They have since modified their teaching by saying that September 12, 2006 was only the start of a nine month period; at the end of that time (June 12, 2007)[2], the prophesied nuclear war would start. As of December 2007 the website states that "It's 100% true and coming soon" although the nine month period has passed.
Further details are only available in the book Birth Of the Nuclear Baby: The Explosion Of Sin, which requires a "$25 donation" to obtain from the author.
Thousands Follow Self-Proclaimed Prophet Yisrayl 'Buffalo Bill' Hawkins of Abilene
By BRIAN ROSS and VIC WALTER
June 6, 2008
Nuclear war will begin next Thursday, June 12, or sooner, according to the latest prediction of self-proclaimed prophet Yisrayl "Buffalo Bill" Hawkins, the founder of a religious sect in Abilene, Texas.
Founder of a religious sect in Texas predicts the world will end June 12.
"It could be turned loose before then," Hawkins told 20/20 for a report to be broadcast tonight. "You're going to see this very soon, really soon," he said.
Hundreds of truck trailers have been loaded with food and water on the group's 44-acre compound, in preparation for the coming war.
Unfortunately for Hawkins, it is not the first time he predicted the outbreak of nuclear war.
Most recently, Hawkins set Sept. 12, 2006 as the beginning of the end.
His followers produced an on-line video with a countdown to doomsday.
In Kenya, hundreds of his followers actually hid in basement bomb shelters and donned gas masks on the date.
They went home in humiliation when there was no war.
Related
WATCH: The End of the World? Again?
WATCH: Sect Leader Predicts Doomsday
WATCH: Current and Former Yahweh Brides Speak
Hawkins says he does not care if people consider him a laughing stock.
"You know, the savior himself, told me not to worry about that. He said, 'They're going to hate you above all people on the face of the earth,' " Hawkins explained.
Former members say there is a method to Hawkins' madness, that the doomsday predictions help him make money and keep disillusioned members from leaving, for fear they will be killed when the end comes.
"He's been saying just give me two more years, we're right at the end," said former member Miriam Martin who left in 2004.
"Why would you give up now? That's how he controls people, is through fear," Martin said.
Other former members say they are required to buy doomsday food and supplies from a company that Hawkins owns personally, Life Nutrition Products.
"Everything that he preaches has to do with people buying something," said former House of Yahweh elder David Als of New York City.
Like many of the his followers, Als actually legally changed his last name to Hawkins because he became convinced that only those named Hawkins would be saved.
"I'm a Black man from New York city. We're supposed to be slick and wise to the street and he had me hook, line and sinker," Als told 20/20.
Hawkins
(Hand Out)
"No one else has the right to the tree of life, except those that keep the laws of Yahweh," Hawkins has said in his sermons, which are broadcast around the world.
Related
Kenyans Won't Buy Doomsday Prediction Again
Hawkins says as a prophet he knows that nuclear outbreak will come 'round the great river Euphrates.
In addition to dealing with the beginning of the end, Hawkins is also dealing with some serious legal problems.
The Callahan County district attorney has filed felony bigamy charges against Hawkins, alleging he has multiple wives.
He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and says he is being targeted because authorities do not like his brand of religion.
Hundreds of Kenyans Made Doomsday Plans Two Years Ago
Hawkins' Sect Was Booming in Kenya Until His Prediction Failed To Come True
By DANA HUGHES
NAIROBI, June 6, 2008 —
Yisrayl "Buffalo Bill" Hawkins' popularity was not limited to Texas, or even the United States. For years his House of Yahweh sect was booming in the nation of Kenya, at least until his last doomsday prediction in September 2006, which ended up dooming the group's success in the East African country.
"We do not refer to him as God but as Yahweh," Moshe Sang, one of the Kenyan sect's leaders told local Kenyan reporters in 2006, right before Hawkins' prediction that doomsday would occur on September 12th, 2006.
The House of Yahweh was introduced to Kenya by an American in 1997. By 2006 it boasted it had grown to hundreds of members, with the sect publicly declaring the world was coming to an end. They horded food, members sold all their belongings and dug underground bunkers to protect them from the nuclear bombs they believed were coming .
"A nuclear bomb will be launched from underneath the sea then move up and cover the whole sky," said Sang. "It will then spread through out the whole world, and that's what we are expecting," he added.
The Kenyan government, fearing a repeat of a situation in neighboring Uganda where hundreds were murdered in another doomsday sect, cracked down. They rounded up members and arrested them for inciting fear, not taking their children to school and forcing believers to sell all their possessions.
"The government was a bit more sensitive of cult activities and feared useless deaths like in Uganda," Pastor Gowi Odera of Kenya's National Alliance of Church Leaders, told ABC News. "They were especially concerned about minors in those cults."
Eventually members were let go, after promising to keep their doomsday predictions to themselves.
But the sect continued to insist that the world would end on September 12th. In interviews the day before, Sang displayed some of their equipment, including gas masks, protective nylon clothing and goggles. Sang, who was a strong believer with the sect, stopped his children from going to school. He told reporters he was preparing his tomb, which was going to help him and his family get through the 'forbidden year' as he termed it.
"The tomb is not a permanent place, it's only for the nuclear period, we will only get in there when the nuclear strikes, since it only moves through the wind," he said.
But when September 12th came and went without the world coming to an end, the Kenyan government did not have to arrest the leaders; they were chased out by angry villagers, and laughed at by the general Kenyan public.
"Kenyans are very religious, maybe well over half the population profess some time of Christian faith," says Odera. "They knew these people were not Jesus Christ; they're not God. They're a hoax."
Today Odera says no-one really talks about the House of Yahweh anymore.
"Religious leaders warned they were a false prophet and called them a 'passing cloud'," he says. After the world didn't end, "they kind of just fizzled out."
Wilfred Wambura contributed to this report
No comments:
Post a Comment