Spark situation ideas Welcome.

I have an '83 toyota pick-up. I recently replaced a bad fuel pump and the vehicle worked for a while. Last start up had tac meter was jumping. The next moring couldn't start it. I pulled a spark plug and attached it to the cable lead and had a friend crank it over. I couldn't see any visble blue spark. I took the distributor cap off and saw the gasket was dry rotted and some of it was missing. Some of the oil and water(I believe) from the fuel pump change had gotten in there. the points on the distributor cap were black. So my questions are these....
1)Should I assume it doesn't start because the gasket, cap, and rotor need to be replaced?
2)Was i doing the spark plug test correctly?
3)Is there any other test I should do or should a replacement solve my problem?

that sounds bad but look at the coil too