Unwrapping Lazarus

Blending the wisdom and experience of his two lives in ‘unwrapping Lazarus’; first as a medical doctor, and now as a church leader and head of the school of supernatural ministries at Bethel Church Redding, Pete Carter is able to give a unique perspective on human suffering, healing, medicine and faithful prayer.

Pete opens his book with a Lazarus-like story of 18 year-old Mexican, Otilio. Otilio is like Lazarus in every way other than actually being clinically dead. A childhood beating had left his paralysed since the age of 8. Small and frail he live in a simple hut composed of little more that sticks. The arrival of Pete Carter, a doctor from England, raised hope of a miracle among the local population.

Pete was in Mexico with Andy Merrick to support missionaries Pepe and Vero in a poverty stricken, disease ridden region. Health care and awareness was so primitive that, despite widespread dysentery, the population could not be persuaded of the need to boil drinking water.

Discovering Otilio on a thread bare blanket, Pete could see the youth had spastic paralysis of all four limbs as well as impaired mental functioning. The only possible course of action in those primitive circumstances was to pray.

Praying with his eyes open, Pete noticed that one of his legs moved more easily, rather than simply jerking. Something was happening to Ortilio. Pete felt God instruct him to lift the youth off his meagre bedding, and to face the question: did he believe sufficiently in God’s power to work through him?

After a decade of muscular wastage lying on his back, there was no weight in the young man as Pete lifted him off the bet, placed his feet on the ground and let him go. The boy walked out of the hut for the first time in 10 years, and God’s healing had begun. The boy was free and brought to life in much wider and fuller sense that mere medical condition.

The book addresses many questions, from: how can God heal an individual, to how can a nation be healed, can it happen again and can it happen here? Pete’s hope is that the book will help Christians everywhere to understand and participate in the healing and enriching of the lives of those around them, through God’s love and power.

At this time God is at work in the nations of the world, doing new things that require us to re-adjust our thinking and align ourselves with Him. This book is designed to help Christians everywhere understand with greater clarity how to participate in the amazing works of God – and to enrich the lives of those around them with His love and power.

Author Pete Carter poses such questions as:

• Can a nation be changed?
• How can hope be brought into seemingly hopeless situations?
• How can we grow as individuals in Jesus’ love and power?
• How can we demonstrate that love and power to the world around us?

He uses the biblical story of Lazarus, brought back from the dead by his friend Jesus, to explore the answers.

Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead – but that wasn’t the end of the story. This episode was not complete until Lazarus was free to live again, and that could not happen until the grave clothes restricting his body were removed. Likewise, one of our main tasks in serving Jesus is to “unwrap Lazarus” – to help people become all they were created to be. We were all born to be fully “unwrapped” – to love God more, to trust Him more, and to do all that Jesus did and more!