Moonshiner, as a Christian I find the thought of eternal torment in the Lake of Fire to be extremely troubling as well & I have thought a great deal about this subject. So re: your questions—‘Why the cruel foreplay, & does God get a perverse S&M pleasure out of punishing people?’—here are my thoughts:
Let’s say that, for the sake of argument, there is a God & an afterlife where we live on forever. If so, then it would also be cruel & perverse if there was no punishment of any kind, no final judgment, no settling of scores, no righting of wrongs. If there was no justice meted out to the monsters & abusers & evil people, then it would be extremely unfair to the victims who have suffered so greatly in this life at the hands of evil people. For God to be good, he not only has to be loving & forgiving, but just—meaning that there has to be some kind of reward for the righteous & fair punishment for those who have lived evil lives.
You probably don't disagree with the need for justice. That’s why we have criminal justice systems here on earth, though they so often fail to achieve fair settlements & don’t give punishments worthy of the crimes. But if I understand you, your question is, who can believe in eternal torment in flames & sulfur & worms that don't die? This is overkill. The punishment does not match the crime. It just goes on & on forever.
You said, Jesus, in his own words or at least those ascribed to him by the gospel writers, repeatedly talks about the everlasting fires of hell where those who don't accept him and his doctrines will suffer forever. I’m not sure what you mean by ‘repeatedly.’ If you mean mere passing mentions of a place/state called ‘hell,’ then yes there are a handful. But they give no description of what this place/state is like.
There are actually very few references where Jesus talks about hell as ‘everlasting fires.’ Apart from Matthew 25:42 (‘eternal fire prepared for the devil & his angels’) Mark 9:48 is the main one, saying that hell is a place ‘where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.’ But it should be noted that in this verse, Jesus is quoting Isaiah 66:24, which states: ‘And they will go out and look upon the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; their worm will not die, nor will their fire be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind.’ (I’m quoting from a modern translation, the NIV, not the old English of the KJV.)
I personally don’t think this passage is meant to be taken literally, & I’ll explain why later, but even if it were, notice that the obvious implication: even the evil people are not suffering eternally in hell. The fire is burning their dead bodies. They are dead & feel nothing. There is no ‘eternal consciousness of suffering’ here. This still makes for a gruesome picture, I will grant you that, to make object lessons of evil doers, but at least they’re not suffering endlessly.
I’ve come to the conclusion, however, that ‘hell,’ reduced to its most basic essence means separation from God & all the wonderful things that he as a super-being has in store for us in an amazing place called heaven. (I’m not trying to re-convert you to the existence of God & heaven by talking about how great I think heaven is, but trying to answer the question that IF God exists, how could he send people to eternal torment in hell. This leads to the question of what is hell.) I believe that hell is a continued existence for those separated from God & all the good, fantastic things—because they chose to be separated. Those eternally separated from God would know that God exists, would know what they are missing out on, so have regrets. (Whether there would finally be a reconciliation is another question. In any case, I don’t think that those who never heard the gospel will be harshly judged for never hearing it.) But yes, there would be just retribution & punishment for evil-doers, people like Hitler & Berg, & the time as well as the punishment will match the crime for each person.
As you probably remember from Berg’s endless letters on the subject, the final ‘hell’ is the Lake of Fire, gehenna. In fact, the word gehenna comes from the words ge-Hinnom, meaning the Valley of the sons of Hinnom. It was the valley just south of the walls of Jerusalem, the public garbage dump where worms (maggots) crawled through rotting garbage & fires burned the garbage with smoke going up both day & night ‘forever.’ It was from THIS place that the picture of hell (gehenna) came. Since the physical reality of the dump was what inspired our present word-pictures of gehenna/hell, & not the other way around, then it is likely that its images are symbolic.
There are a number of descriptions of gehenna in the book of Revelation, but in such a highly-symbolic book I think we should be very cautious and not dogmatically insist that certain descriptions, beasts, events or scenes must be interpreted literally—notwithstanding that Berg insisted they did. Instead, I wonder if those descriptions of hell also be understood in a symbolic context? I believe they should. For example, Revelation 14:10-11 says, ‘He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever.’ Instead of doing like Berg did & wondering exactly what ‘for ever & ever’ means, I researched & found that this passage in Revelation was citing an Old Testament passage about the judgment of Edom.
Isaiah 34:8-10 reads, ‘For the Lord has a day of vengeance ... Edom’s streams will be turned into pitch, her dust into burning sulfur; her land will become blazing pitch! It will not be quenched night and day; its smoke will rise forever.’ Edom, of course, has suffered devastations & been invaded—& in a region with natural gas & sulfur deposits, this description was likely fulfilled literally at times—but the phrase It will not be quenched night and day; its smoke will rise forever was hyperbole, a metaphor & not literal. Is southern Jordan still burning? It’s not. So if even the original quote from which Revelation 14:11 was taken was symbolic, how can anyone insist that the ‘day & night eternal punishment’ of Revelation 14:11 must be literal?
Bottom line: every phrase relating to hell is symbolic, from the burning sulfur/gas deposits of Edom to the burning garbage dump of ge-Hinnom outside Jerusalem. So the question is, what do these pictures symbolize? Certainly I think they are serious warnings that there is punishment for the wicked, & certainly I believe that an eternity without the presence of God is the wrong choice, when Jesus came to give us life to the full. But as for what exactly hell is, I don’t believe there are solid grounds for anyone to be able to insist that is a place of eternal, conscious suffering in flames & burning sulfur & worms.