The Emergence of African Avatars and the Final Secret of Fatima 

Part III

Tom Dark

Before I continue, a correction must be made. Shortly after my last segment was published here, my good friend Pastor Melo, from whom I am getting most of the stories of Simeon Toko, arrived here in Tucson from Paris to go over the book (again, the title: "The True Third Secret of Fatima Revealed" and "The Truth of Christ"). We found that the bible quotations which seem to indicate Simeon Toko's identity had suffered many bruises in translation from french to english, as well as from footnotes from different versions of that book over the decade in which the first draft was produced. 

With the assistance of a local protestant minister named Brother Godfrey Lord (who speaks in prophetic tongues and does extremely well) , we spent a dozen hours a day making corrections. One of us manned  the computer, the other the hard-copy manuscript, and the other read aloud from one single King James version bible, fixing every thee-and-thou and comma and period.

THE TRUE THIRD SECRET, incidentally, contains an excellent appendix which thumbnails a brief history of the bible from its origins in the fourth century to the present. While it may be that Simeon Toko is Christ returned, in the fashion Christ Himself related (indeed no one is required to "go to the field," that is, to take trips to visit any individual, anywhere, said to be a Messiah), it would be unrealistic to assert that "the Word of God" has not been altered by theologically and politically motivated men, many times. 

These, however, while a difficult editing chore, were not the most important mistakes needing repair. Translation had obscured some of the stories of "Tio Simao ('Uncle Simon')" himself, and one such error appeared in the excerpt I presented in the latest article. Corrected forthwith:

Simeon Toko was not in a prison, and he was not abused by prison doctors, when his heart was removed in the horrendous vivisection related in that chapter. He was in exile, remanded by the Portuguese government  to operate a lighthouse on an island in the Azores (We don't have an American term for this sort of forced labor, as American the penal system operates differently). A Portuguese doctor had been reading
records about Toko's alleged "invincibility," and invited several doctors from around Europe to perform the exploratory murder attempt along with him. Toko was taken to a local civilian hospital for this adventure, behind the guise of an excuse. 

If there are medical records available to confirm this event independently, I do not have them now. I would like to see them. All of us involved with this project, here in the states, consider ourselves "doubting Thomases," to say the least. Yet the stories of witnesses and followers has kept our fascination. 

Pastor Melo has also had his doubts and wonders and expresses them freely; nevertheless, he pursues his journey for "Tio Simao" with the particular innocence of a man who independently follows his inner visions, whatever they may be. Indeed it was a powerful psychic vision in 1983, which occurred in dream states over a period of days, that impelled him to begin writing the book.  This highly charged episode of inner communication was his first such experience; until then, he was a not untypical African expatriate, scrambling to make a living in Europe for which there were no opportunities at home. 

Those who met Pastor Melo at an impromptu meeting last April (he'll be back) might confirm with me that he appears to be a perfectly ordinary, friendly man, not some wild-haired raving religious lunatic. Nor do his
eyes glow; and if he has a halo, we didn't see one. 

A pleasant-looking 45-year-old Parisian, with an easy natural warmth, modestly dressed, Pastor Melo started a little uncertainly with the eleven people who had gathered as a result of the EMERGING AWARENESS article; he repeated the story of the Fatima miracle of 1917 to those who had never heard of it (the event remains a major issue among Catholics throughout "the third world.") 

As the evening wore on, Melo found himself relaxing in friendly company; he was quite surprised to learn what these Americans "already know."  He hadn't expected Americans to be amenable to the possibility, that, for
instance, the most ancient Egyptians were largely a black race, or that much of the lore and artwork regarding biblical characters who were originally black had been altered by the Vatican over the centuries. He was also surprised to see that nearly everyone had come prepared with notebooks to note down what he would have to say. 

The guests were open and frank and did express their beliefs quite ably for themselves. But I sat asking myself, "how is it a group of people have gathered over, basically, the news that a man has been murdered and
returned to life again?" And as one of the guests, who also had an interest in the significance of numbers, pointed out, 12 people were present, the number of Christ's apostles, as well as the number of people in Simeon Toko's first choir, where all the Divine Trouble began in the first place. 

Leaning a bit on the good humor I would expect of a man who knows how to get people to kill him so he can come back to life, I'm going to personalize the tone of my essay further, for now. 

As I worked along on this project, I had to ask myself daily, "do I believe any of this?" One evening I took a break, and took a walk, pondering what I myself had just typed about some African man: killed multiple times, resurrected Himself each time. How could anyone still believe such a thing? Could such a man be real? If it is, then what I'd been imagining of him as I wrote along would amount to a communication, as, after all, God hears Everything. I wondered if this man, with his "special powers," could send signs, and so on, as Christ legendarily
did.

Within moments of that thought I saw a young man killed before my eyes, struck by a car in an act of negligence that was horrifying to see. I heard the sound of a human head cracking on the pavement from about 12
yards away. I will not describe more of what I saw, although I will for a public prosecutor;  but I might be unable to describe my shock. I had seen deaths before, but there is no describing the feeling when someone innocent, and presumably unprepared for death, is violated this way. If there ever was a meaning to the word "unspeakable," this would be it. 

The young man's body lay motionless in the middle of the busy street, like a discarded marionette; a small group of people surrounded him to prevent any more ravaging from negligent drivers who still whizzed by, perhaps more concerned that something was obstructing whatever errands they were running. The police and the paramedics finally appeared, and I watched the paramedics cover over his mangled face. I walked away
feeling terrible about the young man: I regretted whatever past had led to such a harsh and insulting end
to his life. He looked my son's age, and this made the scene more poignant. 

When I called the police the following morning to leave my number as a witness, I learned that the young man had lived through the night, and was expected to live. What was a terrible blazing of despair before my
eyes the evening before, was suddenly a fabulous blaze of hope, coming to me through my telephone. I never imagined that I would have felt this exultant at news of a young stranger who seemed to have died before my
eyes, then revived. Psychologically, I had witnessed a man killed who returned to life. 

I don't think that Simeon Toko "sends signs" so harsh as to kill people before one's eyes as a philosophical lesson. Nor do I think that the "special powers" credited anyone said to be divine include the power of
life-and-death over anyone but themselves, and the wisdom not to begrudge others the same.  Yet, as remarked in THE THIRD SECRET, "A coincidence is God trying to pass by unnoticed." 

All of us die and return from the dead, all the time. Perhaps Christ is a great Shaman, who reappears every so often to keep us reminded when most needed.

Back to part I
Part IV

Tom Dark is a professional editor, writer, and music producer and leads a small worldwide dream experiment group.