2013 A.D.:  Geo Prophecy?  Does the Sea of Azov look like the pointing hand of God?

  There in the bosom of Asia and attached to the Black Sea is the world's shallowest sea, the Sea of Azov.  Today the excellent Ukrainian people (I have lived around a good number of them in the USA) are settled around it to a great extent.  Its plankton rich waters abound with life, being particularly rich in fish such as perch, sturgeon, mackerel, anchovies, whitefish, carp, and there are others.  About 20% of its fish are freshwater species (in the areas where the great incoming rivers make the water less saline) and the rest are saltwater species which do better in the areas where the Black Sea's more briny waters mix with those of the Azov.  The salinity varies quite a lot from one area of this sea to the other.  And the Azov is the final destination for several of the most important rivers in that portion of the continent of Asia.  

The Russian Sturgeon, a choice source of caviar and a good tasting fish, is a valuable fish stock in the Sea of Azov!

  From the air the Sea of Azov is shaped quite a lot like a pointing hand, with the interesting additional feature of a very straight line cutting it off at the 'wrist', just as the cuff of a long-sleeved shirt might do to the wrist of a pointing hand.

  (See picture at bottom) 

  So, what might be important about this region and in particular what is there that the 'pointing hand' placed there by God might be pointing out?  Well, to begin with, let's restate the premise of GeoProphecy, which is completely speculation, yet which keeps producing the most amazing situations to consider:  perhaps God formed the world's geography such that He built pictures right into the surface of the Earth to point out places where He already foresaw that certain important things would happen in the course of human history.  Perhaps He did this to show us that it really was He, Yahweh and His Son Jesus our king who were behind all things.  Perhaps He did it to show that He knew the end from the beginning.

  So, if the Sea of Azov really is shaped like a pointing hand, what might it be pointing at?  Well, one candidate involves the fact that the very area that it is 'pointing at' was once dwelt in by a distinguished group of refugees.  For a good number of centuries, they lived there before being pushed out and eventually migrating up the rivers towards the areas of northwest Europe where they finally settled in, though some have also traveled on to other lands from there.  And what makes these refugees somewhat special is that they were tribes of Israel until the 8th century B.C.  At that time, they had become so idolatrous and rebellious towards God that He allowed them to be conquered by Assyria and exported to the northern part of the Assyrian Empire.  When the Assyrian Empire later collapsed a great many of those refugees became permanent and sometimes independent residents of various areas around the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.  They were called Scythians by some, sometimes Cimmerians, portions of them were called Sarmatians at times.  They were sometimes generalized as the Aes culture by other nations, and the word Aesgaard apparently referred to an actual principal city of these Aes.  Greeks called portions of them 'Sacae' and this later morphed linguistically into the word Saxon in later centuries, some contend. 

  They were described as traders and farmers, but also very warlike whether by boat or on horseback.  They were able boatsmen, using the seas and rivers to transport their goods at times and places when and where it was more convenient than overland trails.  The Scyths were such able calvary soldiers that it is recorded that a young warrior's rite of passage included being able to ride full speed along the water shooting down flying waterfowl with the Scythian bow from horseback.  They were a largely fair skinned and fair haired people and mentioned as having very just laws.  DNA evidence from burial mounds has found a high percentage had blue and green eyes, which matches the descriptions of some ancient writers.  They tattooed themselves...at least some did.  Scythians are mentioned as noted cannabis smokers.  Their gold work is extraordinary, and sometimes featured animals now extinct in minute anatomical detail, shown preying upon their horses or fighting with lion prides.  The griffin is one example.  They portrayed it as a horse eater, and sometimes a fighter of lions.  Note that the anatomy of the horse, which we know today, is carefully and faithfully portrayed.  And the griffins seem just as carefully depicted, as if they were a known and ordinary animal, which I believe is exactly the case.

  At least a portion of the tribe of Dan was among those deported Israelites, and that tribe had the noted habit of naming mountains and rivers and towns, etc., wherever they lived and traveled, after their ancestor and founding father named Dan who was one of Jacob's (the man from the Bible who was also named Israel) sons.  And so, some historians contend that the Don River and the Donet River, which conjoin and then empty into the Sea of Azov, received their names through this means.  It is at any rate true that one of those ancient tribes mentioned as living in this area was called the Danarii.  

  The word Don can be a variation of the name Dan, just as Den, Dun, Den, and Din.  These sounds often constitute parts of the names of prominent physical features of the lands where this Israelite tribe of Dan wandered, along with its related brother tribes, over the centuries.  There also are usually small stone houses called 'dolmens' to be found in the areas where they journeyed.  Some believe that some of these were built by the tribe of Dan and his other brother tribes, though that is also a contested thought. 

  The example of a dolmen shown below is more like a home than many dolmens and is from somewhere in the Caucasus region per the picture's label.  Often times dolmens are just a slab of rock for a roof, held up by 4 or more rough pillars of rock at each corner.   

  Here is a couple of examples of dolmens from Israel and that area.  Jordan is another nation which has some, and I do not know which of the two nations these particular pictures are from:

  And in Northern Europe (Brittany, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark for instance) there are also examples of dolmens, such as the one below.  So, either it is merely a structure built by various peoples in all of those widely separated geographical regions, or perhaps one particular culture that built these structures ended up dwelling in all of those geographical regions. 

   I chose the above shown dolmen, from Denmark, to exhibit because some people believe that the 'Den' part of Denmark is yet another example of the Israelite tribal founder named 'Dan' being memorialized.   Again, a contested belief.  Yet, one theory of the migration of the Scandinavian and northern European peoples (portions of them) is that they were pushed out from the area of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov and used the great rivers (such as the Don) and the nearby Volga to move far north, and then even farther to the north west, to travel northward and then overland to what would one day be called north western Europe.  There they resettled according to some historians.  They then spread to portions of more southerly Europe and Great Britain.  Scandinavia was an area that they were previously familiar with because of having used trading routes that led between the Azov/Black Sea region and Northwestern Europe for a long time. Perhaps when invaders forced them to flee, they felt that they might be peacefully received among their trading partners.  Or perhaps they just forced their way up there by force of arms because they were in need of a new home.  At any rate, most of the great royal families of Europe have portions of their ancestry from these migrants, and openly acknowledge that to be a fact.  Queen Elizabeth II is said to have commissioned a very detailed investigation of her own ancestry which established relations with these peoples, and you can easily find a list of her apparent relation back to those people with a simple internet search.  They arrived in the centuries around the time of Christ in several great waves of migration.  

  There was another tribe in the area of the Sea of Azov called the Asturicani that was among the half dozen or more potentially Israelite tribes that seemed to live amicably enough with each other in that area.  Though it is purely speculation on my part, we could note that there was a tribe of the Israelites called Asher.  Does the 'Astur' in Asturicani sound a little like the word Asher?  Perhaps this was a portion of the tribe of Asher, living near Dan and perhaps near other branches of the Israelites there around the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.  And the location of the present city Rostov-on-Don, which is at the tip of 'the finger' of the Sea of Azov was once a city where they lived according to some who have studied this, there just at the 'fingertip' formed by the eastern end of the Sea of Azov.  Such things as grave markers written in ancient Hebrew and the writings of ancient Greek historical writers appear to confirm it as an ancient truth of history that Israelites (portions of the lost ten tribes as they are sometimes called) dwelled together in great numbers in this region for a substantial time. 

   Perhaps this could be what the finger points at, do you think? God punished the northern ten tribes of the Israelites, His fallen and idolatrous people, very severely using the Assyrians.  He allowed them to be rooted out of their tribal land allotments in Israel and be taken away to the north as slaves.  And then about a century and a half later the southern two tribes had become just as bad, and so He used the Babylonian Empire to punish those two tribes, largely Judah and Benjamin, just as He had used Assyria to punish these first ten tribes.  But He had already promised through the prophets that He would never forget the Israelites.  He had declared that they would be His chosen people through whom the rest of the world's peoples would come to see His love, His might, and His protectiveness for those He called His own (despite however much He might punish them at times when their actions became evil as a nation or a people.)  So, though they were in the doghouse, they were still under His watchful eye during this time of punishment.  Some Israelites from all of the different tribes actually returned to Israel during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah in the 6th and 5th century B.C.  Yet only some, not all. 

  Still, perhaps this 'hand' points at something entirely different,  Or perhaps it only looks like a hand by accident or chance or only to me.  Only God can know, I would think.  But God formed the world and all of the features on its surface, and where ever these 'hands with the pointing fingers' show up there seems to nearly always be a correlation with the high profile events of God the Holy Father, the Maker of All Things, and the Guider of the History of Mankind.