To associate with those who neither fear nor love God, unless you associate with them for the purpose of winning them to Jesus, will be a detriment to your spirituality. If you cannot lift them up, their influence will tell upon you in corrupting and tainting your faith....

The true Christian will not choose the company of the unconverted. If Christ is formed within, the hope of glory, we cannot enjoy the malarious spiritual atmosphere which surrounds the souls of the irreligious....

Your acquaintances who are utterly averse to spiritual things are not refined, ennobled, and elevated by the practice of the truth. They are not under the leadership of Christ, but under the black banner of the prince of darkness. To associate with those who neither fear nor love God, unless you associate with them for the purpose of winning them to Jesus, will be a detriment to your spirituality. If you cannot lift them up, their influence will tell upon you in corrupting and tainting your faith. It is right for you to treat them kindly; but not well for you to love and choose their society, for if you choose the atmosphere that surrounds their souls, you will forfeit the companionship of Jesus. By every means in your power seek to repress sin; but never for one moment give sanction to sin either by your deeds, your words, your silence, or your presence. Every time sin is sanctioned by the professed follower of Christ, his sense of sin is weakened, and his judgment thus becomes perverted....

The Lord Jesus cannot keep any soul who places himself upon the enemy's ground and surrounds himself with the society of those who prefer such conversation and conduct as is an offense to the God he reveres and loves....

Cling close to those who will have an uplifting tendency, whose souls are surrounded with a pure and holy atmosphere.... God will be nearer to your heart, more in your thoughts, because you have separated from the world and from influences that would lead you away from the truth, and you will be less compassed with the snares of Satan. OHC 258


For what was the great controversy permitted to continue throughout the ages? Why was it that Satan's existence was not cut short at the outset of his rebellion? It was that the universe might be convinced of God's justice in His dealing with evil; that sin might receive eternal condemnation. In the plan of redemption there are heights and depths that eternity itself can never exhaust, marvels into which the angels desire to look. The redeemed only, of all created beings, have in their own experience known the actual conflict with sin; they have wrought with Christ, and, as even the angels could not do, have entered into the fellowship of His sufferings; will they have no testimony as to the science of redemption—nothing that will be of worth to unfallen beings? Hvn 153



"Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you." 2 Corinthians 6:17 (King James Version)