The Sting of Jesus

Game Setting: The Sting of Jesus is a game inspired by chapter 9 of the Book of Revelation in the Christian Bible. In the Book of Revelation, Jesus appears to a prophet named John of Patmos. Jesus explains his plans to return to the Earth and become its political and religious leader, sitting on a throne for a thousand year. In Chapter 9, Jesus shows John a part of his plan that involves the mass punishment of those who have refused to join his Christian movement. An angel of God will release immense swarms of monsters to torture everyone who has not converted to Christianity. These monsters will have the bodies of giant locusts, but with human faces and long hair. They will wear golden crowns and battle armor. They will have sharp teeth, but their main weapons will be in their stinging tails, which will look like the tails of scorpions. Jesus explains to John that the agony produced by the stings of these monsters will be so horrible that people will beg to be killed rather than endure it. However, the angel of God will forbid the monsters from killing anyone. The purpose of the torture is to instill a fear of Jesus and a willingness to obey him without question. This campaign of global torture, Jesus explains, will go on for five months straight.

In this game, players obtain and control these scorpion locust monsters, and use them to gain points by stinging unbelievers.

Game Play: Shuffle the cards and place them on the table face down. Play begins with the person sitting to the right of the dealer and proceeds clockwise. At the beginning of their turn, a player begins by drawing four cards. Next, the player must place all the unbeliever cards in their hand in the middle of the table. Once placed on the table, unbeliever cards remain there until they are stung. After unbeliever cards are placed on the table, the player may use scorpion locust cards to sting unbelievers, or play other cards. Cards may be played in any order. Players may choose to keep cards other than unbelievers in their hands between turns. Unbelievers may be stung by a combination of locust cards with points equal to or greater than the points of an unbeliever card. No locust card can apply its sting to more than one unbeliever card, however. So, a locust card with 5 points can sting one unbeliever card with 1 point, but cannot sting 5 unbeliever cards with 1 point each. When unbeliever cards are stung, they remain with the player who stung them until the end of the game and are displayed face up so that other players can see them. All other cards go into the discard pile after they are played. When all cards in the deck have been played, the discard pile is shuffled again and made available for players to draw from again.

Play continues for 5 rounds, each round corresponding to9 one of the 5 months of torture revealed by Jesus in the Book of Revelation. The winner of the game is the player who has collected the most unbeliever points at the end of the game.

Special Cards All special cards are added to the discard pile after they are played, but may be picked up and used again, after the discard pile is shuffled. Insecticide cards may be used against another player. The player who is the target of an insecticide card is skipped for one turn. Hop cards allow a player to sting and claim unbeliever cards held in another player’s stung pile. A swarm card stings all unbelievers placed in the middle of the table. A Jesus card doubles the stinging power of all locust cards held by one player for one round. A sandstorm card prevents all players from stinging for one turn each. Players can still draw cards, however. Anointed cards allow a player to draw 2 additional cards, which may be played in the same round. An Angel of God card sends all unstung unbelievers to the discard pile. An Abaddon card requires all other players to give all the cards they hold in their hands to the player of the Abaddon card. This does not include unbeliever cards that have already been stung. Blasphemy cards allow a player to take 1 unbeliever card from the middle of the table, or from another player’s pile of stung unbelievers. However, in order for the blasphemy card to take effect, the person who plays the card must speak a blasphemy out loud.

Instructions and more information about the game are available at demonicbible.com/stingofjesus------------------------------------