MIRACLES OR SIGNS OF GOD

MIRACLES OR SIGNS OF GOD Phenomena in Nature T HE SIGNS that the prophets of God demonstrated to their people are commonly known as miracles. But this is not a true Islamic understanding. The Quran and Hadith (record of the Prophet’s sayings and deeds) refer to these prophetic examples not as miracles, but as signs. Calling such instances as miracles presents them as prophetic phenomena, whereas referring to them as signs shows them to be natural phenomena. Moses was a prophet of God. He was born in ancient Egypt in the 16th century BC. The Egyptian ruler of the time, Ramesses II, challenged him in a contest where, on the demand of the ruler, the Prophet Moses demonstrated a sign. When he threw his wooden staff to the ground, it instantly turned into a slithering serpent. This event was witnessed by many people, some of whom were so affected that they immediately accepted the divine message of Prophet Moses. This incident was not just a lesson for the contemporaries of the Prophet Moses. In reality, it was an eye-opening sign for the whole of humankind. Moses had demonstrated to people a universal and common law of God. This is the law of conversion. With the help of God, Prophet Moses had shown that a piece of wood could be changed into the shape of a serpent in the same way that everything in nature is being converted from one form into another. The event that Prophet Moses demonstrated to the people was in reality this law of conversion: an act of changing something from one form to another. There are several references to this natural law of conversion in the Quran. The Quran says that in this world ‘nothing’ is being converted into ‘something’ (52: 35). In the same way, it is mentioned that a nonexistence is converted into an existence (76: 1). The time of Prophet Moses and the Pharaoh, Ramesses II, was the pre-scientific era, when such signs could only be shown to people with the special intervention of God. With the advent of modern science, it In the order of nature, the act of conversion is universal and allpervading. It is a proof of the existence of God and of His power. What is meant by conversion in the universe is actually Divine intervention.