The salt air of Patmos was a constant companion. It clung to the linen of my robe, a thin, rough fabric worn smooth at the elbows from hours spent writing, praying, waiting. The island was a jagged stone thrown into the Aegean, and I was a fragment of something else, broken off and discarded here. The empire called it exile. In the quiet, beneath the vast bowl of the sky, I had begun to call it something else—a threshold.

It was the Lord’s Day. Not merely the first day of the week, but the day that now held the echo of an empty tomb. I had no temple to attend, no sacrifice to offer. My worship was the silence, the relentless crash of waves on rock, and the parchment before me. I was seeking the Voice, not in the wind or the quake, but in the memory of a promise: *I am with you always.*

Then, it found me.

It began not as a sound, but as a pressure behind the ears, a resonance in the bones, like the deep note of a bronze bell struck in a far-off city. I turned from my scroll, the hair on my arms lifting. The afternoon light, usually a clear, hard Mediterranean gold, seemed to thicken, to pulse.

“I am the Alpha and the Omega.”

The words did not enter my ears. They were simply *there*, fully formed in the chambers of my mind, spoken in a voice that was neither loud nor soft, but absolute. It was a voice of many waters—the roar of a cataract, the sigh of a rain-swollen stream, the hiss of foam on shingle, all woven into one unshakable utterance. It commanded the very air.

“Write what you see. Send it to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, to Laodicea.”

The names, the dear and troubled names of our little flocks, rang out like clarion calls. My heart ached with a sudden, fierce longing for them—for their faces, their struggles, their fragile faith. This was for them. This terrifying grace was for them.

I turned, slow as a dreamer, toward the voice. And I saw.

Seven golden lampstands, arranged in a rough circle on the stony ground, though they stood on no base I could see. Their light was not the warm, dancing glow of olive oil, but a cold, pure, unwavering radiance, like captured starlight. They cast sharp, black shadows that did not move.

And in the midst of the lampstands, a figure.

Human in form, yet… more. A robe fell to His feet, not in coarse linen, but in a garment of such profound white it made the sun look tarnished. A sash of gold, broad and rich, crossed His chest. His hair was like wool, not in color but in texture—a dense, brilliant white, like snow on the high peaks at dawn. His eyes—oh, His eyes—were a flame. Not merely fiery, but living fire, seeing, penetrating, burning away every shadow within me. I felt known, to the very marrow.

His feet gleamed like bronze refined in a furnace, as if they had trodden through the very core of judgment and emerged incandescent. And His voice, when it came again, was the sound I had felt earlier given form—the roar of a thousand oceans speaking in unison.

In His right hand, He held seven stars. They did not twinkle like distant suns, but burned with the same fierce, steady light as His eyes, tiny orbs of contained fury and promise. From His mouth protruded a sharp, two-edged sword, not of metal, but of that same uncreated light, a word so potent it could cleave spirit from soul.

His face… it was like the sun shining in full strength. I could not look at it directly. It was the face of the one I had leaned against at supper, the face that had wept at Lazarus’s tomb, the face that had been torn and bloodied on the Roman stake. But it was also the face of the One who spoke to Moses from the burning bush, the Ancient of Days Daniel saw in his visions. All the kindness, all the severity, all the timeless, unassailable authority of God was fused into those terrible, glorious features.

I saw, and I fell. My legs gave way as if the bones had vanished. I dropped to the ground not in worship, but in sheer, animal collapse, like a dead man. The weight of that glory pressed the air from my lungs. I was ash, a speck of dust before the foundation of the world.

Then, a hand touched my shoulder. The touch of the one with feet of furnace bronze and eyes of flame was not searing, but solid, real, a comfort so profound it was itself a new kind of terror. It was the touch of the carpenter from Nazareth.

“Do not be afraid.”

The words were simple, but in that voice, they were an ordinance of the universe. The fear did not leave me, but it was surrounded, held in check by a greater truth.

“I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One. I was dead, and behold, I am alive for ever and ever. And I hold the keys of Death and Hades.”

The keys. Not a sword to destroy Death, but keys. Authority. It was a custodial promise. The grim gates were now under His hand. The final jailer was Himself in custody.

“Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now, and what will take place later.”

He helped me to my feet. My knees trembled, but they held. The vision remained, but the paralyzing dread had been transfigured into a shaking, awe-filled clarity. He explained, His voice now quieter, a teacher with His pupil. The mystery of the seven stars and the seven golden lampstands. The stars were the angels—the presiding spirits, the essences—of the seven churches. The lampstands were the churches themselves. He was among them. He held their guardians in His right hand. He walked in their midst.

The sun began its descent toward the sea, the ordinary world bleeding back in at the edges of the vision. The figure, the lampstands, the stars in His hand—they did not vanish, but seemed to recede into the very fabric of the twilight, leaving their imprint on the air.

I was alone again on the rocky shore. The salt wind was cold on my wet cheeks. My scroll lay where I had dropped it. My hands, as I reached for the stylus, still shook. But they were no longer the hands of an old exile, broken and waiting. They were the hands of a scribe of the Living One, who was dead and is alive. The scent of the sea was now mingled with something else—the smell of hot metal, of ozone after a lightning strike, of myrrh.

And I began to write.