Does a just loving God torment people night and day with burning fire for all of eternity?? Is there such a place as a lake of fire? Jesus compares existence to hell as worms rooting through a garbage dump. Jesus uses lots of everyday examples to give us an insight to a spiritual truth. But how far can we take those comparisons?

Dante came up with a horrible idea that hell was a place of eternal torment, in agony forever. Now that doesn't sound very kind nor deserving. When you watch a war movie and they see the enemy burning alive, they usually shoot him and put him out of his misery, but as Christians our idea of hell is for God to extend His life and add fuel to the fire. It just doesn't sound right.

We get our idea of hell by taking the scriptures literally and rolling them all together and taa daa! It's screaming pain for eternity! But what if we looked symbolically, especially at Rev.20:15 Lake of Fire?? Revelation is a symbolic book, pictures that explain spiritual truths, I don't picture heaven to be literally streets of gold, what I see is, it is beyond all we can imagine. After all its dimensions don't make sense physically but they do taken literally, since the number 144 is used a lot.

When we study symbolism in the Bible - the Word of God is represented as water. Ezek. 47:1f water flowing from the temple. Jn.4 Jesus offering water that wells up from within, never thirst again. River of Life flowing from the throne of God Rev.22? 21? close. To be cursed is not to have a supply of water, to live in waterless places, to be blessed is to be by a living spring. The demons when cast out went to waterless places why because water represents the word of God and they want nothing to do with it.

Therefore where is the one place where water isn't, the lake of fire, and if water is the Word then in hell there is no Word of God. If there is no Word of God then a person has NO FAITH - NO HOPE - NO LOVE HELL! The torment is the eternal destiny of hopelessness, no way out. The movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray bests describes hell in modern terms. Everyday he woke up was groundhog day, he could do whatever he wanted, rob a bank, make a date, steal a car, but it was always Groundhog day, back to square one when he woke up and it was driving him crazy.

Hell to me is to spend eternity in an eternal body with my very thoughts as we see the rich man had in Lk.16 but unable to change anything, no hope, no change for eternity. And knowing I once was a Christian makes the torment that much worse to the fallen. There will be differing degrees of punishment and the punishment will all be self induced. Those who knew little - fewer stripes those who knew a lot - more stripes.

I am not trying to make it sound like a good place, but lets not make it something it isn't as well. Rich man was looking for water, only thing that truly satisfies the soul is water of God's Word but there is none there. An eternal passing of time with no faith, no hope, no love.

I see hell portrayed symbolically in scriptures and either way you want to look at it, you don't ever want to go there, but it does exist for we are all eternal.

RJ Mac