Book Review: The Final Quest by Rick Joyner

 

First published in 1996, this book recounts five visions or dreams the author recorded. The opening is a stark description of spiritual warfare. The book progresses through various stages of revelation as he moves up a heavenly mountain, through crowds of fellow warriors and angels, to conversations with saints who have gone before (the great cloud of witnesses in heaven), and visions of and conversations with the Lord.  The bottom line is that total devotion to Christ is the highest value and must be the highest priority for our lives. 

The key element of these visions is the intensity with which the author experienced them, and that he manages to convey. The symbolism of various items and creatures lends concreteness to the story. But it is some of the messages that is most strongly conveyed. We need to try to get Jesus’ perspective on situations, people, and events. He loves every single person, not just the saints. He wants to use us in the situations we are in but most of us listen to Him so seldom or so poorly that we simply miss what He is calling us to. We judge other believers based on our culture and prejudices rather than seeing them the way He does, because we are too often prideful and set in our ways. People that seem insignificant to us matter the most in Jesus’ kingdom. When we are judged by Him, He still loves us but wants us to rectify our lives once He has shown us.

The first chapter seems hard as it describes in gory detail what the spiritual conflict looks like. As the book progresses there is not a continuation of the combat between good and evil, but a focus on preparing believers for the battle before they return to it. This does not make them easier to read, because they are challenging on two levels. One challenge is understanding the divine point of view as presented. The other challenge is to deal with our own shortcomings in all of these areas. 

In the introduction, the author explicitly states that he did not make any of this up on his own. He is recording dreams and visions that he had over the course of several months. He offers insight on the prophetic process as described in Scripture and as he experienced it. He does not claim that any of his revelation is at the level of Scripture, but that it deals with how we apply Truth to our lives.