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African Avatars and the Third Secret of FatimaChristian churches and colonial governments tried to eradicate African spiritual masters even into the late 20th century but never destroyed their influence.
Extracted from Nexus Magazine, Volume 8, Number 5 (August-September 2001) © by Tom Dark © 2001
Few Westerners are aware of the spectacular religious activity that has been thundering with incalculable exuberance through the hearts of millions of Africans in our just-passed century. Men and women have been seeing vision after vision, sign after sign, and wonder after wonder. There are national holidays commemorating miracles--not from centuries ago by some old saint whose paint has long since peeled, but within the last few decades and witnessed by thousands of ordinary citizens still walking among us. Religious scholars whom I have contacted as independent sources have been recording the activity with intense fascination. Relatively little is known, and scholars are quite eager to learn more. They may be gathering information that could eventually form a "new" New Testament. It may well be that we are viewing the beginnings of a new civilisation formed around a new Christ, which, like the occasion that started our present one 20 centuries ago, remains relatively unknown in the world until some time after the events that then inspire so many millions for centuries to come. This book extract featured here is primarily about a man named Simeon Toko, who died in 1984. Simeon Toko appeared before people in an apparitional body and in dream states while he was physically alive, and continues to do the same among certain selected people 17 years after his willing, natural death. At least one witness says that he, personally, killed this man--quite professionally, as a hired killer--and saw him alive again a few days later. Others still living at the time of this writing say they saw Toko physically slaughtered, and watched him bring himself back to life before their astonished eyes. There is a very large body of testimony, of which only a little has yet been recorded or written down from eyewitnesses. Much of the media news from Africa in the past 80 years has been presented as political rebellion and tribal warmongering or as a battle between "good" civilised countries versus "evil" communists over the souls of Africans who are still considered uncivilised, superstitious and too immature, individual by individual, to be left to themselves...what with all those raw materials and diamonds yet needing to be dug up. This is the general bias of news reporting from Africa as I remember it since my own childhood. It's not much different now. We tend to think of the African peoples with a distortion somewhere between a bouquet of jokes about banana republics and a vague, distant horror of unexplainable war and slaughter. The first slave traders who came to Africa in the 15th century CE found an advanced society dominated by a monotheism with a powerful code of ethics. They did not find half-naked people in grass skirts with bones through their noses. They did not find rows of fat little stone fertility goddesses and voodoo fetishes. They found an intelligent, friendly, dignified people who had created beautiful avenues, pleasant buildings, well-regulated agricultural fields and fine clothing. They found a people who practised the old Mosaic code, essentially (students of Mosaic law will note how much of it resembles the Egyptian code). They found a people whose language (Kikongo), linguists have shown, contains scores of words found in biblical Hebrew and in later European languages and thus pre-dates these. They may well have found what happened to the so-called lost tribes of the kingdom of Israel. Except that the subsequent four centuries have proved out the following statement to a deplorable degree, we could otherwise be incredulous at a surmisal of the main difference between the "discoverers" of central Africa and the people they divided and traded like objects and cattle over the ensuing generations: the difference between the civilised dark-skinned peoples and their conquerors is measurable in intensity of greed and the will to murder to fulfill greed's endlessly wearisome demands. This behaviour has not ended in modern times. Slavery still exists in Africa, for instance. Now, centuries after the first slashes into the belly of the African land and peoples, predominantly white-skinned countries still allow predominantly white-skinned corporations to assist insane warlords in killing each other, helping with helicopters and technology simply to keep company profits going. So reported Global Pacific News not long ago. There is no question that the peoples of Africa, millions and millions of descendants of the ancient Ethiopians and Egyptians among them, have been methodically dehumanised for centuries. No peoples have met with such enormous psychological and material destruction in recorded human history. If they can be said to be blamed for allowing any of it, then their fault could only lie in a willingness to trust fellow men who come preaching principles. The damage that Christian missionaries have done to the psychology of human kindness in Africa over the centuries is untold. Missionaries routinely accompanied soldiers who came to steal lands and loot for their home European country. The procedure went as follows: the missionary would stand and read aloud an edict in Latin to whatever villagers had gathered. The edict, completely incomprehensible to the villagers, ordered that each of them must at that moment convert to Christianity or be killed or enslaved. After it was read, the guns and swords were put to work. The soldiers felt justified in their murders through the benediction and authority of the Roman Church. Through varying interpretations of the works of Church fathers, the Roman Church developed a system of permissible murder and looting, and it was used routinely. The missionaries would then go to work on the remaining people. The children were taught that their parents' intelligent, peaceful beliefs were "from the devil" and that they were to accept poverty "for the good of their souls", whereas the conquerers were supposedly blessed by God with superior might and wealth and so had to be obeyed. Not long ago, Pope John-Paul II issued a public statement apologising for the behaviour of the Roman Church during the Inquisition, centuries ago. Over a period of about 400 years, Church authorities humiliated, ostracised, tortured and murdered about half a million fellow Europeans over "matters of faith". As these atrocities in the name of God mostly occurred centuries ago, the apology seemed a little late in coming. However, no apology seems to have been offered yet to the estimated 100 million Africans who were categorically enslaved, tortured and murdered into submission in the 400 years that the Roman Church itself assisted this activity, quite officially, benefiting from it materially and politically.
SIMON KIMBANGU: A PERSECUTED PROPHET One would wonder also why there is as yet no apology forthcoming from the Vatican for its role in intent to murder one Simon Kimbangu. This did not happen so long ago that the descendants have long been unaware of the wrong done and the property confiscated, as is mostly the case with the Inquisition. There are thousands of Africans alive at the time of this writing who remember Simon Kimbangu very well. Kimbangu's name is celebrated throughout the great expanses of central Africa, and his fame continues to increase. He stands as far more than a mere national hero. A short history of his life can be found in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He and his followers are also the subject of more detailed scholarly research. Simon Kimbangu was a prophet. He was tortured and left to rot in prison, where he died in October 1951 after 30 years. There are Africans alive at this writing who were brought back from the dead by Simon Kimbangu, and there are people still living who watched him do it. The claim is that Simon Kimbangu healed the sick, made the lame walk, returned sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, and even brought back to life an infant who had been dead for three days. Kimbangu performed these miraculous deeds over a period of five months, from May 1921 through to 12 September 1921. Scholars do not dispute that this man performed these miracles. There is simply too much testimony about it. On 10 September 1921, Simon Kimbangu gave a speech. He announced that the colonial authorities were about to arrest him and "impose a long period of silence on my body". He announced that one day a "Great King" of tremendous spiritual, scientific and political power would arise, and that he himself would return as a representative. Before this event, a certain book would be written that would prepare the people of Kongo (not "Congo") for this event. This book would be resisted, but slowly it would come to be accepted. Two days later, Simon Kimbangu was arrested by colonial authorities--on his 42nd birthday, 12 September 1921--and curtly sentenced to death. The authorities for the Roman Church had recommended his execution, and so had various other Christian missions. According to noted scholar Dr Allan Anderson, the Baptist mission alone protested the execution of this man whose apparent crime was to have stood in a village daily for five months and healed, consoled and revitalised people. The joy and the amazement of the gathering crowds had left the prophet open to supposed charges of sedition by jealous missionaries. Punishment for alleged sedition was death. Just as Kimbangu had predicted two days before his arrest, he was instead given an indefinite prison term, a "long silence of his body". Each morning he was taken from his tiny cell and put bodily into a tank of cold salt water for lengthy periods in an attempt to hasten his death. His prediction that his body would be tortured and humiliated came true. He had also predicted that day that Africa would be "thrown into a terrible period of unspeakable persecutions". For the next 40 years, Africans were indeed put through a terrible period of unspeakable religious persecutions. Hundreds of thousands were imprisoned, deported, separated from their families, subject to atrocious tortures and simply persecuted for new religious beliefs. These new religious beliefs, triggered by the few words of an African man who performed miracles among his own people for "only a little while", sent out great psychological rays of hope to a continent of peoples who had long become accustomed to misery and poverty under centuries of colonial abuse and deliberately oppressive religious instruction. These powerful beliefs are still in development and will reach around the world even in their beginning stages. The appearance of the book this essay reviews marks one of many such beginnings.
THE FATIMA PROPHECIES AND RELIGIOUS CODES The title of the book this essay introduces is The True Third Secret of Fatima Revealed and the Return of Christ. The author is Pastor Melo Nzeyitu Josias, and additional research was done by Rocha Nefwani. Both men are native Africans, both highly educated. I edited the book myself, here in America, and added a little general historical knowledge. The book was meant to be available on 13 May, to commemorate the first of six visits of the Lady of Fatima, Portugal, who appeared on that date in 1917. She was visible to the three shepherd children who repeated her words to the world, yet was invisible to the crowds of thousands who were drawn to come to see her. The Lady made astonishing predictions. Her two sets of predictions, made in 1917 about events of the coming decades, proved true. Among other things, she prophesied the fall of Russia to communism, the end of the First World War and the coming of the Second World War. There was a Third Secret, however, which the Lady instructed Lucia dos Santos to reveal only after 1960, after certain events had passed which would have made it more understandable. It was read to Pope John XXIII in February 1960. When the Pope heard it, he fainted dead to the floor; when he arose, he ordered the Third Secret sealed up in a vault "forever". Are we in the "end of times"? Are we at the hour in which Jesus Christ has already returned and gone? It would seem that appearances of men acclaimed to be God incarnate have increased greatly in the past century. Whether a human being can be said to be God made flesh, let alone whether a particular individual can be said to be this, can be debated into meaninglessness. Those few who are said to have become "god-realised" and who have made themselves known to the public for divine purposes and missions, seem to attract material fortunes from a public that is either inexpressibly grateful or is too gullible. Although some Hindu religious branches speak of "five Ascended Masters" who live invisibly on our planet, there are many quite visible gurus or proclaimed avatars, around whom devotees have formed practical organisations of high material worth. Monies are collected and practical advantages, such as political contributions, keep the organisations going, while their intent is to "enlighten" the masses--who, we must assume, are "endarkened" without them. Sincere or fraudulent, authentic or imitation, each event of the appearance of a man (usually a male) said to be God or god-realised represents a new bud of one size or another upon a very ancient vine. The vine would be human consciousness, and the bud would be civilisation. A civilisation forms through codes of knowledge and behaviour that allow each of its members, relatively, the broadest opportunity for value fulfilment. The codes seem most often to have originated with a single man who is also revealed as God's prophet, if not God Himself in fleshly clothing. New knowledge, or interpretations of it, is added in that Man-God's name. I wonder about the nature of the human experience itself, as I cannot think of any civilisation which did not attribute its foundations to a single man at its cornerstone. Even the "godless" communist attempts at a new and sensible kind of civilisation quickly became personality-worship cults. Nor should we forget Germany's abortive attempt to found a "New World Order" around Adolf Hitler. However, neither Hitler nor Marx nor Lenin nor Mao nor Kim could walk on water or rise from the dead. Christianity, of all religions, has come closest to uniting the peoples of the entire world. The emergence of avatars in Africa in the 20th century maintains a continuity with the ancient prophecies found in the Bible. The True Third Secret cites biblical passages that make a case that Simeon Toko was Christ Returned--at least, different Christian ministers who considered the interpretations did not scorn their logic. The following is an excerpt I have culled from chapter VII of the book, with permission (some of the writing has been edited so as not to confuse the reader who will be reading this out of its context).
THE AVATAR SIMEON TOKO Fragile Beginnings Simeon Toko was born on 24 February 1918 in a village in northern Angola (the Tsafon of Psalm 48:3), portentously named Sadi Banza Zulu Mongo ("Village of the Celestial Mountain"). The newborn emerged from his mother's womb into a very hostile environment. For almost 50 years, from 1872 to 1921, this
region suffered natural disasters. There were long droughts between
short lulls. Northern Angola and the southern regions of the French
and Belgian Congos were devastated. The resultant famines killed
thousands; so, too, there were thousands of deaths brought by
smallpox, typhoid, sleeping sickness, malaria and other diseases.
These different plagues represent the fulfilment of a biblical
prediction. None but a few people inspired by the words of the Lord
recognised this.
The baby Simeon Toko was born mere inches from sickness and famine and plague and death, and many leagues from safety. There was not much reason for a baby to want to live, and much against it. The infant Toko caught smallpox. He was so badly
affected by it that villagers thought the hand of the Almighty Father
alone saved his life. He was left with the unpleasant marring of
smallpox scars on his face. Compare this prophecy: Not long after Simeon's birth, a missionary at a Baptist Missionary Society, based in Angola, had a dream. He dreamed that a Great King had been born in the region under his ministry. He decided to go looking for this baby. Requesting guidance from the Holy Spirit, he came to the baby Simeon Toko. Staring at an infant so rachitic, like a "weak and tender plant", and with so blemished a little face, he shook his head. Doubt had come to stay. He asked one or two questions and left, feeling victimised by his dream and the voice that had led him there.
A Powerful Mission In 1949, Simeon attended an international conference of Protestants in Leopoldville (currently called Kinshasa). During this event, the ceremonial masters asked three Africans from Angola to pray. Those selected were Gaspar de Almeida, Jesse Chiulo Chipenda and Simeon Toko. Simeon Toko asked in his public prayer that the Holy Spirit manifest in Africa to put an end to the abuses of the colonial powers. Toko became a dedicated member of the Baptist Church in Itaga. He formed a singing choir of 12 people. Instantly this choir became famous, and from 12 members it grew into hundreds. At each of the choir performances, whether at their church or while visiting another church, the Holy Ghost manifested with such a power that white missionaries suspected young Toko of possessing black-magic powers. Jealously, the missionaries summoned him to abandon his "dark practices". He responded to them by saying: "But if we are praying to the same God, how come when I pray, and there is a manifestation of the Holy Ghost, you accuse me of sorcery? Is it because I am an African that my prayers couldn't possibly be answered? Does the Holy Spirit discriminate against Africans, too?" (See 1 Samuel 10:10.) But the missionaries were fed up with him and decided to exclude him from the church. Then what was meant to happen, happened. All those who had joined the church on the inspiration of Simeon's magnificent choir left the church with him. The question was whether Simeon Toko would abandon these followers or keep them with him. He decided to keep them with him, realising all the same that a very harsh duty awaited him. He decided to pray again to his Father, repeating the same prayer he had made three years before at the Baptist conference. On 25 July 1949, Simeon and 35 members of his choir met on a street called Mayenge, at the house of a man named Vanga Ambrosio. The choir began to sing, waiting for the time to pray. Shortly before midnight, Simeon Toko lifted his eyes to the sky and he addressed this prayer to his Father: "Father, I know you always answer my prayers. Now look; consider these sheep you have sent to me. This duty is so immense that without the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, we will never be able to achieve what you intended. The prayer I addressed to you three years ago, didn't you hear it?" At precisely midnight, a strong wind shook the house and the Holy Spirit possessed everyone at the prayer meeting, with the exception of a man called Sansão Alphonse, the choir leader. God let him remain in an ordinary frame of mind so that he could write down the testimonials and miracles taking place before his dumbfounded eyes. Many in the group were speaking in tongues. Some saw heavenly light and heard celestial voices; others were able to communicate clearly with people several kilometres from where the prayer was taking place. The excitement about the miracles that happened at this new Pentecost led Simeon Toko's followers to spread all over town and start preaching the building of God's Kingdom. This attracted the attention of Belgian colonial authorities, who viewed the activity as a threatening commotion. Within about three months, the police began jailing the preachers. They were jailed and prosecuted as promptly as were the Kimbanguists, the followers of Simeon Toko's Messenger, Simon Kimbangu--who himself was imprisoned from 1921 until his death in 1951. Some were beheaded, burned alive in their homes, drowned in the river or shot without being prosecuted. Finally, the colonialists decided to deport them. The wives, husbands and children were separated from their families and homes by hundreds and even thousands of kilometres. When miracles started taking place among the new followers of "Kimbangu", the Belgian authorities tried to suffocate this new Messianic group at once. On 22 October 1949, Simeon Toko and 3,000 of his companions were put into two different jails, Ofiltra and Ndolo. After three months in the jails, a decree was passed to deport them out of the country. This is when Simeon Toko started revealing Himself. The Belgian administrator of the jail in Ndolo was named Pirote. He abused the "Tokoist" prisoners, hurling racist insults. He always ended with: "Filthy nigger, you're going back to nigger country in Angola!" Tired of this abuse, Simeon Toko replied sharply to Pirote: "Know that if there is a stranger here, it is you! To show you that I am home, the day you make the injustice of deporting me from Belgian Congo, I'll have you carrying my bags alongside me!" Simeon Toko held up both hands, spread out his fingers, and told the abusive Belgian to count them. He said: "I give 10 years to the Belgians, not one more or less, to leave this country!" No one at that time comprehended these sibylline words. However, the disciples of Simeon Toko understood later: the day they were deported, Pirote fell dead. He was gripped with an apparent heart attack while working in his office, and died as suddenly as though a bullet had struck him squarely. As for the other mysterious statement made by Simeon Toko: 10 years later, in 1960, the Belgians were obliged to leave their rich colony of Congo. But to impel this event, Simeon Toko "unleashed his army". This incredible story is very well known throughout central Africa, and will be reported in greater detail in another book. The event was witnessed by thousands of people on 4 January 1959. Some of the author's own relatives were there, but so are there thousands of citizens of the city of Kinshasa, who witnessed it on that day, alive at this writing. January 4th is now a public holiday in Kinshasa and commemorates this event. Kinshasa was called Leopoldville. On that day, the "Cherubim and Seraphim" appeared and stood against the Belgian colonial army. The citizens of Leopoldville saw an army of about a thousand very small men, about the size of children or dwarfs, with very muscular, imposing bodies. Each of these diminutive human-looking creatures showed great strength; for example, a witness saw one of them flip a five-ton truck over with one arm! The Belgian soldiers fired at these little brown angels to no effect. Terrified, the colonial army was thrown into confusion. The little men disappeared as suddenly as they had appeared. One year after this amazing mass apparition, the Democratic Republic of Congo was a new and independent country.
More Persecutions and Miracles After being deported and arriving in Angola, the real tribulations of the "man of sorrow acquainted with grief and sufferings" were to start. Never again would Simeon Toko rest. His life would be a string of non-stop attempts to kill him to prevent his Mission. Let us follow what he experienced, from Leopoldville, where he was unjustly incarcerated, to Angola. While incarcerated in Angola, the Portuguese authorities deported him: 1. to the Colonato of Vale do Loge, in the
municipality of Bembe, northern Angola; All of these deportations took place in a 12-year period. Simeon Toko's captivity in these prisons and agricultural compounds lasted from three months, as at San da Bandeira, to as long as five years, as at Ponta Albina. The objectives of these deportations were to reduce Simeon Toko's influence and to dismantle his church. Contrarily, everywhere he and his followers were sent, they indoctrinated even more and more members into the belief of (what the Portuguese called) "Tokoism". In the end, the Portuguese authorities decided to use their last measure: "Simeon Toko delenda [must be destroyed]." Thus, when he was sent to slavery in an agricultural field in Caconda in southern Angola, his head was offered for a price. Two Portuguese foremen, excited by the reward, decided to take their chance. They put a plan into action to murder Simeon Toko. During a stay in Angola in 1994, we collected the testimony of Pastor Adelino Canhandi, who was a cook at the Caconda agricultural compound. He saw what happened. Busy with cooking, he heard a voice calling him: "Canhandi, Canhandi, come here." It was Simeon Toko. Once outside, surprised and curious, Toko told him "to stand there and be watchful. Once again, the Son of Man will be tested." Strange words in particular for Canhandi, who was not then a Christian and didn't understand the term or what Simeon Toko wanted of him. Curious, he watched. One of the Portuguese foremen showed up and hailed Simeon Toko: "Hey Simeon, you see that tractor over there? There are weeds clogging the sower. Go clean them out!" Submissively, the docile prisoner crawled under the engine to fix it. When he was under the engine, the foreman, sitting in the driver's seat, started it up, which automatically activated the rotating blades of the seed sower. Simeon Toko's body was instantly severed in several pieces. Terrified, Canhandi stood frozen to the spot, watching. The foreman shifted into reverse to back up and check the damage. A second foreman, who was in service that day, flashed a victory sign, indicating that they had succeeded. Then the unbelievable happened. Before Canhandi and the two Portuguese accomplices, the body of Simeon Toko recomposed itself! Simeon Toko stood up! Canhandi could not believe his eyes. The Portuguese ran away in terror. From that day on, Canhandi believed in the Lord, and his entire family converted to the church of Simeon Toko. It was also that day that Simeon Toko made it
known who he was behind that smallpox-marred face, purposefully
behaving in accord with the following scripture: During Simeon Toko's stay in Luanda, the capital of Angola, while he was in the process of being deported for the ninth time, another event happened to show his hidden and true identity. We should say that when he came on Earth in Palestine, Christ referred to Himself in the third person, using the term "the Son of Man". This time, Canhandi was one of the rare persons to hear the Christ refer to Himself differently. Simeon most usually spoke of the Lord Jesus Christ, which meant to his followers that he, too, was a servant of Christ, like everybody else. Despite the miracles happening around him, he was just like a shadow; no one knew who he really was.
The Vatican and the Avatar His followers were once again bewildered when they found out that two top-level emissaries had been dispatched by Pope John XXIII to Angola to meet Simeon Toko and deliver a personal message to him. One of the emissaries was unfortunate to fall ill with dysentery when he arrived in Luanda and wound up in a hospital. The other was received by Simeon Toko, and he said to him: "I am an emissary of Pope John XXIII, who personally mandated me and my colleague to come and ask you a single question: 'Who are you?'" Let us bear in mind that the year was 1962, two years after the fateful date when the Vatican had instructions to make public the Third Secret of Fatima. John XXIII had read the message, kept it a secret, and very likely had sent his emissaries to Simeon Toko with a sinking feeling in his heart. Simeon Toko responded: "I am amazed that a high-ranking person like the Pope is interested enough about my being to make you travel 8,000 kilometres just to meet me. The answer that you should give your master for me is in the biblical scripture, Matthew 11:2-6." Let's now put ourselves in Pope John XXIII's shoes
as he read the text suggested by Toko:
Using a brief biblical quotation, Simeon Toko gave Pope John XXIII to understand that what the Pope had found in the note written by Lucia dos Santos was true. Indeed, the former Cardinal Roncalli could have picked any name as Pope, but he chose "John", so that now the scripture in Matthew that Simeon Toko sent him to read addressed him directly by name. Fearing who it was who was now living among the most disdained people on Earth, the Pope contacted the Portuguese dictator, Antonio de Salazar. On 18 July 1962, Simeon Toko was again arrested and deported; this time, not to some isolated corner in his native Angola but to Portugal--where his anticipated birth had been announced in 1917 in Fatima. [Tom Dark notes: Tokoists contend that the true Third Secret of Fatima was in fact an announcement that Christ had returned to Earth, in the form of Simeon Toko.] For Toko's deportation to Portugal, a Portuguese Air Force plane was waiting for him. The plane had state-of-the-art telecommunication and navigation systems. In the plane sat a Catholic priest and members of Salazar's secret police, the PIDE-DGS, including the pilot and copilot. Their mission was to fly out over the Atlantic Ocean and, after about an hour's distance, push Simeon Toko out of the plane into the deep sea. This was the same inhuman treatment that the Argentinian military used years later against their political opponents. Supposedly the Catholic priest was brought along on the plane to counteract the magic powers of the African through praying. But this skilfully planned project was about to backfire. The moment the PIDE agents rose to subdue him and carry out their murder, Simeon Toko stood up and ordered the plane to stop. The aircraft stopped in mid-air! It stood still, not advancing an inch nor rising or falling backwards. The crew was stricken by panic. The priest could hardly breathe, and hoarsely huffed out desperate prayers. They all started imploring the preto [Portuguese denigratory term denoting "nigger"] for mercy. Simeon lifted his eyes and hands towards the heavens and after a short prayer he ordered the plane to move again. At once, the plane started moving. Simeon Toko related this story himself. For those who are sceptical, we would remind you that the authority of our sciences does not determine all that is possible on Earth or in Heaven. This same Personality stopped a storm on a sea for a group of terrified fishermen 2,000 years ago. He also walked across the surface of the water and inspired the Sun to weave and dance gaily at Fatima.
Simeon Survives a Morbid Experiment As an "exiled political prisoner", Simeon Toko was deprived of all human rights. We describe here one of the many murder attempts upon his body during his forced stay in Ponta Delgada, in the Archipelago of the Azores. He was assigned the chore of maintaining a lighthouse there. At a future date, we will publish a record of miracles performed by Simeon Toko, which were seen by eyewitnesses. Doña Laurinda Zaza is a vate [pronounced "vah-tay"]--a sort of prophetic trance medium--for present-day Toko followers. She experienced the following event as she saw it happen to Tio Simão (a nickname meaning "Uncle Simon") while he was in exile in Portugal. Simeon Toko confirmed the fact of this event later, and revealed the physical damage that the doctors had done. Over the years, thousands of people saw this scarring on his chest. "You could almost see Toko's heart pounding in his chest through the scar; an almost unbearable sight," Doña Laurinda said. This referred to a most remarkable attempt by these astonishingly misguided men to kill Simeon Toko under dictator Antonio de Salazar's orders. This attempt, which would have been "first degree murder" if the victim were anyone else, took place shortly before his return to freedom in July 1974. [Tom Dark notes: Simeon Toko was not released by Salazar; the dictator was unseated by a revolution and Simeon was released in a general amnesty of political prisoners.] A Portuguese doctor had been reading records about Toko's alleged "invincibility" and invited several doctors from around Europe to perform an operation on him--an autopsy, under the pretext of removing a tumour from his chest. The doctors had him taken to local civilian hospital. They put him on an operating table, cut a jagged, mortal wound in the left side of the centre of his chest, reached into his chest cavity and pulled out his still-beating heart. The aorta and other arteries were severed by scalpel and his heart was removed. Simeon lay dead, his body covered with the warm blood that splashed out of his heart and chest. The doctors dumped Simeon Toko's heart in a metal pan and took it to a laboratory in another room. They ran various tests on it--expecting to find what, they did not know. The gadgets and microscopes and probings showed there was nothing physically extraordinary or abnormal about Simeon Toko's heart. The doctors concluded that this purloined organ would not have been the source of his invulnerability--if it can be said that men can make conclusions about any such thing. The doctors had unquestionably killed this man in this macabre experiment, but to their horror and bewilderment, Simeon Toko came to on the operating table! His heartless corpse was moving of its own volition. He opened his eyes, sat up and looked at them, the chest wound by which they had casually murdered him gaping open. "Why are you persecuting me this way?" he said to them. "Give me back my heart!" [Tom Dark notes: If there are medical records available to confirm this event independently, I do not have them now but would like to see them. All of us involved in this project here in the US consider ourselves "doubting Thomases", to say the least, yet the stories of witnesses and followers have kept up our fascination.] For now we will refrain from reporting many other significant events that happened that same day. We can let you know, however, that the exact time his heart was taken from him, Simeon Toko decided to give a finishing blow to Portuguese colonial power and rule over Angola. He returned to his native country of Angola on 31 August 1974, with the confidence his words would be fulfilled. A year later, on 11 November 1975, Angola gained its independence from Portugal.
A Departure by Choice During the night of 31 December 1983 to 1 January 1984, when the death of Simeon Toko was announced by the media, thunderclaps of virtually seismic force and torrential rain burst the skies of Luanda. It had not rained in this area for several years. Meteorologists were mystified. For three days the rain fell continuously. The occurrence of this event was attributed to all the rumours surrounding the death of this great prophet. A certain politician was recognised as one of the toughest men surrounding Neto, President of the Republic of Angola. He was often called upon for delicate and confidential missions. The Portuguese, whom he fought during a 14-year war for the liberation of his country, had a good deal to say about him. His name aroused dread and awe. He led a resistance group specialising in chopping heads with catanas (machetes). This man was one of President Neto's army officers. His name was Comandante Paiva. After hearing the news that Simeon Toko had died, Paiva rushed to where the body lay exposed for public viewing. He fought his way through the crowd of tens of thousands of people. He was astonished at the sight of it. He stood looking at Simeon's body, and he asked to speak. He declared: "It is not true that Simeon Toko is dead, because he is invulnerable!" To make such a public confession was blatantly incriminating. Seven years before, Comandante Paiva had orders to kill Simeon Toko once and for all. He told the public that this is what he and his men had done. He had Simeon Toko kidnapped and taken to a secret location; once there, he butchered him methodically, like a meatpacker with an animal carcass; he severed Simeon's head, then his arms and legs, then split his chest and abdomen apart. He stuffed the butchered corpse into a large bag, tied the top with a string and hid it in a certain location. After three days, he brought helpers back to get the bag and take it to the ocean to throw to the sharks. By now the bag had disappeared. The men began to argue about its whereabouts. Suddenly, in the midst of their bickering about who may have moved it, a voice they described as sounding like "the sounds of many waters" (Revelation 1:15) overshadowed their own voices: "Who are you looking for? I am here!" It was Simeon Toko, in flesh and bone, alive, standing majestically. The men dashed away shouting "E o Deus, e o Deus!", which means "He is God, He is God!" Paiva's butchering had been the last time that anybody dared to touch a single hair on the head of Simeon Toko. And now that Simeon's body lay discarded by its owner, by choice, Paiva refused to believe it.
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