Is Hell an actual place of eternal torture.

No!

Know Hell.

First off you and many others need to learn or perhaps, unlearn what the word “hell” really means.

There are probably not too many who actually first learned about hell from reading the bible for themselves. I was taught like most that hell was a place where bad people went after they died. Sounds alot like the Santa Claus promise of naughty kids not getting presents.

Hell is characterized in many ways throughout the bible, such as darkness, fire, flames, torments, heat, bondage, thirst, worms, pain and flogging.

Two questions. Are these characteristics to be taken literally or symbolically?

I believe it’s the latter. Symbolically taken.

Take John 3:16. We all know the verse.

John 3:16 NKJV
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

All of Jesus’s believers will die or perish. The perishing that Jesus is referring to is concerning an eternal life, or lack of one.

Faith in Jesus equals “everlasting life” (after physical death)

No faith in Jesus equals perishing or second death (after physical death)

Think about this for a minute. If God sent people to an eternal hell to be tortured forever and ever. Wouldn’t those people have eternal life?

Could God, Who is defined by love send non believers to a place where they are tortured forever and ever?

Mankind could if given the chance. I’ve heard many people say to one another about how they wish they would burn in hell forever. Wow.

Hell is NOT a place where God tortures people forever and ever. The eternal punishment is real however, but sadly, misunderstood.

Why is hell associated with everlasting punishment?

The punishment is the absence from the Lord. No eternal life spent with the God of the entire universe. Life ends forever. Period. End. Finish. No more. Forever gone. Dead. Perish. The grave. This separation is real and forever. It’s a free will choice.

Hell is not a place but is symbolic for those who are “dead” or “in their grave” in a spiritual sense. God does not torture those who reject His free offer of grace through faith. He does however, consider all these people condemned or held guilty of sin. Hence, the designation of hell. The very definition of hell in the bible is “the dead” or “the grave”.

Here is an interaction with Jesus and a supposed follower of His.

Matthew 8:21-22 NKJV
Then another of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” [22] But Jesus said to him, “Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”

The dead in sin or in the grave.

Today doctors use a term that is serious called, “grave condition”.

So too are those who don’t follow Jesus in grave condition without faith .
Not following Jesus or getting behind Him as Jesus rebuked Peter leads to the wrath of God because of sin.

That’s what your saved from (God’s anger) by grace through faith in Jesus.

Sin separates us from God. Jesus reunites us through faith by NOT seeing but believing.

The condemnation of hell is simply that.

People are either condemned “right now” or are in a state of grace through faith.

John 3:18 NKJV
“He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

Jesus said that whoever does not believe is condemned (already!)

Right now!

Hell has many symbolic descriptions.

Two characteristics of Hell that are mentioned throughout the Christian Scriptures are fire and darkness.

Wanna know why hell is likened to darkness?

Darkness is the absence of light. Jesus is the light of the world. Those who are condemned to die in their sins are in “the darkness” (blind to see Jesus through faith) of hell.

John 3:19 NKJV
And this is the condemnation, that the light (Jesus) has come into the world, and men (self righteous) loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

The light that came into the world is Jesus.

Matthew 4:16 NKJV
The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, And upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death Light has dawned.”

Wanna know why hell is likened to fire and flames?

Those who reject Jesus, who is the only way to have sins forgiven by God, face the wrath or anger of God, expressed symbolically as fire. God, Who is a jealous God is a consuming fire.

Hell is a real, but only for those who are alive in the physical, but unfortunately dead in sin or in “grave condition”.

Now believe in Jesus and He will lift you out of the grave and you will live.

Now isn’t that great news.