Jehovah’s Witnesses, as has been observed, deny the bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and claim instead that He was raised a “divine spirit being” or as an “invisible spirit creature.” They answer the objection that He appeared in human form by asserting that He simply took human forms as He needed them, which enabled Him to be seen, for as the Logos He would have been invisible to the human eye. In short, Jesus did not appear in the same form that hung upon the cross since that body either “dissolved into gases or is preserved somewhere as the grand memorial of God’s love”. This, in spite of Paul’s direct refutation in 1 Timothy 2:5, where he calls “the man Christ Jesus” our only mediator—some thirty years after the resurrection!
      The Scriptures, however, tell a completely different story, as will be evident when their testimony is considered. Christ himself prophesied His own bodily resurrection, and John tells us “He spake of the temple of His body” (John 2:21).
      In John 20:24–26, the disciple Thomas doubted the literal, physical resurrection of Christ, only to repent of his doubt (v. 28) after Jesus offered His body (v. 27), the same one that was crucified and still bore the nail prints and spear wound, to Thomas for his examination. No reasonable person will say that the body the Lord Jesus displayed was not His crucifixion body, unless he either ignorantly or willfully denies the Word of God. It was no other body “assumed” for the time by a spiritual Christ; it was the identical form that hung on the tree—the Lord himself; He was alive and undeniably tangible, not a “divine spirit being.” The Lord foresaw the unbelief of men in His bodily resurrection and made an explicit point of saying that He was not a spirit but flesh and bones (Luke 24:39–44), and He even went so far as to eat human food to prove that He was identified with humanity as well as Deity. Christ rebuked the disciples for their unbelief in His physical resurrection (Luke 24:25), and it was the physical resurrection that confirmed His deity, since only God could voluntarily lay down and take up life at will (John 10:18). We must not forget that Christ prophesied not only His resurrection but also the nature of that resurrection, which He said would be bodily (John 2:19–21). He said He would raise up “this temple” in three days (v. 19), and John tells us “He spake of the temple of his body” (v. 21).
      Jehovah’s Witnesses utilize, among other unconnected verses, 1 Peter 3:18 as a defense for their spiritual resurrection doctrine. Peter declares that Christ was “put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit.” Obviously He was made alive in the Spirit and by the Spirit of God, for the Spirit of God, who shares the nature of God himself, raised up Jesus from the dead, as it is written, “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you ” (Romans 8:11). The meaning of the verse then is quite clear. God did not raise Jesus as merely a spirit but raised Him by His Spirit, which follows perfectly John 20:27 and Luke 24:39–44 in establishing the physical resurrection of the Lord.
      The Watchtower quotes Mark 16:12 and John 20:14–16 as proof that Jesus has “other bodies” after His resurrection. Unfortunately for them, the reference in Mark is a questionable source, and a doctrine should not be built around one questionable verse. Neither verse has anything to do with the material reality of Christ’s resurrection. The reason that Mary (in Mark 16) and also the Emmaus disciples (Luke 24) did not recognize Him is explained in Luke 24:16 (RSV): “Their eyes were kept from recognizing him”(RSV), but it was “Jesus himself” (v. 15).
      Jehovah’s Witnesses also try to undermine our Lord’s bodily resurrection by pointing out that the doors were shut (John 20:26) when Jesus appeared in the Upper Room. However, Christ had a “spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:50, 53) in His glorified state; identical in form to His earthly body, but immortal; consequently, He was capable of entering either the dimension of earth or of heaven with no violation to the laws of either one.
      Paul states in Romans 4:24; 6:4; 1 Corinthians 15:15; etc., that Christ is raised from the dead, and Paul preached the physical resurrection and return of the God-man, not a “divine spirit being” without a tangible form. Paul also warned that if Christ is not risen, then our faith is in vain (1 Corinthians 15:14); to us who believe God’s Word there is a Man in the Glory who showed His wounds as a token of His reality and whose question we ask Jehovah’s Witnesses: “Has a spirit flesh and bones as you see me have?” (Luke 24:39).

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