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 Mitchell, pianist for the same congregation.

After leaving Oklahoma, Mitchell joined the military and then attended law school. He moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where in the 1960s he joined the Nation of Islam (NOI) and took the name Hulon X. After leaving the NOI in the late ’60s, 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.

The Nation of Yahweh set up its headquarters in Liberty City, Florida in 1979. Broadly classified as a branch of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, Mitchell’s doctrine emphasized the belief that God and all of the prophets of the Bible were black and that blacks would gain the knowledge of their true history through Mitchell himself.

Mitchell’s business and charity efforts earned him respect in the community. The mayor of Miami, Xavier Suárez, declared “Yahweh ben Yahweh Day” on October 7, 1990, a month before his indictment for alleged crimes.

Mitchell was released on parole in 2001 and returned to Miami, but his activities were strongly restricted until a few months before his death. He was prohibited from reconnecting with his old congregation. To ensure this, he was restricted from any form of speech by Internet, telephone, computer, radio or television that could place him in contact with any Nation of Yahweh members.

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

A 2018 episode of People Magazine – Cults entitled “Yahweh Nation,” also on Investigation Discovery, tells the story of Hulon Mitchell Jr.