Hello Doves.  This is my first contribution to the forum after a couple years of just
reading.  I believe that His return is near, but I pray that the Lord will delay, so that as
many as possible can be born again and escape the troubles to come.  I was prompted to
contribute by the references to the Father Wingate website.
 
Let me first tell you a little bit about myself.  I was baptized Catholic, attended Catholic
school, and graduated from Aquinas College in 1972.  In November of 1972 I asked Jesus
into my heart, became filled with the Holy Spirit, and then became active in leadership of prayer groups that met at Catholic churches for many years. My Catholic father-in-law had a passion for studying scripture and for anything regarding the end times, so I have been
expecting the soon return of Jesus for over 36 years now.  I could not reconcile what the
Spirit was showing me through scripture with a lot of Catholic theology, and God gave
me a release to leave in the early 1980’s.  Catholics are like people you will find in most churches.  Some are born again, many are not but hope that having been baptized and having received the sacraments they will get to heaven.  There are many fine
Catholic Christians and dedicated, born again priests, and through the fog of error in theology and practice Catholic doctrine does proclaim Jesus as Lord and Savior.
 
The problem with the revelations given to Wingate is that many of them, just like the
revelations given by the spirit saying it is Mary to the children at Lourdes, Fatima, or
Medjuigory, reinforce Catholic doctrines promulgated in the middle ages concerning
purgatory, indulgences, works of penance and Marian devotion.  In Wingate’s case it is
not Mary who conveys the false revelation, but most likely a familiar spirit who identified
itself as his guardian angel when he was a boy, and now as the angel Michael.
 
Many might be surprised that Catholic thought expects that in the last days there will be a mass apostasy, or falling away from the Roman Catholic faith, with a coming of an Antichrist, who may even be a false pope. They believe that God will protect the true "institutional" Church during that time, until the Antichrist is bound by the archangel Michael, who has been acting as “the Restrainer” for the past 2,000 years.  Some Catholic writers believe that we now in, or very near to those last days.
 
Catholic end time theology is replacement theology, with promises made to the Jewish nation transferred to the Church.  Jesus is not expected to return now because He is already present on the earth through His presence in the sacraments, especially communion, but also in the display of the host. Because the establishment during His time on earth of the sacraments and the apostolic based priesthood He will not need to return
until the final judgment, which happens just prior to the new heavens and the new earth.
 
The Catholic Church explicitly rejects the idea that Jesus will return to earth as a Jewish
King to rule from Jerusalem for 1000 years. Point 676 in the Catechism Of The Catholic
Church states; "The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the
kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the intrinsically perverse
political form of secular messianism".
 
Catholic theology accepts a tribulation period, which is defined as a period of apostasy
from Catholicism, perhaps accompanied by other worldwide disasters, and led by an
Antichrist. That period will end when the Antichrist is bound by the archangel Michael.
This will usher in a universal Time of Peace, when the nations will flock to the presence
of Christ as found in the sacraments and the priesthood of the Catholic Church. At the
end of that undetermined time Michael will release the Antichrist, who will gather the
nations against the Church, which is ruling from Jerusalem at this time, for the final war
of Gog and Magog. It is at this time that the Church will be caught up to meet Jesus in the
air. The Bride will then immediately return with Jesus to do away with all rebellion.
There will be a final judgment, and finally "a cosmic upheaval of the passing world".
 
Can a Catholic priest get a revelation from the Lord concerning the end times?  Sure.  But
just like most of the Marian apparitions that still today draw tens of thousands of pilgrims
each year to various places around the world, the message conveyed by the seers and the
message conveyed by the Wingate website have an agenda that I believe both misleads
today, and is intended by the evil one to mislead and deceive in the last days.
 
Ask yourself this.  Did Wingate really take a spiritual journey to Purgatory as described in
his web site?  Did the angel Michael really give him incense from the Last Supper to be
sold as a sacramental?  Is Mary a dispenser of God’s grace and the mediatrix between us
and the Father?  None of those things bring us closer in our communion with the Father
and the Son, or express a salvation brought about by grace through faith, not dependent upon works.
 
I suspect that after the Rapture there will be false signs in the sky, and one of those will
be of Mary, standing on a moon and crowned with stars.  Perhaps she will have a
message for those left behind.  Those who have had wisdom and discernment, including
born again ministers and born again priests, will be gone.  Many of those remaining will
believe the ever thicker mystical fog of deception designed to fill the spiritual hunger of the people without actually leading them to a spirit changing relationship with the Father through Jesus.
 
From what I have seen on his website,  interest in his visions is like reading a horoscope.  Don’t waste your time.   It is best not to give the evil one a foothold in your life in case a message originating from an evil spirit ends up having some truth to it.
 
Bob LaBarge
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Thanks, Bob.
Welcome to the Doves!
John