Islam for the beginners | part one |3- The miracle and the prophets

           In the past, we discussed the issue of inferring the existence of God and its harmony with the mind as we discussed the idea of prophecies and how the human need a message from the Creator.

Without the infallible constitution, defects will arise because all human constitution and laws are not far from defects because they are the product of the human soul accompanied with whims and prejudice. Therefore, it was a must to follow a constitution that is infallible from defects.

This law can only be issued by the Creator of the universe and the maker of the mind.

After we realized that there is a Creator and that this Creator sent us messengers, we must know the sign by which we can identify these messengers.

This sign is the miracle, but before we go into the details of the miracle, we must know something, which is that the total number of prophets and messengers is something we are not aware of, God said this in the Holy Qur'an, and said to His prophet (PBUH) "messengers that we told you about before and messengers that we didn't tall you about. This meaning was repeated in Surat Al-Baqarah and Surat Ghafir as well.

However, there were texts stating that the total number of prophets is one hundred and twenty-four thousand prophets, and that the number of the messengers from these prophets is three hundred and fifteen messengers.

But the text that states the total number of the prophets is a different text in its form, unlike the other text that mentioned the number of messengers, so it is valid to invoke it.

But what is mentioned in the Holy Qur'an is that the known number who are twenty five messenger prophet, and it was mentioned eighteen of them in Surat El-Anaam ( the cattle), as God said: "This is the argument we galvel to Abraham against his people. We exalt whoever We please in rank by degrees. Your Lord is wise and all-knowing* And We gave him Isaac and Jacob and guided them, as We had guided Noah before them, and of his descendants, David and Solomon and Job and Joseph and Moses and Aaron. Thus We reward these who are upright and do good* Zachariah and John We guided, and guided Jesus and Elias who were all among the upright* We gave guidance to Ishmael, Elisha and Jonah and Lot; And We favoured them over the other people of the world" and remains seven Driss, and Hood and Shoaib, Saleh and Dhul-kifl, Adam and Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon them all). These seven were mentioned in other verses in the Holy Qur'an.

Perhaps some names appeared in the Sunnah for some of the prophets, such as: our master Sheth bin Adam, peace be upon them and the prophet of God Joshua bin Nun, peace be upon him.

What happened that God didn't inform our prophet MUHAMMAD (PBUH) with the names of those messengers and prophets in details.

Therefore, we don't know thw8all, but we know who are mentioned in Qur'an and Sunnah from them.

 May be you find a mention for some prophets n the previous books, then what do we do?

We read about that matter and release its fact to God, God is knowing the validity of this text or not, because as Muslims we don't approve on any heavenly book that's true today except Qur'an.

Yes, we admit that God revealed the books that preceded the Qur'an. It's from the core of the pillars of faith to believe in all the previous heavenly books. We believe in the revelation of these books, but we don't believe that they exist today on the condition that they were on.

For that reason, we read these texts and say: God knows best. This man who is described as a prophet may be a true prophet or he may not be.

Why? Because we don't have a text that testify to the correctness of that from the Qur'an, therefore there is nothing wrong with mentioning the stories of the people of the book, and talking about them, but without being certain of what was reported about them in their stories.

This matter was declared to us by Abu Hurayrah, may Allah be pleased with him, he said: "the people of the book were reading the Torah in Hebrew and explain it in Arabic to the people of Islam, then said the messenger of Allah don't belie e the people of the book or lied them, and say:" we believed in Allah and was revealed to us" (AlBaqarah136)

Back to our topic: the miracle.

The miracle is the sign indicating the sincerity of the person who claimed that he is a prophet. It is something that is supernatural to the well-known human habit. This matter is shown by God Almighty through a human being.

This person may have claimed to be a prophet.

Then, this miracle comes to prove the validity of this prophets claim, as it always comes with a challenge to these to whom the prophet came….

Pit comes to them with a challenge meaning that non of them can perform such a miracle.

Here we would like to point out things;

First/ the miracle doesn't break the mind, but rather it breaks the habit. For example the mind says that o e is the half of two. It's not possible for a prophet to come to say that one is a quarter of two, because by doing so it destroys the mind, which is the means of understanding.

It destroys the mind that is supposed to search o reach the truth of the prophet's miracle. How can you ask him to believe in a prophet who brings him the opposite of what God created the minds of?

But the prophet comes with something he is not familiar with, for example : as tone may turn into gold or the prophet may move from one place to another in a short time, as it happened in the journey of Al-Isra and Al-Mieaj.

 Why? Because it is not impossible for the mind to imagine the occurrence of these things, and the reality is the best evidence. For example, one hundred and fifty years ago, we didn't believe that these materials could transmit to us a vivd image around the world by phoni g a group with audio and videos!

 But the science has developed today and this became possible.

The miracle does such things, but with the absence of material causes that and lead to it.

This is the difference between a miracle that is extraordinary and things that contradict or are supernatural to what the minds require.

Second/ the prophet is that man to whom God revealed something, whether he commanded him to convey it to someone else or not. If He didn't order him to convey it to the people; then he is only a prophet and if he commanded him to convey it to the people, then he is both a prophet and a messenger.

We will continue the discussion  in the next article, God willing, about the characteristics of the prophets that are obligatory for them, that is they must be characterized by.