Those who love pleasure may keep up a form of godliness, but they have no vital connections with God. Their faith is dead, their zeal has departed.—Messages to Young People, 142.
Though church-members, they are unconverted. They may take part in the church service, they may chant the psalm, “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God;” but they testify to a falsehood. They are no more righteous in God’s sight than is the veriest sinner. The soul that longs after the excitement of worldly pleasure, the mind that is full of love for display, cannot serve God.... Such a one has no inclination to war against the lust of the flesh. He belongs to indulge appetite. He chooses the atmosphere of sin.—Christ’s Object Lessons, 270.
Professed Christians, worldly Christians, are unacquainted with heavenly things. They will never be brought to the gates of the New Jerusalem to engage in exercises which have not hitherto specially interested them. They have not trained their minds to delight in devotion, and in meditation upon things of God and Heaven. How, then, can they engage in the services of Heaven? how delight in the spiritual, the pure, the holy in Heaven, when it was not a special delight to them upon earth?—Testimonies for the Church 2:265. RRe 229
The redeemed raise a song of praise that echoes and reechoes through the vaults of Heaven, “Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.” And angel and seraph unite their voices in adoration. As the redeemed have beheld the power and malignity of Satan, they have seen, as never before, that no power but that of Christ could have made them conquerors. In all that shining throng there are none to ascribe salvation to themselves, as if they had prevailed by their own power and goodness. Nothing is said of what they have done or suffered; but the burden of every song, the keynote of every anthem, is, Salvation to our God and unto the Lamb. Hvn 125
She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth. 1 Timothy 5:6. KJV