Yahweh ben Yahweh

Mitchell died on May 7, 2007 at the age of 71. The location was not disclosed. "Yahweh will be remembered and mourned by the millions of people that he touched through prayer and teachings", his lawyers, Jayne Weintraub and Steven Potolsky, said in a joint statement.

In 2006, as he became increasingly ill with prostate cancer, Jayne Weintraub, ben Yahweh’s attorney, petitioned the U.S. District Court for his release from parole to permit him to "die with dignity".

Ben Yahweh was released on parole in 2001 and returned to Miami, but his activities were restricted until a few months before his death. He was prohibited from reconnecting with his old congregation.

Mitchell's business and charity efforts earned him respect in the community. Then-Miami mayor Xavier Suárez declared Yahweh ben Yahweh Day on October 7, 1990, a month before Ben Yahweh's indictment.

Although Yahweh ben Yahweh's followers remained devoted to him, he was in trouble with the law by the 1990s. Between 1990 and 2001, he served eleven years of an eighteen-year sentence on a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) conviction after he and several other Nation of Yahweh members were convicted of conspiracy for the role of ex-followers in more than a dozen murders. Robert Rozier, a former NFL player and a devotee of Mitchell, confessed to seven of these murders.

The Nation of Yahweh set up its headquarters in Liberty City, Florida in 1979.

After leaving Oklahoma, Mitchell joined the military and then attended law school. He moved to Atlanta, where in the 1960s he joined the Nation of Islam (NOI) and took the name Hulon X. After leaving the NOI in the late 1960s, he became a faith healing Christian preacher and named himself Father Mitchell, fashioning himself after Father Divine and Samuel "Father Jehovia" Morris, two African-American ministers and self-proclaimed divine connections to God who were active during the early 20th century. Mitchell arrived in Miami, Florida in 1978, where he gathered members of the city's Black Hebrew Israelite congregations and founded the Nation of Yahweh.

Yahweh ben Yahweh (born Hulon Mitchell Jr.; October 27, 1935 – May 7, 2007) was an American religious leader, black separatist and founder of the Nation of Yahweh, a new religious movement headquartered in Florida that had thousands of black American devotees at its peak. He preached that Jesus is black, but white devils are in charge temporarily, and he was accused of teaching hate. Yahweh was indicted on three counts of federal racketeering and extortion charges, of which he was found not guilty. However, he was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder.

Yahweh ben Yahweh was born Hulon Mitchell Jr. on October 27, 1935. One of 15 children born to Hulon Mitchell Sr., the minister of the Antioch Church of God in Christ in Enid, Oklahoma, and Pearl O. Mitchell (nee Leatherman), pianist for the same congregation.