NEW YORK, June 7: A religious cult leader in Abilene (Texas) who has predicted that a nuclear war will begin on Thursday (June 12) will have his day in the US court on charges of bigamy and other crimes.

The self-proclaimed Texas prophet Yisrayl “Buffalo Bill” Hawkins, the founder of the House of Yahweh religion, located on a 44-acre tract outside Abilene, has also been charged with helping others become bigamists, and bigamy himself.

“When you’re violating the law, then you can’t hide behind that religious shield and you’re gonna be held accountable,” Shane Deel, the district attorney in Callahan County, Texas, who has filed the criminal counts against Hawkins, told a press conference on Friday .

There are allegations he has as many as 30 wives, according to Deel.

“I’ve got a wife, one wife,” Hawkins said in an interview broadcast on ABC TV ‘s “20/20” on Friday.

District Attorney Deel said: “I’d like to have him say that under oath and confront him with our evidence.”

In a book entitled “The Laws of Slavery and Marriage,” Hawkins wrote in 1994 that in the ideal Yahweh marriage, “three (wives) are better than two, and two are better than one.”

“In a situation where a family is made up of several women married to one man, everyone in that family could benefit in various ways,” he wrote.

Hawkins’s ex-wife Kay says he added that to the sect’s preaching after she caught him having an affair in 1993 with his then-secretary at the church.

“He had the power to re-write the Bible and he did,” she told “20/20.”