On Saturday morning, August 3rd, 1985 I was sitting in an overcrowded jail cell in the Broward County Jail, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. I had just been arrested on the Thursday before, so all of this was strange and new to me. I was nearing my 46th birthday and had never been in jail before. Since childhood I had considered myself to be a Christian and had always tried to live that way. However, my wife wasn’t Christian, so we just didn’t go to church and I had no real Christian influence in my life. Satan messes with people who call themselves Christian but aren’t really living for Christ. During the 15 years before my arrest - my marriage and my life had begun to fall apart. I felt lost and alone. I allowed sin to take a major foothold in my life. By the time of my arrest, I believed God wanted nothing to do with me. I believed I had “set my hand to the plow and looked back and was no longer worthy of the Kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62). I truly believed I had been too bad to be forgiven and that God wanted nothing to do with me. On that beautiful, sun filled Saturday morning, August 3, 1985, a man, who could have been out fishing in either the ocean or the Everglades – or laying on the beach or playing on one of the many golf courses in the area, wasn’t doing any of those things. He chose to spend his time going to lost and hurting souls in the county jail. I saw him coming up the walkway toward our cell. He passed many smaller cells and came to ours, the big cell at the end of the walkway. As he approached the bars, he pointed his finger at me and said, “May I pray with you?” I said, “I guess so,” and walked to the bars. As I was just approaching him, he said, “You know, you haven’t been too bad to be forgiven.” I knew at once that he was talking about whatever had landed me in jail – but I was thinking of Luke 9:62. So, I said, “Yes, I have.” He said, "No – you haven’t!” I remember thinking, “This idiot doesn’t have a clue about what he’s talking about.” So I said, rather emphatically, “YES, I HAVE!” He opened his Bible. We talked for several minutes. After a while, tears filled my eyes as he convinced me that God could and would forgive me. I wasn’t aware of it at first, but as those tears came to my eye’s other men, other inmates, had walked up behind me and some of them had placed their hands on me – an act of love and kindness I had never experienced before. I went on into prison as a forgiven man – and wanting to learn all I could about this God who could love me enough to forgive me. The man had said that God loved me. I couldn’t figure that out. Jesus had paid for my sins on the cross. That made sense to me. But why in the world would He love me? I went into prison wanting to find an answer to that. Early into my three year sentence, a friend on the outside, had gone to a church and asked if they would pay for me to take Bible courses from Moody. They did. I completed the Scofield course while in prison and when I came out, over the next three years, completed the Moody course of study and graduated in May of 1991. While in prison I experienced the same kind of love and fellowship from other Christian inmates that I had been introduced to that day in jail. The Christian brotherhood in jails and prison is strong. They are broken people – at the end of their self-seeking – and turning to God for both forgiveness and a new direction in life. We prayed together and studied God’s Word together. Someone’s mother would die. A wife would write saying that she was filing for divorce. Someone’s son would write and say that he never wanted to see his dad again. We were there for each other. We prayed for one another. We studied God’s Word together. We encouraged one another. On the day I left prison I clearly heard God as He spoke to my heart, “Don’t forget the friends you are leaving behind.” I never have. Two days after my release I went back into the same jail I had come from, walking beside the man who three years earlier had told me that I hadn’t been too bad to be forgiven. That man’s name was Jesse Basnight. He went home to be with the Lord a long time ago. I will always love Jesse Basnight and continually thank God for him. He could have been on the beach or fishing. He wasn’t! He allowed God to use him to change my life. I am writing this in August of 2025. Forty years since Jesse told me I hadn’t been too bad to be forgiven. 37 years since I started going back into jails telling men the same. Today, the lessons I wrote after coming out of prison and graduating from Moody, are being taken by correspondence by inmates, both male and female, in five states – and growing. I am now 86 years old and every Thursday evening I walk into Middle River Regional Jail, here in Virginia where I now live. There I teach my Bible courses and love and hug broken men – and show them from God’s Word that they haven’t been too bad to be forgiven. My prayer is, and I would like for you to pray this for me as well, that God will give me at least four more years of doing what I do. I want to still be going inside that jail, carrying God’s love and His Word to inmates - as a 90 year old man. Clinton O., (Clint), Webb