appointed for the poor"

Thanks for the question, Dorothy.

The gospel pool refers to John 5.2-12:   

Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew  Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralysed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’ The sick man answered him, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk.’ At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk

The man is waiting for the water to be stirred because that was thought to be a sign of the presence of the healing Spirit -- if you could get into the pool at that moment you would be cured. The writer, John Newton--of Amazing Grace, is using the literal pool of the miracle story as an analogy or image for the healing power of the gospel message, the good news of Jesus Christ. 

Another layer of this meaning also comes from John 9:7, another healing story in which Jesus spits to make mud, puts it on a blind man's eyes, then sends him to the pool of Siloam to wash -- and he is healed.