>>After all, when someone is burning in hell for eternity, it’d be nice for them to think that it’s really purgatory and that some day it will all be over.<<
I’m thinking that by that time the realization will have sunk in and horror and despair will replace the hope.
It's the very thought of someone spending eternity in utter darkness and suffering, being separated from the presence of the Lord for E T E R N I T Y is enough to compel me to plead with others to be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ. I remember starkly the image of hell I had as a child, that of sitting on one side of a high fence, suffering in darkness knowing I would NEVER sleep, never escape, never die, but being in eternity with NO hope. I still shudder thinking about that. This is why I so rejoice in God revealing the Gospel to me and knowing that my eternal security was found through faith in the amazing grace of God.
Though I grieve for those who I know and those I never will know who have refused to trust in Christ, denied the gift of God and shunned the many opportunities God gave them TO know, I also know that God loves them far more than I could and that it is his will that ALL come to repentance and the knowledge of the truth. It boils down to each person's responsibility to move towards God, I can't make them, and God won't. I think those tears that he says he will wipe away from our eyes and there will be no more crying for the former things are passed away also contain those we will shed for all the lost. All things will become new and we will remember the past no more.