doomsday prophet

(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Participants in a movement that proselytized that the world would end May 21.(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Radio evangelist Harold Camping has called his erroneous prediction that the world would end last May 21 an "incorrect and sinful statement" and said his ministry is out of the prediction business.

"We have learned the very painful lesson that all of creation is in God's hands and he will end time in his time, not ours!" reads the statement signed by Camping and his staff and posted on his ministry's website.

"We humbly recognize that God may not tell his people the date when Christ will return, any more than he tells anyone the date they will die physically."