THE 2 MINUTE BIBLE by Rob Lacey (1962-2006)

1st off,
nothing... but God
2nd off,
God
starts it all up and
WHAP!
Stuff everywhere.
The snake does some word twisting
Adam and eve fall for it
God
kicks them out of heaven on earth
death strolls in
They make babies
But the evil/good ratio goes through the roof
God
turns the flood taps on
"waterworld!"
Only noah's family and the animals survive
to see the rainbow
"Never again" quote God
More babies
Then Abraham -
The 1st jew
And his boys
Isaac, Jacob and Joseph
400 years on
the Jews are a nation
but just slave labour for Pharoah
Then God waves them out of Egypt through the red sea into the desert via 10 plagues
Moses downloads the contract -
the big ten rules
The Jews break them all
Grumbling round the desert
for 40 years
once Joshua gets them into a land with milk and honey on draught
king David sorts out the giant goliath between recording his greatest hits compilation
Solomon comes out with some wise one-liners
Then naff king after naff king
Messing up the people
Elijah and the other couriers can't stop the rot
So God lets the Babylon army
Trash Jerusalem
And the Jews are carted off
As slave labour
Again
Daniel gets to sleep
with the lions
Isaiah predicts a liberator
Esther stops a holocause attempt
and, 70 years on,
the jews trek back to do construction work in Jerusalem
But no shift in attitude:
More idol promises
wind God up.
So he stops
talking to them for 400 years.
Dot
Dot
Dot
Enter Jesus the Liberator
- good with hammers and nails
but he takes a career change at 30
and kicks off a 3 year
"heaven on earth" tour
with his mobile miracle clinic
and loads of stories
and questions
His team 12 love it
The public love it
The religious suits don't!
Dodgy trial
Punishment beatings
Public execution
-more hammers and nails
2 days later he's back
having sorted out death
He's launching the
Jesus Liberation movement
Via Paul Benson
His foreign rep.
Who's sending out loads of emails
Updating people on what it means that
Jesus came back to do
The sequel:
'With God in us
We can bring heaven on earth
Bit By Bit'
All ending up with Jonno's general memo
On how things are going to get
Wrapped up:
The snake gets bbQd
The Jesus liberation movement get limitless life
Heaven on earth
Absolutely!

Written by Roby Lacey 1962–2006
Rob Lacey, 43, father, actor and award-winning author, lost his courageous battle with cancer this week on Monday 1st May. Lacey is best known for the word on the street (originally published as the street bible), a vivid retelling of the entire Bible in modern British street English which was honored with the Book of the Year award in 2004 by the Christian Booksellers Convention in the U.K.

Read more about Rob Lacey on this site and visit his own site from Zondervan here.

FOR THOSE WHO'VE NEVER READ THE BIBLE
AND FOR THOSE WHO'VE READ IT TOO MUCH

Rob Lacey's "dangerously real" retelling of Scripture vividly demonstrates that the Bible is packed full of stories/poems/images that resonate with the big issues of today. This fresh paraphrase-come-running-commentary brings the text alive: Bible stories are retold as mini blockbusters; psalms as song lyrics; epistles as emails; Revelation as seen through a virtual reality headset.

John 14

1 - 4
‘Don’t look so stressed! You rely on God. So rely on me! Dad’s place has thousands of vacancies. I’m going ahead to get your apartment suites ready, to book you in. Would I lie to you? No, you know it. When it’s all sorted I’ll come and pick you up. I’ll be desperate for you to be with me. You know the route.’
5 - 6
Tom says, ‘Boss, if we knew where you’re going, we might be able to work out the route, but we don’t!’
Jesus comes back with, ‘I’m the route, the true route. And I’m the energy to propel you along the right route. I’m the only way you get to meet my Dad.’

Purist alert: This is not THE Bible (capital B)…
but it might just get you reaching for one.

Here you can read some more extracts.