K. Lynn Lewis's Blog, page 2

Hello!

Greetings! My name is “Hello.”
I must have some kind of fame,
‘cause where ‘er I go,
Anywhere, it’s so,
People already know my name.

“Hello!” people say when I’m out,
I know they don’t know me, no doubt.
All over the place
When I show my face
My name is bantered about.

“Hello! How are you today?”
“Hello! Nice to meet you.”
“Hello! May I help you?”

Surprising, it’s true,
When strangers know you,
Whatever you do,
And wherever you go,
They all seem to know,
Your name.

Hello!

© 2024 K. Lynn Lewis

Tears of Sorrow, Tears of Joy

Rising from a childhood laced with devastation and heartbreak, Stan Goss found immense inward healing and earthly successes with the Lord as his companion. Tears of Sorrow, Tears of Joy shares his journey of conquering hardships while also fully grasping the nature of both pain and joy, and shares his vibrant passion and strategies to inspire spiritual elders to fully live out their crown of glory years.

Stan Goss is a Master Executive Coach, community leader, family man, and passionate servant of the Lord devoted to inspiring Christian spiritual eldership.

Stan Goss, AuthorK. Lynn Lewis, Managing Editor

Paperback | Kindle

Always Thanksgiving

They kept thanking God, and helping others

Joseph ascended from a pit to a palace, thanked God that what his brothers meant for evil God meant for good, and helped his family and multiple nations survive a seven-year famine. Daniel descended from a palace to a pit, thanked God for shutting the mouths of lions, and faithfully served the Lord under a captor king to conserve a remnant of his people during a seventy-year exile.

Moses moved from Egyptian prince to Midianite shepherd to Hebrew leader, thanked God continuously even amidst trials and tribulations, and shepherded God’s chosen people into a tribal nation. David moved from shepherd boy to military hero to mighty king, thanked God continuously even amidst trials and tribulations, and shepherded his nation into a united kingdom.

Nebuchadnezzar arrogantly lost his throne and royal authority for seven years, thanked God for His sovereignty and blessings following his return to sanity, and returned to greater power and glory in service to the people and temporal kingdom God granted him.

Jesus humbly gave up his throne and royal authority for approximately 33 years, thanked God for His sovereignty and blessings throughout his trials and sacrifice, and returned to greater power and glory in service to the people and eternal kingdom God granted him.

Barren Hannah and old Elizabeth became bold mothers, thanked God for their blessings, and gave their children up to serve the Lord and others in His name. Young unwed Mary became married Mother Mary, thanked God for His sovereign grace and mercy, and faithfully and temporally raised the Lord who would faithfully and eternally raise her.

Likewise, in and through all of our own unique circumstances, we should be always thanksgiving, for the Lord and for others, and for the many opportunities we have to help others in His name.

AI and the Arrival of ChatGPT

Opportunities, challenges, and limitations

In a memorable scene from the 1996 movie, Twister, Dusty recognizes the signs of an approaching tornado and shouts, “Jo, Bill, it’s coming! It’s headed right for us!” Bill, shouts back ominously, “It’s already here!” Similarly, the approaching whirlwind of artificial intelligence (AI) has some shouting “It’s coming!” while others pointedly concede, “It’s already here!”

Coined by computer and cognitive scientist John McCarthy (1927-2011) in an August 1955 proposal to study “thinking machines,” AI purports to differentiate between human intelligence and technical computations. The idea of tools assisting people in tasks is nearly as old as humanity (see Genesis 4:22), but machines capable of executing a function and “remembering” – storing information for recordkeeping and recall – only emerged around the mid-twentieth century (see “Timeline of Computer History“).

McCarthy’s proposal conjectured that “every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it. An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves.” The team received a $7,000 grant from The Rockefeller Foundation and the resulting 1956 Dartmouth Conference at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire totaling 47 intermittent participants over eight weeks birthed the field now widely referred to as “artificial intelligence.”

Read more

Looking Back, Moving Forward

Revival. Awakening. Outpouring. Manifestation of God’s presence. Gentleness. Glory. Peace.

There are many descriptors spawned from the chapel service that began on February 8, 2023, in Hughes Auditorium at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky. Thousands have shared their testimonies and opinions on media platforms far and wide.

Although these recent events are new, others have similarly met the Almighty in the past. How did they respond?

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Shaking the Foundations of Doubt

Evidence continues to emerge that shows remarkable alignment with biblical texts

Numerous people and publications discount the historical reliability of the Bible, often based on decades old assertions that cast doubt on the veracity of Scripture. The refrain, “There is no evidence…” commonly precedes skepticism about stories in the book of Genesis, Hebrews in Egypt, the Exodus, the Israelite Conquest, and more. 

At the time they were written, many of these statements were not necessarily lies, but assertations based on opinions of interpretations of purportedly demonstrable conclusions. For example, when 20th century excavations at Jericho (an uncontested location) and Ai (a contested location) did not seem to yield evidence matching the biblical stories, widespread doubt about the reliability of the Bible ensued and influenced millions.

However, new evidence, improved archaeological methods, and scientific advances in the decades since – along with reexaminations of old excavations and interpretations of findings – shows remarkable alignment with biblical texts. Archaeological research scheduled for publication this year related to three early Conquest sites have the potential to cause a gigantic tilt in the balance of evidence favoring fact over fiction concerning the historicity of the Bible.

Click here to read the rest of the article on LinkedIn…

The El-Burnat (A) Structure(s): Joshua’s Altar?

The book of Joshua records a ceremony of blessings and curses that the Israelites held on Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim shortly after their arrival in the promised land. According to Joshua 8:30, “Then Joshua built on Mount Ebal an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel.”

The El-Burnat (A) Structure(s): Joshua’s Altar? provides a thorough analysis of Joshua’s altar first by examining Mount Ebal and altars in the Bible and then by analyzing biblical references to Joshua’s Mount Ebal altar to determine the exact biblical specifications for that altar. It then discusses the surveys and archaeological work that have taken place on Mount Ebal and specifically at one site on the mountain, el-Burnat (A). Adam Zertal, who excavated at the site, claimed to have found Joshua’s altar. This review of the corresponding evidence seems to confirm that one of the structures at the site does indeed qualify as Joshua’s altar on Mount Ebal.

Abigail Leavitt, AuthorK. Lynn Lewis, Managing Editor

Paperback | Kindle

Woefully Bereft

Atheist unanimously elected president of Harvard Chaplains

God started it. He designed the universe and everything in it.  He created people, family, and community, and instructed leaders to teach children and adults His commands, to obey and fear Him, and to love Him with all one’s heart, soul, and strength (Dt. 6:1-7). Yet, people have historically sought to cast off God’s constraints, complained about His commandments, ignored His chastisements, denigrated His Word, and even denied His existence.

Compare Harvard University’s recent unanimous election of an atheist as President of Harvard Chaplains to the sentiments expressed on the “New England First Fruits” tablet at Harvard’s Johnston Gate entrance (see photo above). After the early settlers thanked God for safe passage across the ocean, built their houses and places to worship God, and settled the civil government, they chose as their next priority the advancement of learning so as to avoid leaving an illiterate ministry upon the deaths of their living ministers.

Massachusetts colony leaders founded the college in 1636; received the first printing press on the continent in 1638 and printed the first book in America, “The Whole Booke of Psalms,” in 1640; named the college after benefactor and clergyman John Harvard in 1639; adopted “Rules and Precepts” in 1646 that included admonitions to “Let every student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life, John 17:3, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning”; officially chartered Harvard in 1650 for the “education of the English and Indian youth of this country in knowledge and godliness”; and established their early motto as Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae, “Truth for Christ and the Church.”

Now however, three and a half plus centuries later, Greg Epstein, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard, has been elected to lead the university’s more than 40 chaplains from more than 20 religious traditions. Although a Rabbi who doesn’t believe in God, he professionally trains clergy who seek to minister to nonreligious people. He holds three religious degrees and has been named one of the top national leaders in faith and morality.

According to Epstein, “There is a rising group of people who no longer identify with any religious tradition but still experience a real need for conversation and support around what it means to be a good human and live an ethical life.”

“We don’t look to a god for answers; we are each other’s answers.”

Greg Epstein, President of Harvard Chaplains

In Psalm 2:1-3, the psalmist laments that nations conspire and people plot in vain against the Lord and his anointed saying, “Let us break off their chains and throw off their shackles.” In doing so, people imagine themselves free of God, free of religious obligations, and free of perceived archaic rules and precepts. But, what of their claims about goodness and ethical living?

Apart from God and His Word, “goodness” and “ethics” have nothing but human opinions to define them.

Isn’t it odd when people who do not want to obey God’s Word, or even believe in God, still impose religious beliefs on themselves and engage in religious activities? Remember the disobedient Hebrews in the wilderness who worshipped a golden idol they crafted themselves? Remember the northern kingdom of Israel’s first king, Jeroboam, who built his own altars and an entire system of corrupt worship based on his own ideas instead of the Lord’s commands? Consider the Pharisees and Sadducees, Greeks and Romans, and hundreds of other groups and cultures throughout history – including some religious and secular cultures and institutions today – that have borrowed from God to fabricate their own religious rules and traditions.

Harvard’s founders valued literacy; believed in the duty of parents and communities to ensure that children could read and write and interpret the Bible for themselves; and helped pass the “Old Deluder Satan Act of 1647” to establish schools to thwart “ye old deluder, Satan” from keeping “men from the knowledge of ye Scriptures.”

Today, Harvard has thousands of employees, an average of 22,000 students enrolled, and 400,000+ alumni. Some probably still embrace Harvard’s Gospel roots. However, most of Harvard’s 385-year old, nearly $42 billion endowment and $5+ billion annual budget (funded 20% by student income, 46% by charitable gifts, and the rest mostly by sponsors) no longer seems primarily dedicated to promoting “Truth for Christ and the Church.” Rather, led by an institutionally respected atheist in an increasingly secular culture woefully bereft of the Word of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, they seek their answers elsewhere. They think of themselves as free and learned, in spite of Harvard’s original institutional admonition that Jesus Christ is the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.

But Harvard is not alone. “Non-religious” is the fastest growing “religious” group in America, including four in ten millennials who identify as agnostic, atheist, or nonreligious. Many other colleges and universities – similarly founded by Christians and based on biblical principles – have abandoned the Bible and the Gospel in favor of humanistic faith, ethics, and ideals. These teachings – syncretistic amalgamations of godless opinions often embedded with flecks of biblical truths and strands of Christian values – are ultimately pervasive and destructive. They lead students of all ages astray through half-truths, outright lies, and rejections of multiple realities, including God Himself and the truth of His Word.

I would love The Bible Seminary (TBS) to have the leverage of Harvard’s enrollment, endowment, and educational clout. But, only to the extent that TBS always maintains that the purpose of life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life (John 17:3), and that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding (Proverbs 9:10).

Ultimately, God will finish what He started. Until then, heed the psalmist’s counsel, “Be wise, be warned, serve the Lord with fear and celebrate his rule with trembling. Kiss his son, or he will be angry and your way will lead to your destruction…blessed are all those who take refuge in him” (Psalm 2:10-12).

Woefully Bereft

Atheist unanimously elected president of Harvard Chaplains

God started it. He designed the universe and everything in it.  He created people, family, and community, and instructed leaders to teach children and adults His commands, to obey and fear Him, and to love Him with all one’s heart, soul, and strength (Dt. 6:1-7). Yet, people have historically sought to cast off God’s constraints, complained about His commandments, ignored His chastisements, denigrated His Word, and even denied His existence.

Compare Harvard University’s recent unanimous election of an atheist as President of Harvard Chaplains to the sentiments expressed on the “New England First Fruits” tablet at Harvard’s Johnston Gate entrance (see photo above). After the early settlers thanked God for safe passage across the ocean, built their houses and places to worship God, and settled the civil government, they chose as their next priority the advancement of learning so as to avoid leaving an illiterate ministry upon the deaths of their living ministers.

Massachusetts colony leaders founded the college in 1636; received the first printing press on the continent in 1638 and printed the first book in America, “The Whole Booke of Psalms,” in 1640; named the college after benefactor and clergyman John Harvard in 1639; adopted “Rules and Precepts” in 1646 that included admonitions to “Let every student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life, John 17:3, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning”; officially chartered Harvard in 1650 for the “education of the English and Indian youth of this country in knowledge and godliness”; and established their early motto as Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae, “Truth for Christ and the Church.”

Now however, three and a half plus centuries later, Greg Epstein, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard, has been elected to lead the university’s more than 40 chaplains from more than 20 religious traditions. Although a Rabbi who doesn’t believe in God, he professionally trains clergy who seek to minister to nonreligious people. He holds three religious degrees and has been named one of the top national leaders in faith and morality.

According to Epstein, “There is a rising group of people who no longer identify with any religious tradition but still experience a real need for conversation and support around what it means to be a good human and live an ethical life.”

“We don’t look to a god for answers;

we are each other’s answers.”

Greg Epstein, President of Harvard Chaplains

In Psalm 2:1-3, the psalmist laments that nations conspire and people plot in vain against the Lord and his anointed saying, “Let us break off their chains and throw off their shackles.” In doing so, people imagine themselves free of God, free of religious obligations, and free of perceived archaic rules and precepts. But, what of their claims about goodness and ethical living?

Apart from God and His Word, “goodness” and “ethics” have nothing but human opinions to define them.

Isn’t it odd when people who do not want to obey God’s Word, or even believe in God, still impose religious beliefs on themselves and engage in religious activities? Remember the disobedient Hebrews in the wilderness who worshipped a golden idol they crafted themselves? Remember the northern kingdom of Israel’s first king, Jeroboam, who built his own altars and an entire system of corrupt worship based on his own ideas instead of the Lord’s commands? Consider the Pharisees and Sadducees, Greeks and Romans, and hundreds of other groups and cultures throughout history – including some religious and secular cultures and institutions today – that have borrowed from God to fabricate their own religious rules and traditions.

 Harvard’s founders valued literacy; believed in the duty of parents and communities to ensure that children could read and write and interpret the Bible for themselves; and helped pass the “Old Deluder Satan Act of 1647” to establish schools to thwart “ye old deluder, Satan” from keeping “men from the knowledge of ye Scriptures.”

Today, Harvard has thousands of employees, an average of 22,000 students enrolled, and 400,000+ alumni. Some probably still embrace Harvard’s Gospel roots. However, most of Harvard’s 385-year old, nearly $42 billion endowment and $5+ billion annual budget (funded 20% by student income, 46% by charitable gifts, and the rest mostly by sponsors) no longer seems primarily dedicated to promoting “Truth for Christ and the Church.” Rather, led by an institutionally respected atheist in an increasingly secular culture woefully bereft of the Word of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, they seek their answers elsewhere. They think of themselves as free and learned, in spite of Harvard’s original institutional admonition that Jesus Christ is the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.

But Harvard is not alone. “Non-religious” is the fastest growing “religious” group in America, including four in ten millennials who identify as agnostic, atheist, or nonreligious. Many other colleges and universities – similarly founded by Christians and based on biblical principles – have abandoned the Bible and the Gospel in favor of humanistic faith, ethics, and ideals. These teachings – syncretistic amalgamations of godless opinions often embedded with flecks of biblical truths and strands of Christian values – are ultimately pervasive and destructive. They lead students of all ages astray through half-truths, outright lies, and rejections of multiple realities, including God Himself and the truth of His Word.

I would love The Bible Seminary (TBS) to have the leverage of Harvard’s enrollment, endowment, and educational clout. But, only to the extent that TBS always maintains that the purpose of life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life (John 17:3), and that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding (Proverbs 9:10).

Ultimately, God will finish what He started. Until then, heed the psalmist’s counsel, “Be wise, be warned, serve the Lord with fear and celebrate his rule with trembling. Kiss his son, or he will be angry and your way will lead to your destruction…blessed are all those who take refuge in him” (Psalm 2:10-12).

K. Lynn Lewis serves as President of The Bible Seminary in Katy, Texas and is the founder and President of InspireUSA: Celebrating the Best of America®. A seasoned entrepreneur with a diverse professional background in business, education, and ministry, he is the author of Boss Like God: A Blueprint for Elite Workplace Performance (2018), Meat and Potatoes for the Soul (2013,2015), Plight (2015), and Christian Communication in the Twenty-first Century (2002), and producer of What a Dig and Shiloh Network News video series.

Living the Dream

NWG 1980 Men’s Track Team: (Above, L-R, Kneeling) Don Moore, Tony Crisp, Alan Bolton, Jimmy Plumlee, Lynn Lewis, David Shelton, and Jimmy Wood. (Standing) Coach Gerald Beard, Rusty McBryar, Brian Smith, David Johnson, Wally Moore, Lewis Whited, Michael Long, and John Hammond.

Stella Henry took fifth place in the Girls 300 Meter Hurdles Class 2A Georgia High School Association 2021 State Championships. She might have won, but she tripped on landing after her first hurdle, executed a surprisingly clean forward roll in her lane, and valiantly finished what she started, barely missing fourth place. One of her teammates, Ian Byrd, finished third in the Pole Vault and set a 12’6” school record (“Byrd Earns Third…Henry Takes Fifth,” Dade County Sentinel, Eddie Gifford, 5/20/2021).

I’ve never met Stella or Ian, or any of their teammates, and they don’t know me. But their success brings me great pleasure because I selfishly helped start their high school’s track team. When I attended what is now Dade County High School, I realized at the end of my junior year that unless we had a track team my senior year, I would most likely never realize my Olympic-inspired hurdling, jumping, running dreams. Our principal, Jerry Bryan lived a block away and I lobbied him, quite unsuccessfully over the summer, to start a track team. By the time school started, he tried to end my annoying campaign by informing me that no one was interested. I agreed to stop badgering him if he would simply call an interest meeting. He reluctantly did so and, to his surprise, 60 students showed up. When he lamely declared that he appreciated our interest, but the school had no track coach, one brave soul stepped forward.

“I don’t know anything about track,” one of our coaches volunteered, “but I’ll coach ‘em.”

Ultimately, another coach offered to help, too, and Mr. Bryan ended up coaching the Cross Country team. That season, even though most of us had no track and field competition experience and our meets doubled as practice, several of my classmates performed well enough to compete in the state championships. Not a bad start for a rookie team.

Sometime thereafter, my school changed its name from Northwest Georgia Comprehensive Consolidated Vocational Technical High School (NWG) back to simply Dade County High School (DCHS). Over the years, the school has accumulated more than four decades of track practices; coaches coaching; hundreds of students competing, earning ribbons and medals, setting records, and attending banquets celebrating achievements; and annual “Track and Field” sections in yearbooks. But more than that, while literally running in circles, facing challenging competition, leaping hurdles, jumping high bars, faltering and sometimes making miraculous recoveries in order to finish what they started, students have not only been training for life, but living life, living the dream, even if only for one season. As for me, I will always appreciate everyone who helped make our novice endeavor possible, and I derive great pleasure knowing that our team is still up and running with stellar students performing at high levels.

 Similarly, I celebrate ten years this summer of working to help start The Bible Seminary in Katy, Texas with pioneering adventurers committed to establishing a Biblically-based, Christ-centered, vigorous, world-class educational institution that long outlasts us. I am thoroughly enjoying living this dream, too. While we focus on helping train people for life and ministry leadership, seminary is not just training, it IS life and ministry. All of it. From the dollars to the diplomas, people and projects, and tests to testimonies.

 I am extremely grateful for everyone who has helped make our adventurous endeavor a growing reality. And decades from now, I hope we all derive great pleasure hearing about TBS students training, competing, winning, setting records, overcoming challenges, and celebrating inspiring victories!

Published in The Sentinel, Summer 2021, and the Dade County Sentinel, July 14, 2021, p. 5.