Editorial September 21, 1940 Issue

Bethesda

George Shaw Cook

In the fifth chapter of John's Gospel, it says: "There is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water."

Among those hoping to be healed by the waters of the pool, when they were agitated, was one who is said to have had an infirmity "thirty and eight years." When this man was asked by Jesus, "Wilt thou be made whole?" he explained that he had no one, when the water was "troubled," to place him in the pool. Rejecting the superstitious belief that the waters of the pool had healing efficacy, Jesus said to the man, "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk;" and it is recorded that "immediately the man was made whole."

When reading this account, some may have wondered why Jesus selected this man to be healed by the Christ-power out of the number who were there and who may have been in equal need. There is nothing in the Scriptural record to indicate why Jesus discriminated in favor of this man, but it is quite possible that he discerned in his thought a state of receptivity to the truth which did not exist with the others. Christ Jesus was able to discern the presence of receptivity even though the man himself may not have been aware of it.

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