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My name is Becky Helton and I recently retired from a career in the banking industry that spanned more than 50 years. Trying to find an answer to the question, “Now what?” has not been easy, but I do know that God did not bring me this far just to spend my days in front of the television eating bonbons! Although I do enjoy gardening, reading, embroidery and yes, eating bonbons, there are few things in this life that I enjoy more than opening up my Bible and spending time with the Lord.

I am a theologian of the homegrown variety. Although I did not graduate from any Bible college, I have spent more than 30 years as a faithful student of the Bible.

I think it is important for you to understand what my beliefs are and where I stand on certain things.

I believe that our God is a Triune God. That is, there are three persons who make up the holy Trinity which is sometimes referred to as the “Godhead”. They are: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. In their very essence, all three are perfect and identical in their attributes, and only their roles within the Trinity are different.

I believe that God the Son became human by way of a supernatural event in which the Holy Spirit caused the virgin Mary to conceive a child, a son whose name would be called Jesus. This represents the one and only time in all of human history that the Divine nature of God the Son was united with a sinless human nature, having been formed in the womb of a woman (with no interaction with a human man since the sin nature is passed through the man) in what is called the hypostatic union. The result was the God-Man, Jesus.

One of the many reasons God the Son submitted to the will of the Father by becoming the God-Man, was to dwell here on earth to help explain God to us. Consider this story: If an ant climbs into your sugar bowl, you can scream at it at the top of your voice and it will do no good: the ant does not understand human speech. But if you could become an ant (I know this is strange, but just work with me here) you could talk to the ant in its own language and tell him to get the heck out of your sugar bowl! So one reason Jesus became a man was so we could better understand and communicate with God.

I believe that the Bible (a/k/a the Scriptures) was supernaturally created and preserved. The writing of the Bible was supervised by the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity. Because of this supervision, the Scriptures are said to be “inspired”, that is, “God-breathed”. The Holy Spirit placed knowledge into the minds of certain men whom He then chose to write those things down to preserve them for us. This is evident in the fact that the Bible was written over a period of 1,500 years on three continents and in three different languages by no fewer than 40 different human writers, and yet, the Bible is in complete unity, without error and infallible in the original manuscripts.

I believe the Scriptures are to be interpreted in their natural, literal sense. The Bible says what it means and means what it says.

I believe the Bible is God’s final revelation of Himself to us. The Scriptures provide all of the information we need to live godly lives and it tells all we need to know about receiving salvation through the forgiveness of our sins. I also believe that the only way in which a Christian can grow and mature in the faith is to read and study the Bible on a regular basis.

I believe that all human beings are born into the kingdom of Satan and are separated from God because of their sin. In other words, I believe that all of mankind has inherited a sin nature as a result of Adam’s disobedience to God. On their own, human beings are unable to cleanse themselves of this inherited stain of sin and only by the grace of God (grace is God giving us something we do not deserve) can our sin be cleaned away. Some professing Christians teach that a person can wipe away his sin through his own good works but Scripture teaches this is not so. Remember: Good works do not produce salvation, but salvation produces good works.

I believe that water baptism is a public testimony by the believer that they have personally trusted Jesus Christ as Savior, and the act of baptism in no way contributes to the salvation of that individual.

I believe that the Lord’s Supper (the Communion Service) is a memorial testimony to be periodically observed by believers, and that it is a sacred, symbolic and scriptural means of remembering Jesus’ redemptive work for our sins. I also believe the Lord’s Supper was instituted by Jesus Christ on the night in which He was betrayed, when He said “Do this is remembrance of Me.”

CONTACT INFORMATION

I would love to hear from you. Please contact me by e-mail if you have any questions or comments about anything you read on this website. I would also love to have your suggestions for future Bible study topics.

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