Nicholas,
Don’t despair; you are exactly what you ought to be, which is merciful and loving – like your Father. Only you have a simplistic understanding of scripture (which is precisely what ought not to have been taught to you.) Not that anyone has tried to deceive you. The deception goes much further back than that. First, regarding Revelation, I remember myself trying very hard to imagine locusts that looked like horses prepared for battle, with the faces of men, hair like women, crowns of gold, and teeth like lions – and don’t forget, the tails of scorpions. I’ve got a pretty good imagination, but I came up empty on that one. Not that I couldn’t imagine an image; I just couldn’t imagine one I could believe. Imagine my surprise to find what I ought to have seen right away. Revelation is an apocalypse. It was never intended to be taken literally.
Of course, I’d never heard of an apocalypse. I took everything at face value. I was exactly the sort of person CS Lewis was talking about when he said, “People who can’t understand books written for grown-ups shouldn’t attempt to comment on them.” Revelation particularly appealed to me because (like most of us) I wanted to understand things that would happen in the future, and like you, I found it dismaying. I swallowed my dismay, though, telling myself that I knew God was good and it would all work out. That was probably the most sensible thing I could have done at the time, with the limited knowledge I had.
So, in case you, like me at the time, don’t understand what an apocalypse is, think of Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass.” There’s a segment in there where the Unicorn and the Lion have a battle for the crown. Makes no sense at all, but then it IS Lewis Carroll, and perhaps it’s not supposed to. In the book this is clearly an important battle, and imagine if you read Looking Glass as a book of prophecy and expected everything to literally happen. You’d have a giant lion and a giant unicorn battling it out for the crown, ripping the city apart as they went. If you believed that, it would distress you no end. But in truth it’s a satirical piece, and as it’s more or less contemporary, and a work of fiction, no one supposes it to be anything other than nonsense or satire. The Lion is England, and the Unicorn represents Scotland, which have a history of some conflict as I’m sure you’ve heard. It’s not an apocalypse, but apocalypses are like that. There are no monstrous locusts no huge cubical city, no lake burning with fire. I’d have to do more thinking than I like to do in the morning to interpret the locusts, but the city represents the people of God in a unified, loving community. (It is also representative of the Bride, who is also representative of the people of God).
As for the Lake of Fire, I personally believe this represents God Himself (our God is a consuming fire), and the thing that He consumes is sin and death and the grave, the adversary (the devil) and the false prophet. If anyone’s name is not found in the Book of Life (which represents, in my opinion, Jesus Himself), he is cast into the Lake of Fire." Earlier in the Apocalypse (as it used to be called) we see the elders standing around a sea of fire and crystal, with God on His emerald throne seated at the head of the circle. The lake of fire, elsewhere just outside the New Jerusalem, yet in this other picture appears to be before the very throne of God. That makes sense, as in a sense the ekklesia (church) IS the throne of God, the city of God. The gathering of the saints is then closer to God – one with Him, in fact. The lake of fire is only slightly further away, and the sinners are “tormented” in the presence of God and of His holy angels. George MacDonald (a big favorite around here) mentions that in the outer circles of God’s presence one feels the torment, while the closer one comes, the more delightful His presence becomes.
Please don’t go back now, to viewing this all literally. I’m still moving in the realms of metaphor and symbolism. The fire is symbolic too. Nearly everywhere in scripture (except in a very few occasions where it is just a natural fire), fire symbolizes purification – particularly of precious metals. The word used for “torment” has its sources in metallurgy, in which the metals are purified and then tested for purity and then either pronounced pure, or else purified some more until they ARE pure. If you read the Revelation carefully, you’ll see that AFTER being cast into the LoF, these very kings of the earth who were wicked before are now pouring into the City, bringing their riches to offer to the King of kings. After all, the gates to the city are never closed by day, and there is no night. Who are they open for if not for those outside the city, and who is outside the city if not the inmates of the LoF? At the very end of the Revelation, we see the Spirit and the Bride calling, “If anyone is thirsty let him come and drink of the Water of Life without cost.” This is the water which, if you drink of it, you will never thirst again; therefore, who is thirsty, if not the miserable wretches suffering in the LoF? They must let go their sins if they are to be delivered; it is their sins that cause their torment. Once they do that, they can leave that outer circle of God’s presence, while the sins/sinfulness burns to nothing. They can wash their robes, drink of the water, and enter the Holy City.
If you want to read more about this (by better writers), my very first recommendation would be The Inescapable Love of God by Tom Talbott. Then The Evangelical Universalist by Robin Parry (aka Gregory MacDonald), Hope Beyond Hell by Gerry Beauchemin – and there are many others as well, some good, some not so much.
Welcome to the group, and I hope you will find some comfort here, Nicholas. We’re delighted to have you with us. 
Cindy
