I was thinking about altar calls in many churches today and the following statement is use in most every altar call:

You are not here by random accident

I thought about this comment not in the freewill vs. predestination mindset but in a rhetorical question about church raffles. In most church raffles, it is emphasized that for a small donation, you receive a ticket with a number that may be ‘randomly drawn out’ to win a prize. If you did not show up for the altar call ‘by random accident’, then how can a church raffle consist of a ‘random drawing’ to determine a winner? If the ‘by random accident’ phraze is designed to push a predestination mindset, then the raffle drawing is also not random, the winner had to be predestined long ago. All that hapened was not a random drawing, all that actually happened was that the future owner of a prize became revealed in due time (aka the date/time of the drawing).

Something to ponder.