Flight into Egypt

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A DANGEROUS JOURNEY

‘Thou shall not be afraid of the terror by night Nor of the arrow that flies by day’. Psalm 91:5

The testimony of Major Mark Goodwin-Hudson

In the summer of 2007 I was commanding a squadron of the Blues and Royals posted to Iraq. One evening at Basra, while boarding a transport plane with sixty-eight others, the Holy Spirit punched me almost physically in the stomach with the urgent command, ‘PRAY! So I walked up the length of the fuselage to a seat at the far end praying loudly in tongues with the authority of Almighty God to annihilate whatever the powers of darkness had planned for us.

Some time later, as we touched down at a remote northern desert strip, there was a series of very loud bangs and the plane veered off sharply to the left. A wing of the plane had been torn off and the side of the fuselage was on fire. We had been ambushed! The immediate threat was that we would meet a storm of machine gun fire and that the fuel tanks would explode. Inexplicably there was no machine gun fire, the plane did not blow up, and we all escaped without casualties.

One of the worst crimes a soldier can commit in the battlefield is to lose his weapon. One of my men came to report that he had lost his 9mm pistol. I told him that God knew where it was and that I would ask God to help him. He scowled back at me in unbelief. I sent him off with a land rover and driver to look for it, but it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Three days later we were on the move. The desert was littered with camel dung and other debris. Suddenly a Fijian trooper called Guan Ebeci, a believer, called out to his driver to stop. He had seen something. He got out and picked up the missing pistol. Throughout the Bible there are over thirty instances of deliverance coming on the third day. This was another one!

Shortly afterwards my squadron had to drive through a town known to be a hotbed of insurgents. The Australian commander of that section told me that they did not dare enter the town because of the casualties they had sustained. The enemy were well armed and could be expected to attack us with mines, sniper fire, rockets and anti tank weapons. For our protection we had only un-armoured soft bottomed land rovers with a helicopter gun ship on either side. But, more important, fervent prayer to the God who is our shield!

As we approached six police cars erupted from the city gate tearing towards us like demonic hornets as if to scare us off. We drove four kilometres through the town. It was eerie. Not a soul on the streets. Not a dog barked. Not a shot fired. We came through unscathed. The Lord had put fear into the hearts of the enemy just as He did to win battles in Old Testament times.