Like many other Bible-believing Christians, the Rev. Dean Harner for years has tuned in to Harold Camping's Bible studies on the Family Radio Network.

But Mr. Harner, who just bought an eight-acre parcel in Burlington Township to start a Baptist church, has parted ways with the famous old preacher over a most unlikely cause.

Camping wants Christians to stop going to church.

"The church age has come to an end," according to the Oakland, Calif.-based Camping, a fixture on national Christian radio for 43 years who is not ordained.

The end times are imminent, and churches are not merely irrelevant but "altogether apostate" because they soft-pedal the gospel, Camping, 81, has been telling his national audience since about June of last year. Instead of using Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist and other "corporate" denominations to evangelize the world, he says, God has turned instead to... radio.

Camping's unorthodox stance has riled many church leaders, and his heavy-handed editing of their programs has prompted several preachers or their broadcast ministries to quit Family Radio in recent months.

Unwelcome editing - deleting references to church and to theology that Camping opposes - provoked the Philadelphia-based Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals last month to halt Family Radio's use of the alliance's Bible Study Hour, which features the sermons of the late Rev. Dr. James Boice. The nationally known Dr. Boice was senior pastor of the conservative Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia until his death two years ago.

The Bible Study Hour was being broadcast on 283 radio stations, including the 38 stations and 107 affiliates of Family Radio, until last month. Withdrawing from Family Radio "means tens of thousands of people are now not getting [Dr. Boice's] broadcast," said the Rev. Dr. Philip Ryken, Dr. Boice's successor at Tenth. "But we felt it incumbent to take a stand."

Camping's belief that the so-called "age of churches" has passed and the great tribulation predicted in Revelation has begun "represents a theological position we believe is in error, and dangerous," according to Dr. Ryken.

And on Friday the Rev. Woodrow Kroll of Lincoln, Neb., ended nearly 40 years of broadcasting his Back to the Bible program on Family Radio.

"I can no longer be sure what you hear conveys what I spoke or intended," Dr. Kroll explained in an open letter to his listeners.

Numerous Web sites have sprung up denouncing Camping for "heresy" and "apostasy," and several pastors have written to complain that his views have compelled some of his listeners to quit their churches.

Mike Zeimann, a staff member at WKDN (106.9 FM) in Camden, which is owned and operated by Family Network Inc., said employees are not expected to subscribe to Camping's thesis, and "the vast majority don't support his particular point of view."

In addition to WKDN, the network has low-wattage "translators" at Atlantic City (89.3 FM), Cape May (92.3 FM), Emmaus/Allentown (88.7 FM), Harrisburg (101.7 FM), Lancaster (97.7 FM) and York (88.7 FM).

Camping, a civil engineer who cofounded Family Network Inc. in 1958, is not surprised at the criticism.

"Of course the churches are unhappy," he said in a recent telephone interview. "It's understandable when God makes such a major shift."

But, just as the age of churches supplanted the "age of synagogues" at Pentecost, God has "made another step," he said. "He's finished with the churches."

"After 13,000 years of history... God allowed mankind to discover electromagnetic waves" so people can preach the gospel to Earth's swelling population, he said.

His realization of God's will obliged him to quit his own congregation of the Christian Reformed Church, where he was an elder.

"Personally, it makes me very unhappy to tell people the church age is over," he said.

"My 80th birthday was my unhappiest ever" because it followed close on his church resignation. "But the problem with studying the Bible is that you come up with truths."

But Camping's truth, in this case, isn't Mr. Harner's.

"There's no biblical basis for what he's saying," Mr. Harner said. "The Bible is clear; we're not in the tribulation period."

Mr. Harner, whose newly formed Faith Baptist Church on Fountain Avenue has just 10 members, studied Bible at fundamentalist Bob Jones University and generally respects Camping's teaching.

However, he said, Camping's argument that Christians should be funding Christian broadcast operations instead of congregations and denominations reminds him of a Christian newsletter publisher's recent argument that the biblical mandate to tithe permitted tithing to Christian newsletters.

"People tend to look at things the way they're situated," Mr. Harner said with a laugh. "I see that as very common."

Dr. Ryken called his alliance's split "unfortunate," but said Camping had lost credibility with many biblical scholars a decade ago when he predicted the world would end in 1994.

"This whole situation shows why, in hermeneutics [the interpretation of biblical texts], it's so important to pay attention to the context of a thing and not apply every verse to your [current] situation," Dr. Ryken said.

For example, Camping cites the Book of Isaiah's calling on the faithful to leave Babylon as a mandate incumbent on today's Christians to abandon their churches, Dr. Ryken noted.

"But in the context, it's talking about leaving Babylon, a godless and pagan culture, and being separate from its sin, not its local church."

Camping insisted that he is right, however, and that despite the resignations of "three or four staff" - including the executive director of Family Network - over his view of churches, "We just had our best year ever."

Family Radio is now broadcasting on AM to China, he said, and will soon be broadcasting to Indonesia and Vietnam - in fulfillment, he maintains, of the new, electronic "Age of Evangelization."

"The Lord has blessed and blessed us beyond measure," he said.