I’ve known Dennis Green since about 2008, when he started coming to China with his older kids (he has thirteen biological children) to help us smuggle and deliver Bible portions in the unreached western half of the country. These biannual mission trips by the Green family (and others whom he would mobilize) continued unabated until the Fall of 2015.
From America’s Killing Fields to China’s Mission Field
During the hundreds of hours we spent together bouncing along the back roads of China in my little silver Chinese minivan (later a white hatchback), I often heard stories about pro-life ministry in the U.S. back in the early 90s, when sometimes hundreds would be arrested in one day for peaceful “sit-ins” at abortion clinics. It turns out that many of these men became friends in jail and discovered another shared passion: missions in China. So Dennis and others would coordinate and take these China trips, recruiting others from the pro-life ministry circuit. I thought it was fascinating that all these men seemed to have met in jail twenty years before.
Detained and Deported from China
In 2015, Dennis and one of his daughters were distributing Bible portions door to door under cover of darkness in a remote Muslim area in northwest China. I was waiting for them in my hatchback on the far end of the little town, but I quickly lost cell phone contact and they never showed up to our meeting point. After waiting, then searching, for hours with the two other team members that night (including another of Dennis’s daughters), we had to give up (as it was getting light) and head back to the safety of the big provincial capital nearly two hours away. That was the only night in all my years in China where I had to leave someone behind.
We had no idea what had happened to them until Dennis called me later that afternoon from the back of a police car that was on the way to their hotel room in the capital. He quickly whispered that they had been arrested the night before by local police not long after being dropped off. After the police searched their room and gathered up their things (we had already evacuated his other daughter and her things), they were taken back to the “police hotel” in the county where they had been apprehended the previous night.
After a few days in police custody, Dennis and his daughter were escorted to Beijing and sent packing (sort of a “soft” deportation). Their visas were not officially cancelled, but it was obvious that Dennis was not welcome back. On a subsequent attempt to enter China about three years later, Dennis was indefinitely banned from entry (I can relate) and will probably never be allowed back in again, barring a regime change in the Middle Kingdom.
Arrested and Sentenced by the Biden DOJ
However, Dennis is not prone to sit around moping. China’s doors may have closed for him, but unfortunately, the doors of many baby killing centers in America remain open. Dennis has been involved in full-time pro-life outreach at abortion clinics in his home state of Virginia for decades, other than the many months he spent fighting Stage 4 cancer in 2022. He has continued these efforts, supplementing donor income with selling used Christian books online. I have been blessed to join him out on the streets on a couple of occasions. Dennis is bold and compassionate, not backing down from anything.
This was most clearly seen in July of 2024 at the sentencing in Nashville for the pro-life Christians who had been found guilty for participating in a baby-saving operation back in 2021. I came to Nashville in support of my friends who were being prosecuted (and to interview them), and I was there in the courthouse that day when he was asked by liberal U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger if he wanted to say anything else before she handed down his sentence. He calmly and prayerfully delivered the following statement, with his large family filling the courtroom seats behind him:
Your Honor,
Thank you for the opportunity to speak. As I begin, I feel compelled to make a correction to something said during my fellow defendant’s sentencing yesterday and earlier today. It was stated that the belief the defendants hold that life begins at conception is based upon their religious beliefs. This is not so. This is not a belief based on religion but rather basic biology. Every high school and college textbook states the same. This is established science.
What does differ between our beliefs and those of a secularist is that in our view, the life conceived has intrinsic value and is worthy of our nurture and protection.
I know you said you don’t want us to be preachy and you don’t want to hear a sermon so I will do my best. It’s just that the Scriptures are central to our lives and guide all we do.
We find ourselves in a Nation that has lost its way. A nation that defends and protects the murder of its own children by wicked laws.
We live in a nation that seeks to lock away its citizens who won’t stand by and let innocent children be dismembered. We have become a people repulsive in the sight of God. A people who shake their puny fists in the face of a holy and righteous God while imagining that they have any degree of moral authority to do so.
The One true God has specifically in the Scriptures given His people the command to rescue innocent people who are being taken to the slaughter.
As Christians, we are compelled to obey God.
Throughout history there have been times when a nation loses its way and turns its back on the weak and vulnerable.
Christians have always been at the forefront of rescuing those in danger of unjust persecution and death even when the laws of their day allowed for such oppression and slaughter.
Examples throughout history include…
Rescuing abandoned babies in first century Rome.
Rescuing Jews during the holocaust.
Rescuing fugitive slaves.
We could cite example after example.
Those who opposed the persecution of the weak and vulnerable are today applauded as heroes.
I acted to save the lives of innocent babies who were scheduled to be butchered. I use that word very deliberately. This best describes what is happening to these babies. My conscience would not allow me to do otherwise on that day.
We pray that our nation will once again return to sanity and protect the least of these most innocent image bearers of God by law.
We committed the crime of treating innocent children as if they had value.
We are prosecuted because we are Politically incorrect but Biblically correct.
Over the years, legal opinions change, but our founding documents remain the same.
The Declaration of Independence states…
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
These self-evident truths which are aligned with our Creators revealed law are no longer the basis of law in our Nation’s Federal courts.
This is not the same country our founders envisioned, or created. Politics have taken the place of justice.
The Declaration speaks of the unalienable right to life as being one of these self-evident truths.
If someone has a heartbeat, they are obviously alive. This is self-evident.
We refuse to prop up the charade that killing one’s child is a civil or human right.
The masses can loudly proclaim the obvious lie that the preborn are not persons but there will always be those who won’t play along with the deadly charade. We will act upon the self-evident truth that every child’s life is valuable and worthy of protection whether they reside in or out of the womb. Location doesn’t determine value, God’s Word does.
Men are appointed by God to be protectors of the innocent and vulnerable. A government that sanctions the murder of the weakest and most vulnerable of its members is a government that has abdicated its responsibility to protect its people. And this Nation will answer to God for this neglect.
When I chose to reject the plea offer, it was because truth is important to me. My heart’s desire is to go home to my family, to provide and care for them including my wife and special needs son who very much needs and depends upon me. To be a man of integrity, however, I must show that my first allegiance is to my God.
I honestly have prayed for you often Judge Trauger and will continue.
Thank you for allowing me to speak.
I was honestly surprised that she allowed him to finish. An hour earlier, she had cut off Cal Zastrow mid-sentence during a similarly “preachy” statement, sentencing him to six months in federal prison. Yet despite his clear and direct words contradicting the judge on many points, Dennis “only” received three years of probation. The mitigating factor in Mr. Green’s case may have been his young special needs son, but there is no way to know for sure.
I had the privilege of visiting Dennis and his family in Virginia in late 2024, and was able to observe firsthand some of the restrictions that he was under due to his probation. He needed permission to go almost anywhere and could be “visited” at his home any day. The only grace given was permission and the ability to travel “for work” to and from the abortion clinics and used bookstores, which is what Mr. Green does both as a full-time ministry and to support his family.
Presidential Pardon
After President Trump pardoned Dennis and all of the other convicted pro-lifers, I reached out to him with a few basic questions. Here are my questions and his answers, lightly edited (with his permission):
How do you feel after being pardoned?
“I feel great. I’m very happy to have been pardoned and gotten some of the rights back that were taken away. Also, having the ability to travel is a real blessing since our passports were taken away during our probation period. If I hadn’t been pardoned, I’d still be on probation for three more years, so that’s a great blessing.”
Did you expect to be pardoned?
“We were hopeful that we would be pardoned, although we were never sure. As the date approached for the president to potentially address our case, there was more and more talk about it. There was much more pressure being put on the president and more people speaking to him about it. So I was very hopeful. Earlier on the day the pardon was signed, some false reports came out from a couple different news agencies that said only ten people were going to be pardoned, and I was not on that list. So I was thinking, well, maybe it's not gonna happen for me. I had to content myself to know that although Paul appealed to Caesar, he wasn’t pardoned. So I still needed to press on, joy filled, serving God, even though [a pardon] might not be what was going to be for me. Then we found out there were twenty-three pardons and I was one of them, so I was very happy to hear that.”
What does the pardon mean for you, practically?
“I’ll be able to vote. I’ll get my gun rights back. I won’t have a probation officer breathing down my neck. I won’t have to answer for everything I do and ask permission for everything. So that’s good. I can minister more freely at more abortion clinics and places we like to reach out that had been closed to me because of my probation. So that’s a real blessing.”
Will you get your passport back, so you can travel for missions?
“Yes, I will get my passport back. As of right now, we are no longer felons. So I can use it any time I want!”
What would you say to President Trump about the pro-life issue?
“We are definitely very happy that he pardoned us. We will continue in this battle, because that pardon is just icing on the cake for us. We are still in this fight for the long haul. We will be working to see that FACE is overturned and hopefully it’ll be re-addressed.
I would hope, of course, that President Trump would be born again and have a biblical worldview in everything that he does. I do greatly appreciate a lot of the things he’s done in the last couple of days, things that we never have seen done under any previous democratic or republican administrations. So I’m very happy to see that. I’ll continue to pray for him that he would find the Savior and in everything make righteous decisions, because there’s much more that’s going on in America that needs to be addressed.
