It's called the "Isle of Patmos," and Gilligan's Island it is not. It's a rugged chunk of volcanic rock, ten miles long and five miles wide, 35 miles off the coast of Asia Minor in the Mediterranean Sea, full of caves and out-croppings…a kind of desolate beauty. Your tour guide will take you to a small cave carved in the cliff overlooking the sea where tradition says that in about the year 95 A.D., a man named John received a vision, a revelation from God. Then he sent the message out in a round-robin letter to seven churches in the region now known as Turkey.

We are not exactly sure who this John was, but it was probably not the same John who wrote the Gospel. What we do know is that he was a political prisoner, a detainee, a prisoner of conscience exiled to this remote island because of…