Ankerberg: Slightly Disingenuous on Matthew 10:28

Matthew 10:28 says: "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell" (NRSV).

In John Ankerberg's discussion with Garner Ted Armstrong (see Guess What I found on Youtube.com???), there is disagreement over the Greek word translated as "destroy," apollumi. Garner Ted, an annihilationist, argues that it means to destroy--to cause someone to cease to exist. Ankerberg, who believes that the lost will be eternally tormented in hell, sees it more as eternal ruin--the destruction of a soul's well-being rather than its being.

Ankerberg pulls out all of these scholarly sources that Ted probably doesn't know about: Kittel, Brown-Drivers-Briggs, Vine's, etc. He says that, according to Kittel, apollumi does not literally mean to destroy. Ted blithely responds that Kittel is not an authority.

Ted should've said that Ankerberg is just plain wrong. I looked up apollumi in Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, and it can mean "to destroy or kill" in battle. Often in the New Testament, it refers to causing a person to lose his earthly life. For example, Matthew 2:13 says: "Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, 'Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.'"

Was Herod trying to take away baby Jesus' well-being, or did he want him dead? I think the answer is obvious.

Apollumi sometimes means "to lose," as when it refers to the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost prodigal son (see Luke 15:4, 6, 8; 24, 32). But Ankerberg is wrong to cite Kittel as he did, for he said that Kittel excludes it from connoting ultimate destruction.

On one occasion, Kittel (or, more precisely, Oepke) does say that the word apoleaia means "not a simple extinction of existence...but an everlasting state of torment and death." That's when he comments on Revelation 17:8, 11. But who says that Kittel is free of religious bias? Those passages can easily mean that God will kill the Beast.

Where Ted shoots himself in the foot is that he believes Satan and the demons will be tormented forever and ever, for he views spirit as indestructible. But, as Ankerberg points out, apollumi is used in Mark 1:24, when the demons cry out, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God." How can Ted interpret apollumi to mean "destruction" with reference to wicked people, but as something else when the topic is demons?