What is a Miracle?

AL-QUR`AN, The Miracle of Miracles by Ahmed Deedat

I think it is necessary that we have a clear picture of what we mean by a miracle. Here are some definitions:- "An event that appears so inexplicable by the laws of nature, that it is held to be supernatural in origin or an act of God." "A person, thing or event that excites admiring awe." "An act beyond human power, an impossibility."

It is logical that greater the impossibility, greater the miracle. For example, should a person expire before our very eyes and is certified dead by a qualiified medical man, yet later on a mystic or a saint commands the corpse to 'arise!', and to everybody's astonishment the person gets up and walks away , we would label that as a miracle. But if the resurrection of the dead took place after the corpse had been in the mortuary for three days, then we would acclaim this as a greater miracle. And if the dead was made to arise from the grave, decades or centuries after the body had decomposed and rotted away, then in that case we would label it the greatest miracle of them all!

A Common Trait:

It has been a common trait of mankind since time immemorial that whatever a guide from God appeared to redirect their steps into the will and plan of God; they demanded supernatural proofs from these men of God, instead of accepting message on its merit. For example, when Jesus Christ (pbuh) began to preach to his people - "the children of Israel" - to mend their ways and to refrain from mere legalistic formalism and imbibe the true spirit of the laws and commandments of god, his 'people' demanded miracles from him to prove his bona fides ( his authenicity , his genuineness), as recorded in the christian scriptures:
Then certain of the scribes and the phairsees ansswered, saying master, we would have a sing ( miracle ) from thee.
But he answered and said unto them, "an evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign (miracle) and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas ( matthew 12:38-39 holy bible) Though on the face of it, Jesus (pbuh) refuses to pamper the jews here, in actual fact, he did perform many miracles as we learn from the gospel narratives.
The holy bible is full of supernatural events accredited to the prophets from their lord. In reality all those 'signs' and 'wonders' and 'miracles' were acts of God, but since those miracles were worked through his human agents, we describe them as the miracles of prophets (i.e. Moses or Jesus (pbuh) by those hands they were performed).

Quirk Continues:

Some six hundred years after the birth of Jesus(pbuh), Muhammad(pbuh) the messenger of God was born in Makkah in arabia. When he proclaimed his mission at the age of forty, his fellow countrymen, the mushriks of makkah made an identical request for miracles, as had the jews, from their promised Messiah. Text book style, it was as if the arabs had taken a leaf from the christian records. History has a habit of rpeating itself!
And they say:
why are not signs sent down to him from his lord? (holy Qu`ran 29:50)


SIGNS! WHAT SIGNS!!

"Miracles ? Cries he, what miracles would you have? Are not you yourselves there? God made you 'shaped you out of a little clay.' Ye were small once; a few years ago ye were not at all. Ye have beauty, strength, thoughts, 'ye have compassion on one another.' Old age comes-on you, and grey hairs; your strength fades into feebleness: ye sink down, and again are not. 'Ye have compassion on one another': This struck me much: Allah might have made you havving no compassion on one another, how had it been then! this is a great direct though, a glance at first-hand into the very fact of things...." "(On heroes hero-worship and the heroic in history,")by Thomas Carlyle. read more