The Preacher Who Said He Could Walk on Water: Rev. W. L. Jenkins, Simão Toko & Black Prophetic Power

By Edward Brown

Some stories don't disappear because they're false. Sometimes they disappear because nobody knows where to put them. And sometimes a story is so strange that later generations assume it must have been invented. Then somebody finds the newspaper.

In 1972, in Jackson, Mississippi, a Black preacher named Rev. W. L. Jenkins announced something audacious enough to force Christianity out of the sanctuary and into public view.

He said he was going to walk on water.

Not metaphorically. Not as a sermon illustration. Not “walk above your circumstances.” Water.

The location was the Ross Barnett Reservoir, a massive body of water northeast of Jackson. Jenkins announced that the demonstration would take place at precisely 4:03 p.m. on Sunday, May 21, 1972. Contemporary newspaper reports describe him as calling himself the “Third Prophet of God.” Jenkins told reporters that he believed God had commissioned him to teach humanity and that the demonstration would show people that God was still alive and active in the world.

THREE DAYS BEFORE THE WATER

On May 18, 1972, Jenkins told reporters that five unidentified men attacked him. According to his account, they rendered him unconscious, strapped him to a large wooden cross, placed a crown of thorns on his head, and left him there for approximately four hours before young people found him and got him down.

According to Jenkins, his attackers told him they were going to show him what it was like to be Jesus.

That story was not added by Instagram fifty years later. A contemporary religious publication discussing Jenkins in June 1972 recorded the allegation while attacking his prophetic claims.

Think about the chronology. A Black preacher publicly announces: I am going to demonstrate supernatural power. Days before the demonstration, he says men seize him and stage a mock crucifixion. Then Sunday arrives. And somebody shoots him.

THE BULLET

Early on the morning of May 21, Jenkins was wounded in the leg by gunfire reportedly coming from a passing automobile. Authorities acknowledged that he had received what was described as a flesh wound. His public water walk was cancelled.

A crowd had already gathered at the reservoir. The man who announced he would walk on water never arrived to do it.

Critics laughed. The newspapers reported it. Skeptics had their punchline: “Waterproof, but not bulletproof.” That was literally the title later used by one religious critic attacking Jenkins.

And if the story ended there, Jenkins would probably survive today as a bizarre footnote in Mississippi religious history. A preacher made an impossible claim. Got shot. Cancelled. End of story.

Except Jenkins came back.

JULY 1972: ‘I DID IT.’

Roughly six weeks later, something happened that changes the historical record considerably.

On July 8, 1972, The Commercial Appeal in Memphis published an Associated Press report from Jackson under the headline: “Minister Says Photos ‘Prove’ Walk on Water.”

The AP dispatch reported that Jenkins now claimed he had fulfilled his promise. He said he had gone back to the Ross Barnett Reservoir the previous evening. Not before the enormous crowd. Not after broadcasting another date across Mississippi. Quietly. With a small group.

And according to Jenkins, he walked.

More importantly: he said somebody photographed it.

The contemporary AP account identifies Jenkins as pastor of New Hope Church at Camden and says he presented a series of photographs that allegedly depicted him walking on the reservoir. The report also says one of a small, selected group of friends photographed the event.

We are no longer dealing merely with a twenty-first-century internet legend claiming that some mysterious 1972 newspaper once existed. We found the 1972 paper trail.

A religious publication dated August 25, 1972 reproduced the AP newspaper story while attempting to refute Jenkins. The critic didn't deny that Jenkins had made the claim. He argued that photographs weren't sufficient proof. He complained that the witnesses had not publicly testified. He questioned whether some physical trick could have been involved.

Which means something fascinating happened to this investigation: the skeptical source accidentally preserved the story.

THEN LUKE FORSYTH PULLS OUT THE NEWSPAPER

More than half a century later, preacher Luke Forsyth began telling the Jenkins story publicly. And he didn't merely repeat something somebody posted. Forsyth displayed what appears to be an aged physical newspaper clipping from the period while recounting the story.

He says he was alive when these events occurred. He says the article is genuine. He describes Jenkins eventually demonstrating the walk before witnesses. And Forsyth's account adds another remarkable detail: twelve friends.

Twelve.

Now, we need precision here. The Associated Press report Apex has independently located says a small, select group of friends witnessed Jenkins's claimed walk. It does not, in the preserved text located so far, specify twelve. So the number twelve presently belongs to the later testimony surrounding the event rather than the AP text itself.

But spiritually? You already know why twelve catches the biblical imagination. Twelve tribes. Twelve apostles. Twelve gates. Twelve foundations.

Does symbolic resonance prove a miracle? No. But you'd have to have the imagination of a parking meter not to notice it.

Apex isn't interested in confusing symbolism with evidence. We're interested in something more dangerous: following both wherever they lead.

THE QUESTION HAS CHANGED

Originally, the obvious question was: Did newspapers really report that Jenkins later claimed to have walked on water? We can answer that now. Yes. They did.

The AP story existed. Jenkins publicly claimed he completed the feat. He said photographs were made. Contemporary critics responded to that exact claim in 1972.

The question now becomes: WHERE ARE THE PHOTOGRAPHS?

And after that: Who took them? Who were the witnesses? Did any survive long enough to give later testimony? Can the reservoir location be reconstructed? Do other newspaper archives contain the images? Did Jenkins preserve copies? What exactly does Luke Forsyth possess? Who is the Wes Pedon Forsyth reportedly identifies as having recently verified elements of the story, and what precisely was verified?

Those questions matter. Because extraordinary claims should invite extraordinary investigation, not extraordinary laziness.

Skepticism isn't the enemy here. Poor investigation is.

AND PERHAPS THE STRANGEST POSSIBILITY: JENKINS MAY HAVE LIVED INTO OUR ERA

Modern ministry material attributed to a Rev. W. L. Jenkins describes a Mississippi-rooted preacher whose career began in the Jackson media and ministry world and continued across roughly six decades. The biographical details appear strikingly compatible with the Jenkins described in the 1972 reporting, although Apex would want direct identity confirmation before declaring every modern reference to be the same man.

Forsyth makes the even more astonishing claim: Jenkins is still alive. That needs independent confirmation.

But if it is true, we shouldn't merely write about him. We should find him.

Because fifty-four years later there is one question that cuts through theology, mythology, criticism and speculation: Rev. Jenkins, what happened to the photographs?

WHY THIS STORY DISTURBS MODERN CHRISTIANITY

But this article isn't really about proving one Mississippi preacher could violate buoyancy. Jenkins is the doorway. The deeper question is much more uncomfortable.

Christianity itself begins with claims that most modern churches would consider absurd if somebody announced them next Sunday. A man walked on water. A man multiplied food. A man restored sight. A man commanded storms. A man healed paralysis. A man raised the dead.

Then that man looked at ordinary human beings and said: Follow me.

Not: Admire me forever. Follow.

That is apprenticeship language. It suggests imitation. Development. Transformation. Participation.

If Jesus is merely someone to worship from an impossible distance, Christianity is comfortable. But if Jesus is also demonstrating what a human being aligned with God can become? Now we have a problem. A glorious one.

‘CHRISTIAN’ — WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO BE BECOMING?

Acts 11:26 tells us that the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch. Strictly speaking, the Greek Christianos means something closer to a follower, adherent or partisan of Christ. The popular spiritual rendering “little Christs” is devotional rather than a literal dictionary translation.

But perhaps that devotional interpretation accidentally exposes something important.

If you belong to Christ, shouldn't something about Christ eventually become visible? Compassion. Wisdom. Courage. Healing. Authority. Self-mastery. Faith. Discernment. Power.

The earliest Christians were not remarkable merely because they agreed with Jesus. Something about their lives made observers associate them with him.

That raises one brutal question for Christianity in 2026: If Christ is supernatural, why has so much Christianity become terrified of the supernatural?

WILLIAM J. SEYMOUR: WHEN THE HOLY SPIRIT CROSSED THE COLOR LINE

Rev. Jenkins wasn't the first Black religious figure whose ministry collided with extraordinary claims of spiritual manifestation.

One of the most consequential figures in modern Christian history was William J. Seymour, the son of formerly enslaved parents, a Black preacher nearly blind in one eye, operating in an America where lynching and racial segregation were normal facts of life.

Beginning in 1906, Seymour became the central leader associated with the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles. People reported tongues. Prophecy. Ecstatic worship. Healing. Spiritual manifestations. And thousands came.

But one of the greatest miracles may have been happening directly in front of everybody: Black people. White people. Latino people. Men. Women. Rich. Poor. Worshipping together in Jim Crow America.

The movement helped ignite Pentecostal Christianity across the planet. Sometimes the first supernatural act is simply doing what the social order says cannot be done.

THEN AFRICA GIVES US SIMÃO TOKO

And then we cross the Atlantic. Because if Jenkins forces us to confront supernatural Christianity in Black America, Simão Gonçalves Toko forces us to confront what happens when Black spiritual authority challenges colonial power.

Toko was born in Angola in 1918. In 1949, while in Léopoldville, now Kinshasa, his religious community underwent what followers understood as an extraordinary descent of the Holy Spirit. Reports describe shaking, ecstatic spiritual manifestations and unusual speech.

Then something very earthly happened. The authorities got nervous.

Belgian authorities arrested Toko and followers and deported them. Portuguese colonial authorities subsequently subjected Tokoists to forced labor, imprisonment, dispersal, surveillance and exile. Academic research documents Toko himself undergoing prison, forced labor, geographical isolation and later exile in the Azores from 1963 until 1974.

Portuguese political police monitored Tokoist correspondence so extensively that thousands of intercepted letters and documents survive in archival collections.

This isn't somebody's Facebook post. This is colonial history.

And it tells us something. Colonial authorities did not behave as though Toko was merely an irrelevant man saying strange prayers. They treated his movement as power.

BUT THEN THE TOKO STORY GETS STRANGER

Within Tokoist memory, accounts surrounding Simão Toko go far beyond political resistance. Followers attributed extraordinary healing and prophetic abilities to him. Traditions emerged around attempts upon his life.

One especially astonishing body of testimony says authorities attempted repeatedly to kill him. Later Tokoist accounts describe an alleged attempt to throw him from an aircraft, an operation in Portugal in which followers maintained his heart was removed, and extraordinary survival narratives surrounding these events.

These stories are documented by scholars as Tokoist religious memory, even though that does not independently establish the supernatural interpretation as medical fact.

That distinction matters. But don't miss what else matters.

These stories formed around a historical man who really was arrested. Really was imprisoned. Really was exiled. Really was monitored. Really was viewed as dangerous enough that colonial authorities repeatedly tried to isolate him from his own followers.

And still the movement spread.

The government scattered the believers. The doctrine traveled with them. They attempted to isolate the prophet. He became larger in their imagination. They attempted to suppress the movement. Suppression helped transform it into a national religious phenomenon.

You want resurrection symbolism? There it is. Bury the seed. Watch what happens.

WHAT IF WE HAVE BEEN READING MIRACLES BACKWARDS?

Modern Christianity has developed a strange contradiction. We affirm a book overflowing with impossible phenomena while constructing churches where virtually nothing impossible is expected.

Moses divides a sea. Elijah commands fire. Elisha raises a child. Jesus walks upon water. Peter briefly follows. Jesus heals blindness. The apostles heal people. Paul survives circumstances that should destroy him.

Then somewhere around Revelation we shut the book and act like God retired.

We turned supernatural Christianity into historical Christianity. Everything astonishing happened yesterday. Everything powerful belongs to someone else. Everything miraculous is safely trapped between Genesis and Revelation.

And your job? Sit down. Pay your tithe. Sing three songs. Go home.

Paul warned of people possessing a form of godliness while denying its power. 2 Timothy 3:5. That scripture cuts deeper than believers sometimes allow.

Because we have form. Oh, we have form. LED screens. Fog machines. Conferences. Celebrity pastors. Algorithms. Brand consultants. Livestream studios. Churches with production equipment television stations would envy.

Nothing inherently wrong with any of that. Apex appreciates production. But let's establish something: production is not power.

A microphone can amplify your voice. It cannot manufacture authority. A spotlight can illuminate a preacher. It cannot create illumination. A camera can record a healing claim. It cannot heal anybody. You can simulate fire on a ten-thousand-dollar LED wall. That is not the same thing as carrying it.

And Paul says: “The kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.” — 1 Corinthians 4:20

Christianity was never supposed to become a museum where people gather weekly to admire what God used to do.

THE TWO WITNESSES MAY BE STRANGER THAN WE THINK

Now we enter prophetic territory. Revelation 11 describes two witnesses. They prophesy. They possess extraordinary authority. The text associates them with fire, rain, water and judgment.

Because these manifestations resemble biblical episodes involving Moses and Elijah, Christians have often interpreted the witnesses as those two prophets returning. Maybe.

But Revelation gives us another clue. The witnesses are described as two olive trees and two lampstands. And Revelation itself has already interpreted lampstands. Revelation 1:20 associates them with churches.

So consider another possibility. Not doctrine. Not certainty. A possibility.

What if the Two Witnesses aren't merely two individual humans? What if they symbolize two prophetic communities? Two bodies. Two streams. Two companies of awakened believers.

One carrying the Moses current: Liberation. Deliverance. Judgment upon oppression. Confrontation with Pharaoh. Authority against systems.

The other carrying the Elijah current: Prophetic fire. Restoration. Confrontation with corrupted religion. Authority connected with the heavens. Calling people back to God.

Suddenly Revelation becomes more than something Christians sit around waiting to watch. It becomes something a generation might be expected to become.

WHY DON'T WE SEE MORE POWER?

Maybe because Western Christianity has spent generations producing spectators.

Pastor prays. Congregation watches. Choir sings. Congregation watches. Prophet speaks. Congregation watches. Celebrity preacher writes. Congregation buys.

But Jesus did not create spectators. He created disciples.

A disciple is an apprentice. An apprentice learns the master's method.

Jesus didn't merely say: Watch how I heal. Watch how I confront fear. Watch how I pray. Watch how I fast. Watch how I resist temptation. Watch how I confront empire. Watch how I treat the rejected. Watch how I command myself. Then applaud.

He says: Follow me.

That is radically different. And perhaps that is why stories like Jenkins and Toko bother us so deeply. They threaten to pull Christianity out of the category of belief system and back into the category of practice.

DON'T USE SKEPTICISM AS A SEDATIVE

If Jenkins employed a hidden apparatus? Find it. If his photographs were manipulated? Analyze them. If his witnesses lied? Demonstrate it. If Tokoist miracle narratives grew in the telling? Document their development.

Truth doesn't need protection from investigation.

But here's the other side: skepticism doesn't automatically equal intelligence. Saying “impossible” before investigating something isn't science. It's dogma wearing a lab coat.

The proper answer to an extraordinary claim is: Show me. Then test. Then test again. And if something survives? Keep going.

Because the goal isn't to protect belief. The goal is to discover reality.

THE REAL MIRACLE MAY BE ACTIVATION

Maybe you never walk across the Ross Barnett Reservoir. Fair enough.

Can you walk into generational poverty and create wealth? Can you enter trauma without reproducing it? Can you walk into addiction and regain command of yourself? Can you walk into ignorance and emerge educated? Can you enter hatred without becoming hateful? Can you enter a broken neighborhood and leave infrastructure?

Can you heal? Can you teach? Can you organize? Can you build? Can you create? Can you liberate? Can you remain truthful when lying would be profitable? Can you retain sovereignty while algorithms compete for your mind? Can you stand upright when an entire system benefits from you crawling?

Now we're getting somewhere.

Because divine power isn't proven exclusively through violations of physics. Sometimes the impossible thing is the person history says should no longer exist.

Black America knows something about that miracle. Africa knows something about that miracle. Indigenous peoples know something about that miracle. Every people who have survived conquest know something about that miracle.

Still here. Still creating. Still praying. Still building. Still remembering. Still becoming.

BUT WHAT IF THAT IS ONLY THE BEGINNING?

And here is where Apex refuses to stop at the safe interpretation.

Because perhaps healing trauma isn't the replacement for miraculous healing. Perhaps discipline isn't the replacement for spiritual gifts. Perhaps transforming society isn't the replacement for prophecy. Perhaps psychological explanations aren't necessarily the endpoint of mystical experiences.

Maybe they are the foundation.

What if humanity first has to recover attention, discipline, faith, breath, prayer, fasting, intuition, compassion and self-command before more unusual capacities can be carried responsibly?

Scripture repeatedly pairs power with preparation. Moses goes into wilderness. Elijah retreats. Jesus fasts. The disciples pray. Paul disappears into formation.

Power appears downstream from transformation.

That might be the piece modern miracle culture gets backwards. Everybody wants the gift. Few want the refinement required to carry it without becoming corrupted by it.

FROM SPECTATORS TO ‘LITTLE CHRISTS’

Jenkins's story is no longer merely: An old legend claims a Mississippi preacher walked on water.

The historical record is stranger. A Black preacher publicly announced that he would demonstrate supernatural power. He alleged that five men kidnapped him and strapped him to a cross. Days later he was shot. He cancelled the demonstration. Then roughly six weeks later he told the Associated Press: I went back. I did it. There are photographs.

Whether those photographs ultimately demonstrate a literal miracle is another question entirely. But the story happened. The controversy happened. The reporting happened. And now the trail is alive again.

Maybe that's the jewel.

We've spent centuries arguing over whether supernatural power exists while often neglecting the transformation required to responsibly possess power of any kind.

Christ wasn't asking for fans. He was creating reflections. People courageous enough to confront empire. Compassionate enough to touch those society rejects. Disciplined enough to master themselves. Perceptive enough to recognize deception. Faithful enough to enter situations everybody else calls impossible. Powerful enough to alter reality around them.

Call them disciples. Call them Christians. Poetically call them little Christs if you wish. Whatever name you choose, they should look different from spectators.

WHAT IF TOKO WASN'T THE END?

What if Seymour wasn't an anomaly? What if Jenkins wasn't merely a strange Mississippi story? What if Toko's warning, preserved within the tradition surrounding him, contains the deeper archetype? That another generation would rise.

Not one superstar prophet. A generation.

Millions of people awakening to dimensions of human and spiritual possibility that industrial civilization trained them to dismiss.

Not gullible. Not intoxicated with fantasy. Not worshipping spiritual celebrities.

Disciplined. Investigative. Prayerful. Fearless. Testing everything. Keeping what proves true. Developing the body. Developing consciousness. Developing community. Developing power. And developing the wisdom not to abuse it.

Because power without character simply creates another Pharaoh.

THE AGE OF THE SPECTATOR IS ENDING

Ecclesiastes says there is nothing new under the sun. Maybe history doesn't merely repeat. Maybe certain patterns wait. And wait. Until humanity develops enough consciousness to recognize them.

Seymour's generation shook Christianity. Toko's movement survived colonial suppression. Jenkins dared Mississippi to watch.

And perhaps the next chapter isn't about waiting for another Seymour. Another Toko. Another Jenkins. Another Moses. Another Elijah.

Maybe it's about producing a people.

Not people drunk on fantasies of power. People disciplined enough to carry it. Not people performing spirituality for cameras. People whose lives become evidence. Not celebrities. Witnesses. Not audiences. Participants.

Not people endlessly waiting for God to move. People asking: What if God has been waiting for us to move?

Because perhaps the question was never merely: Can a man walk on water?

The deeper question is: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN HUMANITY REMEMBERS WHAT IT BELIEVES LIVES INSIDE OF IT?

What happens when prayer becomes training? When faith becomes practice? When intuition becomes disciplined? When consciousness becomes studied? When spiritual gifts are developed instead of merely preached about? When healers learn measurement? When prophets learn discernment? When mystics learn investigation? When scientists become courageous enough to investigate anomaly? When believers become mature enough to question themselves? And when power finally meets responsibility?

That's where the conversation becomes dangerous. That's where it becomes beautiful. And that's where Activation begins.

You don't need another performance. YOU NEED AWAKENING.

And after awakening? Training. Mastery. Service. Power. Responsibility.

The water is only the beginning.

APEX 9 — Elevate Your Edge.

SOURCES & FURTHER READING

1972 Words of Truth archive discussing Jenkins and reproducing the July 1972 AP report: https://www.therestorationmovement.com/_journals/wot/Words%20of%20Truth%20-%20Vol%207%20-%201972.pdf

Academic research on Simão Toko and Tokoist history: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00141844.2013.806946

Academic research on Tokoist correspondence and colonial surveillance: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00083968.2012.737525