Rosh-Shee-Yah!

Just an interesting tidbit that occurred to me today while watching the Sochi Olympics, from Russia. Specifically, I was watching the U.S. Olympic Hockey Team take on the Russian Hockey Team, in the first of what is to be at least two contests that may well play a significant role in deciding the team medals. Since these games are being played in Russia, you would correctly presume that the crowd for this game was overwhelmingly biased in favor of the Russian Team.

At one point the television play-by-play announcer remarked concerning the chanting that was going on almost continuously in the background. He said that Russian crowds tended to chant in such a manner, rather than shout out individual encouragements such as one might expect in American sporting events. He said that he didn't speak Russian but that they had a translator on stand-by, and that he would try to find out what the crowd was chanting. Later, he said that one chant was..., and he named the Russian word, adding that it translated into the urge to, "let's get going" ( roughly). Then he said the second chant was their pronunciation of their country's name which he stated was phonetically pronounced, "Rosh-Shee-Yah!". Immediately, we could easily hear the crowd take up that chant, in three beats, making the pronunciation absolutely unmistakable.

This immediately reminded me that the country that the Bible claims will be the lead country of the prophecied Gog/Magog invasion of Israel will be from the country of Rosh, which has prominent cities that it referred to as Mes
chesch, and Tubal ( commonly believed to be ancient pronunciations of the present-day cities of Moscow, and Tobolsk). I claim no great prophetic insight in all this, but I thought it was interesting that a crowd of Russian fans would all pronounce the name of their country exactly the way God pronounced it more than 1500 years ago, even though most other countries today pronounce it significantly different, including our own.

Just another small revelation of the relevance of God's ancient prophecies to the readers of the Bible today. By the way, the American Team won the game, in over-time, by the score of 3 to 2! Hmm... I wonder if God is a Hockey fan???