Thanks for the suggestion. I had tried to use the program to reboot into safe mode. I took your advice and used Windows 10 advanced startup to reboot into Safe Mode; and it worked. I was able to then run Windows Repair and only selected the "Windows update" checkbox. After rebooting, however, windows update still didn't work. (As you will see, it wasn't the fault of the program, however.)
Attempts to enable windows update service in services.msc were not successful. My computer would not allow me to enable the windows update service. I remembered that in my earlier attempts to fix windows update, I downloaded and installed a utility called WUMT Wrapper Script. It was the culprit. Once I uninstalled this program (and undid the script), windows update worked.
So, thanks for your assistance. Much appreciated.