(05-23) 20:06 PDT ALAMEDA --

The end is still near, radio preacher Harold Camping said in a broadcast Monday night, but the world will be around until Oct. 21.

Camping, the 89-year-old East Bay preacher who gained international fame with his prediction that the rapture would come at 6 p.m. Saturday, said that he misinterpreted the Bible and that May 21 was not really the end of the world but the spiritual beginning of the physical end.

"Were not changing a date at all; we're just learning that we have to be a little more spiritual about this," he said in a rambling 90-minute radio broadcast that was part sermon, part press conference. "But on Oct. 21, the world will be destroyed. It won't be five months of destruction. It will come at once."

The good news, for those dreading five more months of talk about the rapture, is that Family Radio will be taking down its billboards, ceasing distribution of Bible tracts and literature about Judgment Day and focusing its programming on religious music and God's word, not on a countdown to the end.

"We don't need to talk about it anymore," Camping said. "The world has been warned - my it has been warned. We have done our share and the media picked it up. The world has been warned that it is under judgment."

Despite being pressed by reporters, Camping refused to take responsibility for any pain or suffering his prediction may have caused, saying that he was merely interpreting the Bible, and that he did so incorrectly.

"I have never, ever told anyone I'm infallible," he said. "But God is infallible."